The only surprise about the resignation of International Development Secretary Clare Short was that it did not happen sooner.

Yet, with Short now able to take shots at the Government as and when she pleases, Colin Tapping asks: Will Tony Blair be better of without her?

LIKE Danniella Westbrook's plea to be sent packing from the celebrity jungle, Clare Short was almost begging to be sacked from the Cabinet.

Danniella's appeal to TV voters to be booted out fell on deaf ears, and she was left with no option but to walk.

With Tony Blair refusing to get rid of his increasingly detached International Development Secretary, yesterday Ms Short made the decision for him.

The surprising thing about the resignation is that her departure from Labour's front bench did not happen much earlier.

When she was brought into Tony Blair's first Cabinet in 1997, few commentators expected her to stay put for more than a year.

Those who have watched her progress are still astonished that such a volatile person, who seems incapable of responding other than publicly and noisily when things happen of which she disapproves, has lasted for so long in the top echelons of Government.

That she lasted six years in the same post, is testimony to her endeavours in that role and a reflection of the respect for her within the Cabinet and the wider world community.

But she was always an unwilling disciple of the notion of collective responsibility. Her reputation as what someone once described as "a serial resigner" was made when she served under Neil Kinnock as Leader of the Opposition.

In Government she appeared more inclined to toe the party line... until the Iraq crisis left her reverting to type.

Her days in Cabinet were numbered as soon as she described the Prime Minister as "reckless". Missing a key vote last week on the contentious issue of foundation hospitals made it look as though she was almost begging to be sacked.

The speed with which Ms Short's replacement, Baroness Amos, was announced after her resignation, suggested her departure was not entirely unexpected.

According to Vernon Bogdanor, Professor of Government at Oxford University, her position had become "untenable".

He says: "She was becoming a loose cannon within the Government. She was a Minister who breached collective responsibility and wasn't playing with the team.

"If you accuse your Prime Minister of recklessness you can't expect to stay on."

In keeping with her controversial reputation, she went out with a bang, accusing Tony Blair of breaching assurances he had given her about the United Nations' role in post conflict Iraq, and delivering a damning verdict on his style of government.

She stands out among the present generation of politicians as a person who speaks her mind bluntly and without the slightest fear of the personal consequences to herself.

She is the epitome of the explosive loose cannon of Westminster, and has been described as a "hot-blooded, self-igniting, hip-shooting, semi-hard left feminist".

Clare 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 as a Bachelor of Arts with honours in political science.

Her father, Frank Short, was a teacher born in Crossmaglen, a fervently republican area of Northern Ireland.

Her interest in Northern Ireland has never waned, and some have accused her of being too sympathetic to the Republican cause, when her sympathies lie with individuals who, she felt, had been wronged throughout their lives simply on sectarian grounds.

For years, 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, even shock-inducing politician, drinking pints in Annie's Bar and embracing feminist causes with all the fervour that the Irish blood in her veins could muster.

She attacked Page Three girls in The Sun newspaper with the kind of vitriol which earned her the description by one commentator as "cuddlesome in repose but rather less so when speaking".

She demanded the sacking, in 1988, of Judge James Pickles, for jailing a woman who was too frightened to give evidence against a man who beat her.

She is said to be the only member of Mr Blair's Cabinet who has never voted for the winning candidate in any election for Labour's leader, not even when Tony Benn challenged Neil Kinnock in 1988.

At first she gave the impression that she could not see Tony Blair as leader, but finally decided she "could work with this guy".

To say she is unorthodox is an understatement. Her future character was probably moulded when at school she was appointed as playground protector against the local bully - that is the sort of position she has maintained ever since.

In 1991, Ms Short quit the shadow cabinet after refusing Mr Kinnock's instructions that she could not speak outside her environmental portfolio.

From 1996 until the 1997 General Election she was Opposition spokeswoman on overseas development. Before that she had been shadow minister for women, shadow transport secretary and Opposition spokeswoman on environmental protection, social security and employment.

She was appointed International Development Secretary when Labour swept to power in 1997 and, astonishingly, until yesterday has held on to that post.