UK coalition holds first cabinet meet

Britain's new Conservative/Liberal Democrat coalition government ministers pose for a group photograph, after attending their first cabinet meeting, in the garden of 10 Downing Street, central London yesterday. Front row, L to R: Iain Duncan Smith, Liam Fox, George Osborne, William Hague, David Cameron, Nick Clegg, Sayeeda Warsi, Cheryl Gillan, Caroline Spelman, Ken Clarke, David Laws. (Back rows L-R) Patrick McLoughlin, Theresa May, David Willetts, Oliver Letwin, Vince Cable, Francis Maude, Eric Piccles, Tom Strathclyde, Andrew Lansley, George Young, Michael Gove, Andrew Mitchell, Philip Hammond, Chris Huhne, Jeremy Hunt, Owen Paterson, Danny Alexander, Dominic Grieve, Gus O'Donnell. Britain's new premier Cameron chaired his first cabinet meeting Thursday, bringing together former rivals from the Conservative and Liberal Democrat parties in a historic coalition. Deputy premier Clegg and four other Lib Dem ministers gathered with their new Tory colleagues in Downing Street, in the first test of whether their promise of a "new politics" in Britain can work in practice.Photo: AFP

New British Prime Minister David Cameron chaired his first cabinet meeting yesterday, gathering former rivals together as he rebuffed suggestions their historic coalition cannot last.
Deputy premier Nick Clegg and four other Liberal Democrat ministers met with their new Conservative colleagues in Downing Street, in what one Tory said was a "constructive" first attempt to work together.
Visiting the business and skills department afterwards, Cameron urged civil servants and his new ministers to start working on long-term solutions on how to reboot the economy, insisting the coalition was here to stay.
"The more I think about this endeavour on which we have embarked, the more excited I become because this coalition government, if we can make it work -- and I believe we can -- is a five-year government," Cameron said.
In a continuation of what the media have dubbed a "love-in" between the two sides, he praised Lib Dem Business Secretary Vince Cable as an "absolute star".
Cable is part of a new team headed by finance minister George Osborne, a Conservative and close friend of Cameron's, that has the job of tackling Britain's record deficit and securing its recovery from a deep recession.
Osborne said the economy and the war in Afghanistan had dominated what he described as a "really constructive cabinet meeting" earlier, adding: "We are working incredibly well as a team."
The new government, Britain's first coalition since World War II, has made tackling the deficit a priority and an emergency budget is due within 50 days to outline how they will make billions of pounds of savings this year.
One of the first acts of the new cabinet was to agree a five percent pay cut for all ministers, a Downing Street spokeswoman said.