Brown ministry
Government of the United Kingdom
Gordon Brown formed the Brown ministry after being invited by Queen Elizabeth II to form a new government following the resignation of the previous Prime Minister of the United Kingdom, Tony Blair, on 27 June 2007. Brown formed his government over the course of the next day, with Jacqui Smith being appointed the United Kingdom's first female Home Secretary.
Following the 2010 general election, which resulted in a hung parliament, the government briefly remained in an acting capacity while negotiations to form a new government took place. After talks between the Labour Party and the Liberal Democrats broke down and a Conservative–Liberal Democrat coalition looked imminent, Brown resigned as prime minister on 11 May 2010.
Background
In comparison with Tony Blair's last Cabinet, Brown retained seventeen ministers including himself.
Alistair Darling replaced Brown as Chancellor of the Exchequer while his portfolio at Trade and Industry was renamed Business, Enterprise and Regulatory Reform and given to John Hutton. Hutton was in turn replaced as Work Secretary by Peter Hain, who continued as Wales Secretary but not as Northern Ireland Secretary, a post that went to Shaun Woodward, previously Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State.
David Miliband was promoted from Environment Secretary to Foreign Secretary and was replaced in that brief by Hilary Benn, then International Development Secretary. Douglas Alexander filled Benn's seat whilst his posts as Transport and Scotland Secretaries were given to Ruth Kelly and Des Browne, respectively, the latter of whom stayed on as Defence Secretary. Jack Straw became the first MP Justice Secretary and Lord Chancellor, declaring it a new Great Office of State.
This brief starts where responsible research should: with the source description of “Brown ministry” as government of the United Kingdom. Everything that follows is an evidence route, not borrowed authority.
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Contemporary correspondence, administrative files and participant testimony can test how later narratives organized the event or institution. The source revision retrieved here is dated Sep 20, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q1646006. 1 of 1 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 2007 and 2010.
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This entry incorporates text from “Brown ministry” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.