UK prime minister makes more government changes (AP)
05.10.2008 22:25 Business
The government shuffle has also been seen partly as an attempt by Brown to bring his critics into a unity government.
The country's first Muslim government minister, Shahid Malik, was named one of several ministers in the justice department in a shuffle of lower government ranks. He previously had been an international development minister.
In other appointments, Vernon Coaker became police minister, and Phil Woolas was named immigration minister. Earlier this year Woolas angered some Britons of Pakistani descent by suggesting marriage between cousins in the Pakistani community was leading to high rates of birth defects.
The government is hoping the changes will help tighten its grip on the economy as the global financial crisis deepens.
On Friday, Brown moved several senior Cabinet members and brought back to government his longtime adversary Peter Mandelson — a key architect of former Prime Minister Tony Blair's rise to power in the 1990s.
Mandelson, a former European trade commissioner, was appointed business secretary in the shuffle.
A new poll published for Sunday's News of the World newspaper, however, offered a mixed message for Brown. It found that voters wanted Brown to lead the country through the economic crisis, but would still vote him out at the next election.
Forty-three percent of respondents thought Brown was the best leader for the credit crunch, compared with 35 percent for main opposition leader David Cameron. But 43 percent said they would vote for Cameron's Conservatives in a national election, while 34 percent said they would support Brown's Labour Party.
Pollster ICM said that on Oct. 1-3 it interviewed 1,004 adults in 192 constituencies currently held by Labour for the poll, which had a margin of error of plus or minus three percentage points.
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