A politician undone by her own popularity

Naturally, yesterday, they came to praise her

Naturally, yesterday, they came to praise her. And Mo Mowlam - onetime darling of the Labour Party conference, former Northern Ireland secretary, ever-so-reluctant cabinet office minister, and soon-to-be-departing MP - could have been forgiven a wry smile at the discovery of quite so many friends.

Having for once observed the proprieties, Dr Mowlam left it to Downing Street to announce her planned exit from the political stage come the general election. And Number 10 led the way in paying tribute to the woman consistently voted the most popular member of the Blair cabinet, Mr Blair included.

"The Prime Minister has a great regard for her ability," his official spokesman repeated for the umpteenth time, adding: "He believes she will be a great loss to the government and to parliament." Confirming that Dr Mowlam would continue in her present post until the election, the spokesman robustly denounced the "24-carat rubbish" about those alleged briefings against her.

And he indicated that, in her own statement, Dr Mowlam would make clear she had not authorised the forthcoming biography by journalist Julia Langdon, expected to put Mr Peter Mandelson in the frame.

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When her own brief statement emerged, it contained no reference to Ms Langdon's book, or to the one she plans to publish once outside the cabinet.

Explaining her "personal" decision, Dr Mowlam said she wanted to do something different with the remaining years of her working life, possibly reflecting her interests in poverty, conflict resolution and international affairs.

She had the good grace not to say she might once have hoped to pursue the latter as Mr Blair's foreign secretary.

That was back in the heady days of 1998, when the post-Belfast Agreement euphoria won her an unprecedented standing ovation in the middle of Mr Blair's big conference speech.

The suspicion has long been held that she ceased to be Mr Blair's "one and only Mo" at about that time. And as journalists pondered yesterday - did she jump or was she pushed? - her husband squared up to the question of whether she had ever recovered from that display of party affection.

"Some people have said that from that point on the adverse stories occurred," he told BBC Radio 4's World At One. "I haven't personally been through the papers and looked to see if that was the truth. But, normally, popularity isn't always the most popular thing amongst colleagues."

Mr Mandelson certainly wasn't popular with Dr Mowlam when, at Mr David Trimble's urging, Mr Blair finally appointed him to replace her at the Northern Ireland Office last year.

One keen observer yesterday detected significance in the tense used by Mr Mandelson to describe their relationship: "I've known her a very long time. We've been good friends and we have neighbouring constituencies in the north-east."

Maybe the source was being too literal in assessing Mr Mandelson's otherwise warm tribute to "a one-off" who would be missed in politics but still had a tremendous amount to do elsewhere in life.

However, there was no need for close textual analysis to detect the disappointment and hurt clearly felt elsewhere in the Labour Party. Her friend and fellow Labour MP, Ms Joan Ruddock, confirmed that "of course" Mo had been upset by her move from Belfast.

"It is difficult in government, where all the slots are pre-determined. She is a person who is very unusual in her approach, and perhaps that makes it more difficult for her to get the place she most wants, having once already done something unique," she said.

More explicit still, Ms Gwyneth Dunwoody MP welcomed Dr Mowlam's decision to quit because she had been "wasted" in the cabinet office. "I am delighted that Mo has decided life has a great deal to offer her," she said. "She is a woman of enormous talent and will be very much missed, but I look forward to her impact on politics and government for many years to come. . . She was being wasted. There's a lot for her to do. I think she is quite right to want to do it elsewhere."

There seems little doubt that, after the high drama of Northern Ireland, Dr Mowlam considered herself somewhat wasted in the cabinet office. From soon after her arrival there, however, some key Labour insiders feared she was rather wasting an opportunity to make the most of the job. One source said she gave the impression of not wanting to be there, adding: "She's very difficult with her civil servants."

Being the unconventional politician she is, there is little reason to doubt this. Indeed, one Irish civil servant, who knows her well and hugely admires her, cheerfully offers: "She would have been hell to work with."

She also plainly overplayed her hand with Mr Blair in her battle to stay on in Northern Ireland. Amid a widespread perception that she and Mr Frank Dobson had effectively aborted an earlier planned reshuffle, one source close to her said with great clarity: "You only get to say no to your prime minister once."

Eventually, the demand for change became irresistible. Dr Mowlam failed in her rearguard action to win the department of health, and probably compounded Number 10's annoyance by indicating, when it was too late to do anything about the doomed Mr Dobson, that she might, after all, like to be Mayor of London.

One man who knows the personalities and politics of new Labour better than most predicted in advance that Mr Blair would not put Dr Mowlam in charge of a big-spending department. He believed that judgment reflected Number 10's actual assessment of her skills.

That view will be hotly contested now. In the midst of the sentiment and affection, as one Tory put it, "we'll have to wait for her own book to get the dirt". But in Ireland, at least, there is no questioning her talents or her unique contribution to the peace process.

For, of course, it was her engaging personality, robust scepticism (not least about the received wisdom of the official machine) and very "lack of conventional pieties" that won her such rave reviews in official Dublin. Nor, as one well-placed source maintained vigorously last night, was this because of the widespread perception that she was simply pro-nationalist and therefore anti-unionist.

"She was pro-change," her Irish admirer insisted, recalling her famous assertion that the status quo was not an option in Northern Ireland. Throughout the long dying days of the Major government, Dr Mowlam played the crucial role in persuading Dublin, the SDLP and the republicans that Northern Ireland would be a priority for a Blair government.

"Her contribution was very important in a psychological and political sense," said the Irish source. "She took the metropolitan issues that a Labour party should be addressing, without regard to Orange or Green. A lot of her colleagues talked a good talk, but she took Northern Ireland as a modernisation issue. She actually walked the walk in Ireland."