British Prime Minister Tony Blair sacrificed two top ministers in a major cabinet shakeup on Friday after his Labour Party recorded one of its worst defeats in a local election since coming to power in 1997.
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The overhaul comes after accusations of government sleaze and incompetence over the past few weeks as well as the poor local election results, which put huge pressure on Blair to give his government new impetus or step aside.
Foreign minister Jack Straw and interior minister Charles Clarke lost their high-profile jobs while John Prescott, who is Blair's deputy and has been embroiled in a sex scandal, was stripped of his ministry.
Besides diverting attention away from the election results, Blair's promotion of key allies of finance minister Gordon Brown should keep his expected successor happy for now, analysts said.
But it also showed Blair had no intention of leaving yet.
"The fact that he has decided to reshuffle his cabinet is a sure sign he is intending to hang around for a while," said John Curtice, political analyst at Strathclyde University.
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