Analysis: Blair hurt by Short?

By Nick Assinder BBC News Online political correspondent

Blair may have sacked Short anyway

No prime minister likes to see cabinet members resigning - but Tony Blair will probably make an exception for Clare Short.

He may once have feared the potential threat posed by an unshackled Short. He will lose no sleep over her behaviour now.

If she had not jumped when she did, she would almost certainly have been pushed in the next reshuffle.

Thanks to his nifty handling of her last non-resignation, the prime minister has very effectively neutralised her.

So, while the prime minister has good reason to worry about Robin Cook's future speaking engagements, he will have no such fears over Ms Short.

The only damage being done by her decision is that it has given the prime minister's anti-war rebels a new platform from which to attack him.

Rebuild Iraq

Many of Ms Short's colleagues were surprised when the prime minister persuaded her to stay in the cabinet after her assault on his recklessness over war.

The more trusting, and that appears to have included Ms Short herself, accepted at face value his suggestion that she was needed to help rebuild Iraq.

The truth was probably that the prime minister had mentally already sacked her, he just hadn't told her so. No one gets away with making that sort of assault on a prime minister.

Short has lost credibility with the left

And his tactic is now seen as the slickest political stitch up of recent times.

By persuading her to stay - while certainly planning to sack her at the first possible post-war opportunity - Tony Blair completely neutralised her.

The fact that he replaced her within about an hour of her phone call to number 10 also suggests he had already line up Baroness Amos for the job in the reshuffle.

And this event certainly didn't break significantly into his day.

Many of Ms Short's former supporters on the left of the party had long ago given up on her and her breathtaking u-turn over war was simply greeted by them with a sigh of resignation.

Matter of principle

But others were genuinely offended and angered by her about face.

And any suggestion that she could now retire to the backbenches to join Robin Cook as the rebel leaders is simply incredible.

She may have clawed back a little credibility over this latest resignation, but it is unlikely she will now provide a rallying point for dissidents in the Commons.

And she certainly found a matter of principle on which to resign, and has gone on to launch another stinging attack on the prime minister, branding his actions in the UN as "dishonourable" and illegal.

That has given the Labour rebels another stick with which to beat the prime minister and she will reap some rewards with them for that.

And it certainly shows that the deep splits in Labour over the war have not gone away and will continue to buffet the prime minister for some time to come.

But backbenchers were under no illusion that she was about to be sacked in the looming re-shuffle, so has only jumped before she was pushed.

And Downing Street was quick to claim that she had not been given assurances by Tony Blair that he has not fulfilled.

It had become increasingly obvious that, for the prime minister, the benefits of keeping Ms Short on board - as a sort of cabinet conscience and sop to the left - had evaporated.

Like deputy prime minister John Prescott, who has been sidelined by the prime minister, she had largely outlived her usefulness.

But, while Mr Prescott can still be relied on to toe the prime ministerial line, Ms Short was a loose cannon.

This cannon may now take pot shots at the government, but most of the ammunition will be blanks.