Cabinet reshuffles were never Tony Blair’s forte. Some of them verged on outright shambles. Gordon Brown has had rather longer to prepare his and sound colleagues out and so ensure that the operation he conducted yesterday at least ran smoothly. He has also deliberately sought to construct a Cabinet that reinforces his claim to be “new” but which is balanced politically both between generations and across factions. He has placed familiar figures in some of the most senior portfolios (Alistair Darling and Jack Straw) and promoted much younger politicians to other places (David Miliband and Jacqui Smith). He has also indicated both his short-term priorities (the NHS, to be presided over by the genial Alan Johnson) and his medium-term concerns (by the reforms to the Department for Trade and Industry and Department for Education and Skills).

In that sense, it is a politically astute reshuffle. What matters ultimately, however, is not that Mr Brown has (correctly) placed a range of voices around the Whitehall departments but whether he will listen to them. The acid test of his time in power will be whether he is sufficiently liberated after his tussle with Mr Blair to change some of the working habits he exhibited while at the Treasury.

That process has to start at his old fiefdom. Mr Darling is in many ways a rational choice to be Chancellor. He is calm and thoughtful and his political instincts are sound. He has seen enough of spending departments to appreciate that they frequently do not use public money very well and there would be no harm in imposing rather more rigour and restraint upon them.

His disadvantage is that he has long been a close ally of Mr Brown and there will be the perception that his leader intends to remain as Chancellor in all but name. This would be a profoundly bad plan both for the new Prime Minister and his successor at the Treasury. Mr Brown needs to take a vow of self-restraint and allow Mr Darling to become the dominant influence on economic policy.

Besides the highest ranks of government, this reshuffle was chiefly about recasting relatively familiar faces. Des Browne stays at Defence despite the Iranian sailors fiasco (which is charitable). The pedestrian Harriet Harman becomes the Leader of the Commons as well as the Labour Party chairman (which may not prove a happy blend). Ruth Kelly has finally got a department (Transport) where being a devout Roman Catholic is not a liability for her. The long-distance runner Tessa Jowell has won a silver medal of sorts by becoming Minister for the Olympics. Shaun Woodward (Northern Ireland) will be a rare Labour Cabinet minister who has a butler.

There are, nonetheless, serious reservations about Mr Brown’s reshaped administration.

The first concerns foreign policy. David Miliband is an undoubtedly able individual. But he has an innocent enthusiasm for the EU that might not make him the best man to play hard-ball with Britain’s partners in the deliberations to come over the final shape of a new treaty. Supposedly “Blairite”, he has a whiff of the old Left about him on the very subject that he is supposed to control, foreign policy. It was a mistake to appoint the ennobled Mark Malloch Brown to serve with him at the Foreign and Commonwealth Office. This self-promoting former Deputy UN Secretary-General has made some crude public remarks about the US Administration along with the slightly unhinged assertion that the UN’s failure to act decisively on Darfur is partly the fault of the US and UK for invading Iraq. It will be interesting to see what is uncovered by investigations into the UN Development Programme under his tenure.

Lord Malloch-Brown’s elevation is believed to be part of the Prime Minister’s scheme to bring in “all the talents”. He should approach this venture with far more caution. It may sound noble in theory but could easily result in crass tokenism in practice. It risks emulating the parable of the talents in the Bible where in one instance the talent ends up being buried. Politics is a contest of ideas and competence, not an exercise in collecting interesting, superficially independent, names. Tokenism is not the cornerstone of principle.