Gordon Brown’s first Cabinet has been announced – with musical chairs pretty much all around, with the only person staying in the same post being Des Browne at the MoD [with Tessa Jowell moving moving from Secretary of State for Culture Media and Sport to Minister for the Olympics and out of the regular Cabinet].

Prime Minister: Gordon Brown
Chancellor: Alistair Darling
Home Secretary: Jacqui Smith
Foreign Secretary: David Miliband
Health: Alan Johnson
Transport: Ruth Kelly
Trade & Industry: John Hutton
Justice: Jack Straw
Attorney General: Baroness Scotland
Education: Children, Schools and Families: Ed Balls
Education: Innovation, Universities and Skills: John Denham
Communities & Local Government: Hazel Blears
Chairman of the Labour Party: Harriet Harman
Chief Whip: Geoff Hoon
Environment: Hilary Benn
Work & Pensions and Wales: Peter Hain
Leader of the House of Commons: Harriet Harman
Culture, Media and Sport: James Purnell
Northern Ireland: Shaun Woodward
Leader of the Lords: Baroness Ashton
International Development: Douglas Alexander
Defence and Scotland: Des Browne
Chief Secretary to the Treasury: Andy Burnham
Social Exclusion & Cabinet Office: Ed Miliband

So, as the rumour mill predicted, Miliband got the Foreign Office, Darling got to be Chancellor, and Straw became Justice Secretary. The most surprising thing about the new Cabinet has to be Jacqui Smith as Home Secretary. Yes, it isn’t the same position as it once was having lost prisons and the courts to the MoJ. Her appointment has to be the greatest risk for Brown in this Cabinet, since her only previous Cabinet-level job was as Chief Whip. I have no idea who she is, so the general public won’t have the slightest inkling – which may or may not work in their favour. The appointment of Shaun Woodward, the defective defector Tory as NI Secretary is a bit of a side swipe at Cameron and the Conservatives.

The splitting of the Education brief into Children, Schools and Families and Innovation, Universities and Skills is an odd choice, I think, although it is quite obvious Gordo’s way of saying that he will live up to Blair’s 1997 promises of “education, education, education” himself. It especially seems an odd thing to do whilst parcelling Scotland and Wales off all around the place – Scotland added to Des Browne’s brief [whilst still having Defence], and Peter Hain keeping Wales and going to Work and Pensions with it. It would make more sense to amalgamate Nothern ireland, Scotland, and Wales into one ministerial brief, with a name such as “Department for Devolved Government” with a non-Cabinet Ministers with specific responsibilities for each area – including England, of course, which should it’s own Parliament.

Making Harriet Harman Leader of the House of Commons as well as Party Chairman and Deputy Leader seems odd, and implies that Brown has no more respect for Parliament than Blair did. Since she also keeps hold of her Minister for Women portfolio, Harriet Harman really is going to be spreading herself rather thinly for a while.

Despite having as long as he did to organise his first cabinet, Brown hasn’t got it perfect. He has kept in enough Blairites to say that it isn’t a complete break from the past, and brought in enough new [and young] faces to mark it as “different”. But I don’t think he has divided the jobs up quite right and to the right people – but we shall see.

Now that we know what Gordo’s first Cabinet looks like, we just have to wait for David Cameron’s response will be in the reorganisation of the Shadow Cabinet [and I suppose Ming Campbell's as well].

UPDATE: A very brief glimpse of Brown’s first Cabinet meeting as PM [via The Spectator Blog]: