Stephen Byers, installed as Britain's Trade and Industry Secretary yesterday, can look back on the year as a personal triumph.
He started 1998 as School Standards Minister before moving to the post of Chief Secretary to the Treasury in Mr Tony Blair's July reshuffle.
His rise to the top echelon of government came just over six years after first being elected to parliament.
Mr Byers (45) will need little time to get up to speed on the government's trade and industry message.
Within days of moving to the Treasury he was announcing with great fluency that "it would be the worst of short-termism to pay ourselves more today at the cost of higher interest rates, fewer jobs and slower growth tomorrow" - the exact wording favoured by his then boss, the Chancellor of the Exchequer, Mr Gordon Brown.
Mr Byers's upward move to the Treasury was described as inevitable by many, and regretted by a few.
"No one is irreplaceable, but in his previous job as schools standards minister, Byers was as near as dammit," the London In- dependent said shortly afterwards.
Mr Byers had proved well up to the task of juggling teaching unions and his education chief, Mr David Blunkett.
"Like the prime minister, he has the knack of speaking with many voices, without ever quite contradicting himself," one commentator said.
Indeed, Mr Byers is widely regarded as having modelled himself on Mr Blair.
That might explain an apparent touch of personal vanity. Mr Byers is said to have sent fresh photographs of himself to newspaper desks after the May 1997 election. Mr Byers's links with Mr Blair were forged in north-east England, where both have parliamentary constituencies, as does the former trade and industry minister, Mr Peter Mandelson.
Mr Byers was elected to parliament for Wallsend in 1992, moving to North Tyneside, a prosperous suburb of Newcastle, in the 1997 boundary change.
He took a law degree at Liverpool Polytechnic and was a law lecturer at Newcastle Polytechnic before entering politics.
Well used as he may be to treading a straight path to the top, Mr Byers's ascent has not been without the odd stumble.
Last year when schools minister he was asked to multiply eight by seven. He famously answered "54", to the delight of the tabloids.
Nicholas Watt adds: Mr Geoff Hoon, the softly-spoken former law lecturer who steps into Mr Geoffrey Robinson's shoes as Paymaster General, has been one of the quiet successes of the government.
An arch-Blairite, Mr Hoon showed a sure touch as Lord Irvine's deputy during the incessant rows earlier this year over the Lord Chancellor's fondness for expensive wallpaper. Mr Hoon was one of the wise heads who helped Lord Irvine to refashion his image.
His appointment to the Treasury will come as little surprise to Mr Hoon (45), who was lined up to become Paymaster General in the Prime Minister's reshuffle last July. At the last moment Mr Robinson won a reprieve which meant that Mr Hoon remained at the Lord Chancellor's Department with the consolation prize of promotion to Minister of State level.