LONDON (AP) – Prime Minister Tony Blair fired his foreign secretary who had taken a different tack on Iran and reportedly expressed doubts about the Iraq war in a wide-ranging Cabinet shuffle Friday, a day after the governing party took a pounding in local elections.

Blair replaced Jack Straw with Margaret Beckett, who had headed the Department of Environment, Food and Rural Affairs and becomes the first woman to hold the foreign secretary position.

Straw was moved to the far less exalted job of leader of the House of Commons, where he will be in charge of shepherding through Blair’s controversial program of reforming public services.

Home Secretary Charles Clarke, embroiled in a politically damaging furor over the failure to deport foreign criminals, also said Blair had removed him from office. Defense Secretary John Reid was named the new law and order chief, and Des Browne was promoted from chief secretary at the Treasury to secretary of defense.

The moves came after Labour Party pulled 26 percent of Thursday’s vote to the Conservatives 40 percent, a result that renewed calls from some quarters for the prime minister to step down. The local elections also resulted in unprecedented gains for the far right.

Deputy Prime Minister John Prescott, who admitted an affair with a secretary, will keep his title but was stripped of the responsibilities of his department, which include housing and planning.

“I felt that it was very difficult, given the level of genuine public concern, for Charles to continue” as home secretary, said Blair, who days earlier had defended Clarke as the right man to deal with the prisoner issue.

Clarke said he had turned down offers of other government posts. “I do not think it would be appropriate to remain in this government in these circumstances,” Clarke said in a statement.

Straw’s demotion was a surprise.

But there had long been rumors of tension between Straw and Blair _ some reports said the outgoing foreign secretary had private expressed doubts about the Iraq war, and he publicly took a different position on Iran than Blair did. Straw frequently described military action against Tehran as “inconceivable” and the reported U.S. contingency plans for a tactical nuclear strike as “completely nuts.”

Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice called Straw after hearing the news and wished him well, State Department spokesman Sean McCormack said. Rice and Straw teamed up during a trip to Iraq last month to try to expedite the formation of a government there.

“She has had an excellent working relationship with him … You saw that demonstrated time and time again, including on their trip Baghdad,” State Department spokesman Sean McCormack said. “While she will miss him as a colleague the friendship with he and his wife, Alice, will continue.”

Rice also looks forward to working with Beckett and expects to talk with her soon, McCormack said.

The shake-up appeared aimed at demonstrating Blair still holds a firm grip on his beleaguered government after weeks of negative headlines and scandal.

The government’s acknowledgment last week that officials had failed to screen 1,023 foreign criminals for deportation before freeing them from prison in the past seven years was particularly damaging to Blair.

“It’ll take far more than a reshuffle,” Conservative Party leader David Cameron said. “What we need in this country is a replacement of the government.”

“I think what we have seen over the last few hours is that while the Labour Party is collapsing, the Conservative Party is building,” Cameron said as he toured London to celebrate his party’s gains in the local elections.

Glenda Jackson, a former Labour government minister who has been a persistent Blair critic, joined the calls for him to go. “The problem for the party and its government is its leader,” she said.

Thursday’s vote was widely seen as a referendum on Blair’s government, and Cameron emerged as the main winner.

“I’m a happy man this morning,” said Cameron, who took over the party in December.

Labour took 1,065 seats in incomplete counting, down 251 seats compared with the results of the last election. The Conservatives won 1,567 seats, a gain of 249. Labour lost control of 16 local councils _ including some boroughs in London _ and the Tories gained eight.

The far-right British National Party won 13 seats.

Labour also did badly in the 2004 local vote but that didn’t stop Blair from leading the party to its third straight national election victory a year later _ albeit with a reduced majority in the House of Commons.

Treasury chief Gordon Brown, the man expected to succeed Blair, said voters were concerned about issues of crime, terrorism and their financial and job security. “We’ve got to show in the next few days, not just in the next few weeks, that we are sorting these problems out,” he told British Broadcasting Corp. radio.

Voters Thursday chose representatives to fill 4,360 seats in 176 local authorities across England, a little less than half of all English councils. London was the biggest battleground, with elections in all 32 boroughs.

Most Labour members of Parliament “are saying now that we’ve got to get the party under new management. It ought to happen fairly soon,” said Frank Dobson, who was health secretary in Blair’s first Cabinet.