Matthew Norman: A Cabinet of husbands, brothers and wives

Three months after styling his final keynote economic address "a Budget for hard-working families and pensioners", the new Prime Minister wastes no time underpinning his commitment to these sub-strata of British society. Not content with emphasising his passion for change by offering an advisory post to pensioner Shirley Williams, the 76-year-old ingénue who first worked in government as recently as 1967, Gordon Brown has done wonders for the finances of the hardest-working family of them all.

The elevation of Ed Balls and Yvette Cooper to become history's inaugural husband and wife Cabinet ministers - or at least "attending the Cabinet when needed" in Ms Cooper's case - should boost the family's annual income overnight by some £75,000, which was much what Gordon had in mind in that valedictory Budget. Ms Cooper, rewarded for the fiasco over the Home Information Pack with the Housing portfolio, can now afford a trip to Nicky Clarke for her first decent haircut, while Mr Balls tends to Schools and Children. With three school-age children and two houses between them, they are ideally qualified for their posts.

Having said that, many of us will be a little concerned. That Gordon has grafted a pair of Balls on to his top team, after all the years of eunuchs under his predecessor, is no surprise because among the myriad changes he has hinted at is "the return of Cabinet government". Nominally this quaint and fusty concept refers to a charmingly collegiate system whereby a primus inter pares PM chairs mannerly discussions in which everyone chips in, until he takes the mood of the meeting and follows majority opinion.

So much for the fantasy. Judging by the last time government by Cabinet operated in Britain, during the magnificently internecine Wilson administrations of the mid to late 1960s, the reality involves bitterness, screaming matches, veiled threats and dramatic walk-outs. If Ed and Yvette are typical of hard-working families, you'd have thought they get quite enough of that at home.

I love my wife to pieces, and much of the time she tolerates me in return, but facing each other across an oval mahogany table in front of an audience does not appeal. "Why are you shouting/ whispering/ dunking the chocolate digestives?" - or even "It isn't my tone of voice. My tone of voice couldn't be sweeter. It's your tone of voice. You should only hear yourself. Sorry? Right, that's it, I'm fetching the tape recorder" - is one thing at home in front of EastEnders, but quite another during a discussion about whether to support Mr Bush in bombing Iran.

As for the next spending round, those of us who have endured a 24-hour froideur over who was responsible for a £50 parking ticket will fear for them when they are chasing the same £500m for building schools and houses respectively. Let's wish Andy Burnham, doubling up as Chief Secretary to the Treasury and Minister for Relate, all the best in dealing with that.

Ed and Yvette apart, what a reshuffle this was for families and for breaking new ground. The first pair of brothers in the Milibands, David and Ed, slowly building a fraternal political dynasty to rival George and Jeb Bush, or the Castro Boys of Havana; the first woman Home Secretary in Jacqui Smith, the least widely known holder of a great office of state since Mrs Thatcher gave John Major the Foreign Office; and in Shaun Woodward the first Labour Cabinet Minister with a butler (domestic servants are for the many, not the few), the Tory turncoat whose startling appointment as Northern Ireland Secretary looks cleverly judged to give Quentin Davies false hope.

All the fresh faces and newly named departments certainly imbue the Cabinet with the scent of lemon freshness, with only Des Browne retaining his old job (quite right too after his deft handling of the Iranian hostage crisis). Putting the likeable Alan Johnson in at Health, to schmooze with NHS staff, instantly establishes a more emollient flavour to Gordon's government. Making Miliband Snr, an opponent of both the Iraq war and last year's Israeli bombardment of Lebanon, Foreign Secretary looks as clear a statement of intent about reforming Middle East policy as a reward for his failure to challenge for the leadership.

In retaining such maniacal Blairites as the Wee Jimmy Krankie impersonator Hazel Blears and John Hutton (whose self-sacrifice in agreeing to serve a man he so recently predicted would "make a fucking awful Prime Minister" does him great credit), Gordon shows a certain magnanimity. He could have been bolder, for example by bringing the leftie deputy leadership candidate John Cruddas into his first Cabinet. Even so, at first glance this monumental reshuffle looks as adroit and balanced as Mr Blair's were cack-handed and skewed towards his sycophants.

Genuine change, of course, is about rather more than personnel, ministerial titles and tonal variation, and it will be intriguing to see how long the "return to Cabinet government" persists. I'd guess that we'll see plenty of gushing quotes about Listening Gordon from unnamed senior ministers for a month before government by tiny cabal reasserts its familiar grip.

It's easy to be a sweetheart when you're light headed with the joy of ancient ambition fulfilled, and exceedingly difficult when beset by daily disappointments and crises. Having been the paradigm of bully-boy machine politician for so long, and with autocratic centralist instincts at least as powerful as Mr Blair's, Gordon Brown faces an almighty struggle to avoid rejecting this self-imposed personality transplant.

For all that, he has made pretty much an inch perfect start, and it will be great fun watching the cockiness drain from their faces as David Cameron and George Osbourne realise that seldom has the Beware What You Wish For principle been more acutely reflected than in their facile misjudgement that Gordon was the easy option.

Already there is the faint smell of decay, if not quite death, about the Tory leadership, and Mr Davies' utterly poisonous but unflinchingly accurate critique of Mr Cameron's superficiality will haunt him until a general election in which he may struggle to hold the ground he has, let alone advance into power. The canniest bet I've heard of in ages was the £20 a friend put on William Hague last year to be Britain's next Conservative Prime Minister at 33-1, and you won't get anything like those odds now.

After the election, perhaps Gordon's fabled love of inclusivity will see him offer Mr Cameron an important job. For now he is content, and even serene, in the role of Les Dennis, as the genial host of Cabinet Family Fortunes.

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