Posted on 05/12/2003 3:36:47 AM PDT by ejdrapes
Clare Short, the international develpoment secretary, has resigned from Tony Blair's government after weeks of speculation about her position. She is expected to make a statement in the House of Commons later on Monday. Aides said she had quit over the issue of Iraq, but declined to elaborate. For several weeks, constant speculation about Ms Short's future has swept Westminster. Her verbal attack on Mr Blair's Iraq strategy before the conflict and threat to quit the cabinet led to suggestions she would not survive the next reshuffle. Last week, she failed to turn up to support the government in a crucial Commons vote on foundation hospitals. Ms Short's move suggests she has decided to pre-empt a possible sacking by going through with her original threat to go. The prime minster had persuaded her to stay in the cabinet to see through the reconstruction of Iraq after the war, but ministers have privately suspected she would be dropped. A Downing Street spokesman said she rang the prime minister just after 10am to inform him of her decision. The call came just twenty minutes before her office announced the news. In a statement, Ms Short said in her resignation letter to the prime minister: "I have decided that I must leave the Government." She accused Mr Blair of breaching assurances he had given her on the role of the United Nations in governing post-conflict Iraq. And she accused the prime minister and Jack Straw, foreign secretary, of "secretly" negotiating a UN security council resolution which contradicted assurances she had given in the Commons to MPs. Baroness Valerie Amos, a junior Foreign Office minister, has been appointed her successor, the first black female cabinet minister. The international development secretary has long had a reputation for speaking her mind, a trait that has sometimes landed her in hot water. She is also regarded as having managed her department competently. Mr Blair has tolerated her outspokenness, appreciative of her popularity on the backbenches and with aid agencies, but her stance on Iraq - and in particular her description of his Iraq policy as "reckless" - stretched his patience and infuriated cabinet colleagues. Commentators said she appeared to have taken the decision to jump before she was pushed. The hostile tone of the resignation letter suggests she will make a fierce critic of the government on the backbenches and could become a beacon for disaffected opponents of Mr Blair on the Labour left. She will join Robin Cook, former leader of the Commons, who also quit the cabinet over Iraq.Clare Short resigns from government
By Christopher Adams, Political Correspondent
So members of the House of Lords can still be in the cabinet? Didn't Tony Benn resign his peerage because it was impeding his career?
Again, what took her so long?
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