Blair opts for solid foreign minister

British Prime Minister Tony Blair has appointed Margaret Beckett, the former environment minister, as his new foreign minister in a wide-ranging overhaul of his cabinet. Our British affairs correspondent, Stephen Evans, assesses why she was chosen and the outlook for her time in office.

Margaret Beckett is not flamboyant but she is utterly solid.

Mrs Beckett has the political merit of seeming like ordinary people

She has been a government minister throughout the nine years of Mr Blair's prime ministership and is widely trusted within the governing Labour party, but is also seen as a woman of her word by opponents.

If the new job in charge of the country's diplomats demands diplomatic skills, Mrs Beckett has demonstrated them. Over her career she has moved from the left of the Labour Party to become a loyal lieutenant of Mr Blair, but without making enemies.

She has friends - or at least political friends - across the spectrum.

It is not clear, however, that Britain's foreign policy will change.

Iraq and Europe

The presence of British troops in Iraq seems fixed and few doubt that it comes from the top.

There are no indications that Mrs Beckett has any thoughts of overturning the current view that withdrawal in the near future is impossible. There have been no suggestions that she demurs from the Blair view on the matter.

Under Beckett the UK is unlikely to turn back on Iraq

On top of that, the contentious issue of Britain's relations with the rest of the European Union has moved way down the political agenda. Joining the euro has moved off Labour's list of debating subjects.

Mrs Beckett's views of Europe are not clear anyway - she retains trade union links and a leftish past, sometimes seen as indicating scepticism, but she's also loyal to Mr Blair, sometimes indicating a more pro-Europe stance.

In the 1970s, she campaigned against British entry to the EU. Since then, she has not indicated enthusiasm for greater integration of political structures in Europe but neither has she shown outright hostility.

Down-to-earth

Mrs Beckett has the political merit of seeming like ordinary people - for example, she takes her holidays with her husband Leo in a caravan, usually in the UK county of Derbyshire but occasionally towing it behind a car (the classic "ordinary person's" holiday in contrast to the glamorous trips to exotic locations of Mr Blair, for example).

Goodbye to Jack Straw

She has been known to caravan, too, in France - a good qualification, perhaps, for a foreign secretary.

Mrs Beckett was once described as the personification of a caravan: practical, tough and durable, but rather unexciting and not in the slightest bit glamorous.

They are traits that might well be assets to Labour in the current atmosphere of mistrust and allegations of an arrogance in power.