Clare Short is the popular, outspoken International Development Secretary. Her cabinet role includes leading the UK's responses to humanitarian disasters in Mozambique and Central America and organising aid for Sierra Leone and the volcano stricken island of Montserrat. However, she has recently been criticised by environmentalists about the UK Government's support for an oil pipeline between Chad and Cameroon in west Africa.
A lively feminist, she has favoured women-only shortlists and has attacked topless Page Three girls in tabloid newspapers.
When she joined the cabinet she promised to "try to be good, but I can't help being me". Such frankness has led to her occasionally embarrassing the Labour leadership - on the Prevention of Terrorism Bill, the Gulf War, the legalisation of cannabis, and levels of income tax. She resigned twice as a front bench spokesman while in opposition and has often attacked the press and Labour's own spin doctors for briefing against her.
Clare Short went to grammar school in Birmingham and graduated from Leeds University. She was elected MP for Birmingham's Ladywood constituency in 1983.
