Gordon Brown, the UK's former chancellor, stressed "the need for change" as he became prime minister on 27 June 2007 following a ten-year wait to succeed Tony Blair.
His new cabinet will include not only critics of the Blair-led war in Iraq, but also seek to draw talent from outside the political arena, in an attempt to regain the trust of Labour voters before the next general election, due in three years. Labour currently trails in the opinion polls behind the Conservatives, led by David Cameron.
It was public opposition to the Iraq invasion that split Labour, forcing Blair to abandon plans to serve a full third term and which led Brown to pledge that he will "examine Britain's role in Iraq".
David Miliband, who replaces Margaret Backett to become the youngest foreign secretary in the past 30 years, will thus now face the challenge of distancing the UK from the Iraq conflict, while remaining on good terms with the George W. Bush US administration. But Miliband, a strong pro-European and co-founder of the Centre for European Reform think-tank, will also be key in smoothing the somewhat tense relations between Europe and Gordon Brown, who is preceived by most EU officials as a eurosceptic.
Miliband was one of a group of European intellectuals who formulated the EU's 2001 Laeken Declaration, calling for institutional reform to strengthen the EU, and will be key in countering Conservative calls for a referendum on the freshly agreed EU Treaty (EurActiv 23/06/07). He will be assisted by a Jim Murphy, a pro-European Blairite, who will be the new minister for Europe.
Alistair Darling, former trade and industry secretary, has been picked to replace Brown as chancellor, while John Hutton has been appointed as head of a new department of business, enterprise and regulatory reform that will replace the sprawling department of trade and industry. The new department will be in charge of "promoting productivity and enterprise across government policy and within the EU" and will also cover energy policy – an area seen as essential to the competitiveness agenda – as a signal of Brown's desire to improve relations with business.
Onlookers believe that Brown's pro-liberal approach to business and minimalist approach to Europe could also see him clash with France's recently elected President Nicolas Sarkozy.
Indeed, while Sarkozy is keen to relaunch Europe politically, he is distant from Brown on free-market competition and globalisation, and infuriated the UK during the recent European Summit, by demanding that the principle of "free and undistorted" competition be removed from the EU’s objectives. He has also called for a return to an industrial policy based on "community preferences" in order to back "European champions" (EurActiv 27/06/07).
German Chancellor Angela Merkel will likely be pivotal in the relationship. While sharing Sarkozy's enthusiasm for Europe, she is closer to Brown on free markets and trade and will likely be key to brokering deals within the EU.
