British Prime Minister David Cameron has named eurosceptic Philip Hammond as his new foreign secretary in a major cabinet reshuffle ahead of next year's general election.
Former defence secretary Hammond, who replaces William Hague, supports Britain leaving the European Union unless significant powers are returned to London before a referendum promised for 2017.
The reshuffle is the biggest since Cameron's Conservative-led coalition government took office in 2010 and marks a bid to broaden his party's appeal at the election in May 2015.
The prime minister has pledged to hold a referendum on Britain leaving the EU if he is re-elected.
Newspapers billed the reshuffle as a cull of the "pale, male and stale" which opened the door for a new wave of women to get ministerial jobs.
It also saw the government turn more eurosceptic as Cameron seeks to face down the anti-EU UK Independence Party (UKIP), which many MPs fear could take seats from the Conservatives at the election.
"I think it (the reshuffle) will be interpreted in Europe as raising the stakes and showing that this is now getting more serious," said Mats Persson, director of the Open Europe think-tank in London.
Cameron had promised in opposition to make a third of his government female but the reshuffle left him well short of his goal, despite an increased number of women on the front bench.
These include Nicky Morgan, a former lawyer who will take over from Michael Gove as education secretary, and Liz Truss, who takes the environment portfolio.
There are now five women with full cabinet status, up from three before the reshuffle but the same number as Cameron had at the start of his term in 2011.
His attempts to breath youth into the front bench has seen its median age fall five years to 47.5.
Hague will remain in parliament until the next election but his resignation as foreign secretary marks the end of the political career of a man Cameron called "one of the leading lights of the Conservative Party for a generation".
A former Tory leader, Hague was a leading voice urging the overthrow of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad before the House of Commons last year voted against conducting missile strikes.
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