Who now remembers Tony Blair's first cabinet reshuffle, in the summer of 1998? But for the promotion into the cabinet of Peter Mandelson, and the ousting of Harriet Harman and Frank Field from the Department of Social Security, it was a lacklustre affair. Its one striking feature was the construction that political commentators were authorised to put upon it: that the prime minister had intended to clip the spreading ambitions of Gordon Brown, by sacking or sidelining half a dozen of the chancellor's proteges, and promoting his own in their stead.
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