BRITAIN: Newly elected Conservative leader David Cameron appointed the top tier of his shadow cabinet team last night after an impressive debut performance against Tony Blair at prime minister's questions in the House of Commons.
As expected, one of Mr Cameron's predecessors as Tory leader, William Hague, returned to front-line politics as shadow foreign secretary. Despite predictions that a triumphant Mr Cameron would seek to demote and thus "humiliate" his defeated leadership rival, David Davis retained his home office portfolio, while the third-placed Dr Liam Fox went to defence.
Mr Cameron's campaign manager George Osborne retained his post shadowing Chancellor Gordon Brown, while Oliver Letwin was confirmed as Mr Cameron's new director of policy.
Francis Maude retained the party chairmanship, to which he was appointed by the former leader Michael Howard.
Sir Malcolm Rifkind, who pulled out of the leadership race for lack of support, announced he was leaving the shadow cabinet, having told Mr Cameron some weeks ago that foreign affairs was the only post in which he was interested.
Mr Cameron's office announced that the remaining candidate from the original field of four, Kenneth Clarke, is to chair a democracy task force which will examine the independence of the civil service, the role of political advisers, the proper working of cabinet government and reform of the House of Lords.
The new Tory leader's determination to assemble a team of "all the talents" was also evident earlier yesterday when he announced the appointment of a new social justice policy group - given the task of tackling Britain's "broken society" - which will be chaired by another predecessor, Iain Duncan Smith.
Further shadow cabinet appointments expected today will be studied for evidence of Mr Cameron's pledge to change the way the Tories think, feel and look - with Theresa May and Caroline Spelman expected to be in the running for senior posts.
Mr Cameron surprised MPs on all sides yesterday with a confident and assured dispatch box performance in which he also gave a flavour of his promised new style of politics at Westminster.
Having expressed his disdain for the "Punch and Judy" theatre of Commons question time, Mr Cameron opened his long campaign to replace Labour with a promise to help prime minister Tony Blair secure his controversial education reforms. However that did not prevent him from making clear he intended to hold Labour responsible for the bear-pit atmosphere in the Commons yesterday - holding up Labour chief whip Hilary Armstrong as a prime example.
His voice almost drowned out by shouting from the Labour benches, Mr Cameron said: "That's the problem with these exchanges - the chief whip on the Labour side shouting like a child. Is she finished? Are you finished?"
Most observers thought this a neat trick which had the effect of subduing the Labour benches, where the opposition of many MPs to Mr Blair's proposals for independent schools was almost certainly intensified by Mr Cameron's evident support for them.
However Mr Cameron's bipartisan offer was not without strings as he pressed Mr Blair to say that all the proposals in the government's white paper would be carried into the bill - including giving schools control of their own admissions policy.
Although welcoming this "new consensus" approach, it was left to Mr Blair to explain that they would continue to disagree over Mr Cameron's support for selection by ability at the age of 11. Mr Blair signalled a certain line of Labour attack on the new Tory leader, telling him that the offer of support for the government's education policies also required a matching commitment to support the necessary funds for investment.
Mr Cameron's campaign theme to share the proceeds of economic growth between investment in public services and tax cuts would, said Mr Blair, have resulted in real cuts in funds available for schools this year.