Gordon Brown woke up at 10 Downing Street for the first time on Thursday and presented his new cabinet, which included both "Brownies" and "Blairites" and, as foreign secretary, a 41 year old who has at times criticized Tony Blair's Mideast policies.

David Miliband was appointed as the youngest British foreign secretary in 30 years on the same day that three British soldiers were killed by a roadside bomb in Basra, Iraq. Miliband, the son of a Belgian Jewish Marxist academic who fled to England in 1940, is considered a Blairite and was encouraged to run against Brown for the leadership. However, he was also an early critic of the Iraq war and has also criticized Blair's support for the Israeli invasion of Lebanon in the summer of 2006. His appointment has led some to think Brown might put more distance between the United Kingdom and the United States than Blair did. However, the new prime minister's spokesman insisted Brown remained committed to maintaining a close relationship with the White House.

Unsurprisingly, several of Brown's protegees were rewarded with cabinet posts: Brown appointed Alistair Darling as his own successor as chancellor of the exchequer; Ed Balls, one of Brown's closest advisers and an MP for only two years, was appointed as children, schools and families secretary; and Yvette Cooper took over as housing minister. Jacqui Smith, one of "Blair's babes" elected to parliament in 1997, was appointed the first female home secretary in history.

The new cabinet also, however, included several familiar old hands from the Blair administration, such as Jack Straw, the former foreign minister, who was appointed justice secretary. Brown had said he wanted to assemble an "administration of all the talents."

The average age of the new cabinet is 49 -- five years younger than that of Blair's ministers. But that did not impress the German press, which reacted with almost unanimous skepticism to Brown's attempts to present the handover of power as a new beginning.

The left-of-center Süddeutsche Zeitung compares Brown to an old broom that simply shifts dust from one place to another:

"The problem the new British prime minister Gordon Brown faces is that he just isn't that new. It's not just that he has defended New Labour's policies for the last 10 years, he has helped to formulate them -- and not just as a backbencher or a civil servant in the shadows but as a chancellor of the exchequer, the second most important position in government. And 10 years is a long time in the life of a politician, just as they are for a broom."

"The same thing goes for the members of that cabinet that Brown has begun to name. They are -- to stay with the metaphor -- the same brushes, washcloths and dusters that have been sitting in the cleaning cupboard for 10 years. From Jack Straw to Alan Johnson, Peter Hain to Alistair Darling -- voters know them all from their previous positions. Even David Miliband, at 41 years-old the youngest and freshest face on the team, will be in his third ministerial job since entering the House of Commons just six years ago."

"Brown says his government will be a government of new priorities, an 'administration of all the talents.' The only problem is that the priorities he has named -- namely health and education -- are the same as Blair's in 1997."

"Brown's greatest dilemma is that he will have to differentiate himself from his predecessor without losing his own political credibility. … Because if everything he is doing is new, it raises the question of why he has kept his mouth shut for 10 years. If, on the other hand, he is continuing in the same direction as Blair, one wonders why a change was even needed."

The business daily Handelsblatt shares the Süddeutsche's skepticism but chooses a different metaphor, comparing Brown's cabinet to the Spice Girls, who announced their comeback on the same day as Brown announced his new cabinet:

"By painstakingly avoiding Tony Blair's glitzy stage-managed appearances, Brown has attempted to differentiate himself from his predecessor and come across as sober and modest. And yet, for all Brown's pleading that his government represents a change, illustrated by the new faces in his cabinet, what we know so far of his policy program resembles a collection of New Labour's Greatest Hits from the 1990s."

The one area where Brown can distinguish himself, Handelsblatt says, is foreign policy:

"While Tony Blair travels around the Mideast as a special envoy and attempts to put out the fire that he himself fuelled with the Iraq war, new Foreign Minister David Miliband can start to shift the emphasis of British foreign policy from intervention to cooperation. His views on foreign policy are, like those of Brown, largely unknown. That will give them a chance to write a new hit."

The center-right Die Welt also sees Brown's arrival in No. 10 Downing St. as a seamless transition rather than a fresh start:

"Brown didn't come to power through elections from which one could get a sense of what direction the majority of the electorate is going. Rather he took Tony Blair's place through a transfer of power within the party. One founding father of New Labour is following another, and that alone makes it difficult to persuade the country that it has anything new to offer."

"In David Miliband the Foreign Office will have a fountain of ideas at its head. But the 'special relationship' with the United States will remain a key focus of British foreign policy, however much anyone wants to loosen it. What the UK's relationship to Europe will look like under Brown/Miliband remains to be seen; the question of ratification of the new EU draft treaty will give an indication."

Commenting on Miliband's appointment, the left-leaning Berliner Zeitung is confident it will represent a break with what it sees as Blair's pro-American foreign policy:

"The appointment of the youngest British foreign minister in 30 years signals a new beginning in foreign policy -- a return to Britain's traditional role as a bridge between the US and Europe. Blair broke the bridge and threw himself into the arms of the American president. That has damaged the UK's reputation abroad and weakened its position in the world. Brown has realized this."

"The question is whether Miliband's promotion to the second-most difficult job in government has come too quickly. If Brown really wanted to build him up as his successor, he could have let him develop some standing as environment minister. Instead he has put him on the diplomatic stage, which everyone knows you can very quickly fall off."

The Financial Times Deutschland also points to Miliband's criticisms of the Iraq war but says they are now besides the point:

"The fact that the new foreign minister was critical of Blair's policy in Iraq -- albeit only in private -- has made the headlines. That has allowed the Brown government to at least symbolically step out of the shadow of the decision that has hung over Tony Blair and New Labour and hurt its image more than any other.

But that doesn't change the reality of the situation. Just like Brown, Miliband defended Blair's foreign policy in public. Even more importantly, it's irrelevant today what anyone should or should not have done in 2003. The difficult question is what to do next. Under Blair the UK has already begun a gradual withdrawal of troops from Iraq, but at the moment its soldiers are still involved in intense fighting."