NYT: British Foreign Secretary Quits for Lower Position in the Cabinet

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http://www.nytimes.com/2014/07/15/world/europe/william-hague-resigns-as-britains-foreign-secretary.html?partner=rss&emc=rss&smid=tw-nytimesworld&_r=0

British Foreign Secretary Quits for Lower Position in the Cabinet

 

In a surprise announcement, William Hague, Britain’s foreign secretary, said late Monday that he would quit his job to take a lower-profile cabinet position as part of a wider shuffle of the government.

 

Mr. Hague, a former leader of the Conservative Party and one of its most prominent politicians, will remain a minister until the next general election in 2015 as the leader of the House of Commons, a post with responsibility for the management of legislation.

 

He said he would then step down as a lawmaker, ending a long political career that began when he first came to prominence by making a speech as a 16-year-old schoolboy at a Conservative Party conference in 1977.

Mr. Hague’s announcement surprised politicians, even though a reshuffle of important government figures had been widely anticipated. The veteran cabinet minister Kenneth Clarke also left his job in a shake-up described by one newspaper as a “purge of the middle-aged men” and in another as a cull of the “male and pale.”

 

But the more unexpected move was that of Mr. Hague, who led the Conservative Party between 1997 and 2001, when he lost an election to the Labour Party, then led by Tony Blair.