UK Politics: Coalition Govt: 1st cabinet meeting of new regime

An important news report by Sarah Lyall appears in New York Times today, under the title "New Hybrid British Cabinet Holds First Meeting" (all those damn caps in a title over a news piece in a print newspaper, ugh!)

Since NYT gives no actual list of the members of the new Cabinet, I turned to the Murdoch-owned newspaper Telegraph where, again no straitforward list, but again disappointingly a text that gives neither a total of the cab's membership nor an indication that those mentioned in the article's text are the sum total thereof ("David Cameron begins first coalition Cabinet since 1945" by Alastair Jamieson and Ben Leach). So, fiting a feeling of this further article's incompletenes, I quote a patch of text from said daily press:

The Prime Minister sat next to William Hague, the new Foreign Secretary, and opposite George Osborne, the Chancellor, and Nick Clegg, the Deputy Prime Minister.

Vince Cable, the Lib Dem Business Secretary, arrived with his Tory [Business] deputy David Willetts and Liam Fox, the new Defence Secretary, pausing briefly at the door of No 10 before going inside.

Ken Clarke, the new Justice Secretary and one of the few to have any previous ministerial experience, arrived with Mr Hague.

Later, Mr Cameron is expected to fill out the middle-ranking and junior roles in the Conservative-Lib Dem administration as well as adding detail to their joint policy proposals.

The new Cabinet features five Liberal Democrats: Mr Clegg and Mr Cable; Chris Huhne the Energy Secretary;David Laws the Chief Treasury Secretary and Danny Alexander, the Scotland Secretary.

Iain Duncan Smith, the former Tory leader, has also been awarded the job of Work and Pensions Secretary in what was being seen as a sop to the right of the party amid concerns about the alliance with the Lib Dems.

The appointments meant some senior Tories were not given full Cabinet positions, including Chris Grayling, Dominic Grieve and Theresa Villiers.

An immediate priority task of the new govt will be to achieve financial stability, both of the govt and of the United Kingdom's economy as a whole. The latter task feeds directly into another: how to manage financially the impact of Europe's nitemare socialist economic breakdown (Greece †, yesterday Spain's belated austerity program, today Portugal's). German banks and the International Monetary Fund (of which UK is a stalwart member and underwriter) are expected to have to pony-up the money for all the spending that has brawt ruin or near-ruin to these countries and others in the European Union. Britain, Canada, and the USA woud each be wise to insulate themselves as much as possible from continental socialist-economic contagion, as the current term pinpoints the matter.

A second priority comes to mind: national security. Already PM David Cameron had held his first meeting of the committee with operational management of security matters. So, he's off to a good start apparentlty on that.

-- Politicarp