Loose cannon puts convictions ahead of career

CLARE SHORT has never shied away from voicing her blunt opinions — even at the cost of her own career.

Her description of British Prime Minister Tony Blair as “reckless” in the run-up to the Gulf War eventually led to her own resignation and her revelations yesterday will come as no surprise to those who regard her as a loose cannon.

Ms Short was born in Birmingham on February 15, 1946 and was educated at St Paul’s Grammar School, Birmingham, and at the Universities of Keele and Leeds. She graduated with a Bachelor of Arts in political science.

Her father, Frank Short, was a teacher born in Crossmaglen, Co Armagh. Her interest in Northern Ireland has never waned, and some have accused her of being too sympathetic to the republican cause.

She worked as a senior civil servant at the Home Office and entered the Commons as MP for her home territory of Birmingham Ladywood in 1983.

She quickly acquired a reputation as a forceful politician, embracing feminist causes with fervour.

She attacked Page Three girls in The Sun newspaper and in 1988, demanded the sacking of Judge James Pickles for jailing a woman who was too frightened to give evidence against a man who beat her.

In 1991, Ms Short quit the shadow cabinet after objecting to Neil Kinnock’s instructions that she could not speak outside her environmental portfolio.

She was appointed International Development Secretary when Labour swept to power in 1997 and held on to that post until last year when she resigned over the lack of a UN mandate for post-war Iraq.

In 1996, she was reunited with her son, solicitor Toby Young, who had been given up for adoption during her first marriage at 18 to a fellow Keele student. Her second marriage in 1981 was to Alex Lyons, a Home Office Minister who lost his seat at York just as she won hers in Ladywood. Mr Lyons died of Alzheimer’s in 1993.