Mowlam calls it quits in politics

LONDON - Mo Mowlam, the most popular member of the cabinet, stunned Britain yesterday by announcing that she would leave Parliament at the next general election.

The Cabinet Office Minister denied she had been driven out by sniping about her performance by aides of Prime Minister Tony Blair but confirmed that there had been a "whispering campaign" against her.

Mowlam, aged 50, insisted her surprise move was a personal and career decision. She said she wanted a job outside politics before she retired and was considering options "in international affairs, conflict resolution and poverty." One possibility is a post with the United Nations.

Downing Street said Mowlam would remain in her ministerial post until the election and that Blair believed her departure would be "a great loss to the Government and a great loss to Parliament."

However, the Prime Minister did not try to talk Mowlam out of her decision when they met for 15 minutes at Downing Street on Monday. Her move spares Blair a dilemma over whether to keep her in his cabinet if he wins a second term.

Blair's relations with the colourful, outspoken MP for Redcar have been strained since she scuppered his plans for a cabinet reshuffle in July 1999 by insisting on keeping her post as the Secretary of State for Northern Ireland. Blair took his revenge last October by switching her to the Cabinet Office even though she asked to be made Foreign Secretary.

She could cause embarrassment after leaving the cabinet by writing her memoirs, for which she has already been offered £350,000.

A biography of Mowlam, to be published later this month, is expected to accuse Jonathan Powell, the Downing Street chief of staff, and Peter Mandelson, her successor as Northern Ireland Secretary, of briefing against her.

Mowlam said yesterday: "I have had whispering campaigns for rather a long time now and if I had listened to them I would not be here now."

Mowlam will be remembered in Belfast as the first Northern Ireland Secretary to believe wholeheartedly in the peace process, and to take sizeable personal risks to keep it alive.

The general view was summed up by former United States senator George Mitchell, who chaired the political talks during her time: "She is blunt and outspoken and she swears a lot. She is also intelligent, decisive, daring and unpretentious. The combination is irresistible. The people love her, though many politicians in Northern Ireland do not."

- INDEPENDENT