Ballard's unfinished business

A hunt ban will be a priority for the new RSPCA head

By Nyta Mann BBC News Online political correspondent

BBC News Online profiles the ex-Lib Dem MP and anti-hunt campaigner Jackie Ballard following her controversial appointment as the RSPCA's new chief.

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Jackie Ballard's appointment as director general of the RSPCA is a return to unfinished business for the former Liberal Democrat MP.

After the one-term holder of Taunton lost her seat at last year's general election, she was in no doubt where the blame lay: with the pro-bloodsports lobby, with whom the anti-hunt MP clashed on numerous occasions.

Jackie Ballard had nursed hopes of rising further in the Lib Dems

Throughout the government's seemingly endless havering over what to do about its 1997 manifesto pledge to ban hunting with hounds she played a central role in mobilising parliamentary opposition to hunting - a bold move given her own highly rural seat.

As she later said, "I was often frightened to go in to parts of my constituency because of the naked hatred I saw in people's eyes."

Leadership contender

Having raised her political profile by putting in a decent performance in the contest to succeed Paddy Ashdown just two years earlier, her defeat in 2001 was a classic reminder of how, in politics, the best-laid career plans can be dashed by the will or whim of the electorate.

The shock of losing to the Conservatives, who had campaigned against her outspoken anti-hunt views, moved her to declare she was throwing in the towel.

"There is no way that I am standing again," she declared in the immediate aftermath of an election that must have been all the more painful thanks to a record number of Lib Dem MPs being returned while she found herself her party's highest-profile casualty.

"I have been involved in politics since 1985 and apart from the past four years I have not made a living out of it."

Destination Tehran

She certainly appeared to have fled just about as far as was geographically possible when she relocated to Tehran last year, settling down to study and to learn Farsi.

She had long retained an interest in Iran, having first visited the country soon after entering the Commons.

But the committed feminist raised some eyebrows back home with her insistence that women in Iran "are in many ways among the most assertive and socially independent women I have met".

Ms Ballard's new role will put her once again at the forefront of the campaign to ban hunting with hounds. There will also be no shortage of small-p politics, with reports of RSPCA infighting having preceded her appointment.

Not that the big-P Politics is behind her, though. The government is little nearer to - some say a lot further from - a clear position on hunting now than it was when Ms Ballard first became an MP.

Having been rejected by the voters, she is no longer on the parliamentary frontline on the issue. But her latest job allows her to carry on the fight by other means.