Clare Short said that she fully supported the Anglo-American war against “an evil, monstrous regime that has caused a terrible war and displacement, raping and killing people”. She attacked the “doom and gloom merchants” and bleeding-heart liberals, and declared this war to be “a challenge for our generation. We must do what is right, otherwise evil will triumph.”

Such was the stance of our supposed heroine of the anti-war movement, during the US-UK bombing of Slobodan Milosevic’s Serbia in 1999. Yesterday in Parliament, Iain Duncan Smith asked Tony Blair how even a tent as big as his could accommodate a dove such as the International Development Secretary and a hawk like Donald Rumsfeld, the US Defence Secretary. If Ms Short does resign her Cabinet post over Iraq, perhaps she could get a job writing Mr Rumsfeld’s speeches about President Saddam Hussein’s evil, monstrous, rapine regime.

Despite her reputation as the people’s peacenik, Ms Short is no more against wars of intervention than a Bush or a Blair. After a school visit by the minister, one Cornish sixth former showed a better grasp of Short’s position than many pundits and MPs. “I was quite disappointed because I thought she would say she was trying her hardest to completely prevent war,” complained young Laura Stanworth. “But her answer was more along the lines of she was just trying to postpone it.”

In her posturing over Iraq, Clare Short is doing what she has done throughout her political career — cultivating a reputation for being unlike a politician. Her angry rebel routine boosts her crafted PR image as the conscience of the Labour Party in an otherwise sinful world. That is how she has managed to remain at the centre of Blair’s Government, while talking as if she were a spokesman for Greenpeace. It is also why she has been so useful to Mr Blair.

The issues on which she has taken “brave stands” against government policy tend to be ones where she can ride a wave of public sympathy. You do not have to be much of a hero to bomb soft targets such as the Millennium Dome, top-up fees for universities, Catholic teachings on condoms or a war without UN support.

Now Ms Short has said she may have to resign because Blair is being “reckless” over Iraq. Whether or not he is reckless, she is irresponsible. Having sat in the Cabinet throughout the campaign against Saddam, she now threatens to run away rather than stand by what her Government has done. During Prime Minister’s Questions yesterday, Blair seemed to abdicate responsibility for Short, observing that “I cannot answer for the comments of every member of every administration around the world — including occasionally my own”. But far worse is that Short refuses to answer for her own actions.

She recognises no sense of responsibility to anything higher than her own self-importance. Her outburst on Iraq is less a statement about the war than about Clare Short. As she said when resigning from the Labour front bench during the first Gulf War, she had “no principal differences” with the leadership but “this is about me being silenced”. After the 18th-century War of Jenkins’ Ear, we now have the war of Clare’s Ego.

The short version of Short’s position is “not in my name” — more a slogan of disengaged individuals who are opting out of the political battle than of those fighting for an alternative. So our moral Cabinet minister ends up hiding behind the bogus authority of the UN, waiting for unelected, unaccountable apparatchiks such as Hans Blix and Kofi Annan to pass judgment on Iraq before she can give the bombers her blessing.

If Saint Clare of Ladywood really is the worst thing he has to worry about, Blair may yet manage to outlast Saddam.