PENPIX: Main figures in British political shake-up

LONDON (Reuters) - Prime Minister Gordon Brown is to reshuffle his ministerial team within days and faced renewed speculation over his political future on Thursday.

Here are portraits of ruling Labour Party figures linked with a possible leadership challenge or new government role.

HARRIET HARMAN

Educated at St Pauls, one of Britain's elite girls' schools, Harman worked as a civil liberties lawyer before entering parliament in 1982 when she was seven months pregnant.

The leader of the lower house and deputy Labour leader, the 58-year-old has close ties to Brown.

Supporters describe her as a tenacious workaholic with a strong record on sexual equality and workers' rights. Critics nicknamed her "Hattie Harperson" for her political correctness.

She once joked she could never be prime minister because "there aren't enough airports in the country for all the men who would want to flee."

ALAN JOHNSON

A guitar-playing former postman, Johnson, 59, is portrayed as a man of the people who could help Labour reconnect with its working class roots.