Major Fires 4 Ministers in British Cabinet Shake-Up

Prime Minister John Major fired four senior Cabinet members Wednesday in the largest shake-up of his government, a move that analysts said would allow him to present a fresh, forward-looking team to bolster his sagging popularity.

Major’s biggest surprise was the appointment of Jeremy Hanley, the relatively unknown armed forces minister, as Conservative Party chairman with Cabinet rank. Hanley now is expected to mastermind the next Tory electoral campaign.

Passed over for the party job was Jeffrey Archer, the novelist and Conservative politician who had been touted for the chairmanship but who became involved in an investigation of alleged insider stock trading. A final report on Archer’s case is on the desk of Michael Heseltine, minister of trade and industry, but has not been made public.

Wednesday’s Cabinet shuffle was also designed to counter the new Labor Party team. Its new leader will be announced today and is expected to be Tony Blair, 41, an engaging moderate who preaches “modernism.”

The Tory party’s fortunes have been sagging badly in opinion polls, and, analysts said, the Cabinet shuffle--on the day before Parliament recesses for the summer--was intended to get rid of ministers who had been disappointing and to introduce fresh blood.

Dropped from the Cabinet were: Education and Science Minister John Patten, once a high-flier in government circles; Heritage Secretary Peter Brooke, who botched the D-day celebrations; Transport Minister John MacGregor, who has been tarred by the railroad strike, and John Wakeham, leader in the House of Lords.

The new faces are: Jonathan Aitken, who went from defense minister to chief secretary to the Treasury; Steven Dorrell, former junior Treasury minister, to heritage secretary; Brian Mawhinney, former No. 2 at the Health Department, to transport minister, and Lord Cranborne, new leader in the House of Lords.

Three major Cabinet posts were left unchanged: Foreign Secretary Douglas Hurd, Home Secretary Michael Howard and Chancellor of the Exchequer Kenneth Clarke.

Shifting Cabinet jobs were: Gillian Shephard from agriculture to education; Michael Portillo from Treasury to employment; David Hunt from employment to chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster, in which he is expected to coordinate government policy; William Waldegrave from chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster to agriculture minister.

The shake-up also involved several junior ministers in various government departments and political aides to government ministers.

Political observers said the Cabinet’s political coloration had not drastically changed--pro-Europeans vs. Euroskeptics--but that Major’s selections had edged it slightly to the right.

Hanley, 48, is boisterous and popular. He will have two deputies, including writer Michael Dobbs, author of the television series, “To Play the King,” a political thriller. Hanley succeeds former party chairman Sir Norman Fowler, who had expressed a wish to step down from the exhausting job.