Profiles of the main members of the Cabinet of Britain's first coalition government since the second World War.
George Osborne (chancellor of the exchequer, Conservative)
Osborne (38) will be the youngest finance minister since Randolph Churchill in 1886. Osborne wants early action to tackle Britain's large budget deficit and he backs cuts in wasteful government spending to reverse a planned rise in payroll tax for most people. A Reuters poll of economists in April found Conservative business spokesman Ken Clarke was their top choice as finance minister. Osborne was in fourth place. Mr Osborne is part of an old Anglo-Irish aristocratic family and is heir to the Osborne baronetcy of Ballentaylor in Co Tipperary.
Vince Cable (business secretary, Liberal Democrat)
Cable (67) shot to prominence in the wake of the global banking crisis, when he gained a reputation for economic sagacity for his no-nonsense warnings of looming financial peril. A former chief economist with Shell, he also won plaudits as a parliamentary wit after joking that the banking crash had transformed Prime Minister Gordon Brown "from Stalin to Mr Bean, creating chaos out of order rather than order out of chaos".
Theresa May (home secretary, Conservative)
After beginning her career at the Bank of England, she moved to the Association for Payment Clearing Services from 1989 to 1997. May (53) was elected member of parliament for Maidenhead in May 1997 and has belonged to the shadow cabinet since 1999. Roles included shadow secretary of state for Education and Employment (1999-2001), shadow secretary of state for transport, (2001-02), and shadow leader of the House of Commons (2005-09).
William Hague (foreign affairs, Conservative)
A schoolboy speech made Hague, now 49, the darling of the Conservative Party when he was just 16. At 34 he became a cabinet minister and in 1997, aged 36, he won the party leadership after the Labour Party's election victory ended 18 years of Conservative rule. He moved the party to the right, embracing hardline policies on asylum, immigration and Europe but succeeded only in shoring up the party's core support while alienating floating voters.
Hague resigned as leader after a crushing election defeat at the hands of then Prime Minister Tony Blair's Labour Party in 2001. He returned to front-line politics in December 2005, when new David Cameron named him foreign policy spokesman.
Liam Fox (defence, Conservative)
Fox (48) supported the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, although he criticised Labour's planning for the conflicts. He wants to renew Britain's submarine-launched nuclear weapons and said before the election he would order an immediate review of defence spending if the Conservatives came to power. Seen as a eurosceptic, Fox says Britain's most important relationship is with the United States and he has described Nato, not Europe, as the "cornerstone" of Britain's security.
David Laws (chief secretary to the Treasury, Lib Dem)
Educated at Cambridge, he was managing director at Barclays Bank before joining the Liberal Democrats as the parliamentary party's economic advisor in 1994. Laws (44) was author of the 1994 and 1995 Liberal Democrat Alternative Budgets and was appointed shadow chief secretary to the Treasury in 2002. He was re-elected in 2005 and appointed shadow secretary of state for work and pensions. In 2007 he was appointed shadow secretary of state for children, schools and families.