For some Labour colleagues, her call for Tony Blair to step down is like spitting in church, Clare Short tells Deaglán de Bréadún.
She may be in the eye of the storm but Clare Short is unruffled. She may wear long flowing scarves on TV but tonight she is wearing a smart trouser suit. She may have a reputation as a verbal bruiser but in conversation she is matter-of-fact, almost clinical, about her role as chief thorn in Tony Blair's side. This is the informal position she has held since she resigned as international development secretary last May over Iraqi reconstrucation, having been persuaded not to step down on the eve of the war.
She has a strong claim, of course, to be one of our own. Her father, Frank, came from Crossmaglen, Co Armagh. He moved to Birmingham, where he worked as a teacher and became a founder-member of the Anti-Partition League, now forgotten but an important body in its day. Her uncle, Paddy Short, still has a pub in Crossmaglen where, along with the pints, he dispenses high-quality political comment to visiting journalists and television crews.
In Dublin on Thursday night, everyone wants to talk to Clare Short, and she's about to go "on stage" to address the Philosophical Society of Trinity College. There's no time to lose.
Clare Short is currently a synonym for "outspoken". Why does she do it? She replies that she feels so strongly about Iraq that she can't bear to remain silent. And she recites the gloomy litany: "Twenty thousand Iraqis and the deaths go on, 500-odd American soldiers, and 50-odd British. The Middle East is massively more unstable and dangerous and angry. Israel-Palestine goes on; it's worse. Al-Qaeda is stronger. The world is more divided. It's like they are trying to make the 'clash of civilisations' come true."
It could be the notes for the speech she is about to give in half an hour's time. Then comes the political message.
"To have engaged in deception to get us there and not prepare for the inevitable speedy military victory is so irresponsible," she says. "And in the case of my country and my government, we were deeply implicated in it. I just don't think you can brush that under the carpet. But of course people are saying: 'Clare, we want another Labour government, be quiet.' And I find that unbearable."
Not for her the slogan "my party right or wrong". She gives me a short-hand account of conversations with colleagues who tell her to sit down, she's rocking the boat.
"And then I say: 'Well, let's get the truth out and let's correct [our approach]. Then we could ask Tony to stand down and we could get a new leader and we could sort ourselves out and get some of the honour back into the government.' And then this is seen as an atrocious attack on Tony Blair. The logic is either where I am, or brushing it under the carpet. It's because I can't go along with brushing it under the carpet," she says.
Short is an action person. She is a doer, not a talker. She is not in love with words, nor is she particularly interested in perfectly formed, well-constructed sentences. Her pronouncements are more in the nature of an agenda for a meeting or campaign. She has an agenda for change in the British Labour Party and in the way politicians in general see the world. In other words, you are not interviewing Gore Vidal: witty, with beautiful phrasing, but essentially a spectator. The commentators have interpreted the world; the point for Short is to change it. So how important is it for her that Tony Blair steps down?
"It was my recommendation for a way for the Labour Party to handle the problem we've got," she says. "If we could face up to what has happened and the mistakes that have been made and the deception that was engaged in, then we could correct what we had done wrong, we could take pride in what we had done right in government, get a new leader, and go forward into the next election with a very good chance of winning very well. It was just the logic of my position.
"It is the answer to those who say: 'We can't talk about this because it will damage our electoral prospects.' Saying 'maybe Tony Blair should step down' is treated like spitting in church. You are not supposed to say things like that."
There is talk of a move to deselect her and stop her running in her Birmingham Ladywood constituency, but she still wants to stand for parliament next time.
"As you know, I am under a lot of attack at the moment, but that's my position. But we'll see what happens in the next few weeks," she says.
She has been attacked by Labour MPs and the chief whip wants to meet her soon. She does not know if this is being orchestrated from Downing Street.
She spoiled a few Labour Party breakfasts last week with her sensational radio interview about alleged British intelligence skulduggery at the United Nations.
"I have wanted to get into the public domain the fact that Kofi Annan's office was being spied on, as a way of getting it stopped," she says now. "It's been in my mind for some time. So I said it after the [secret service whistle-blower] Katharine Gun trial was stopped because, of course, what she had revealed were proposals to spy on other, non-permanent, members of the Security Council. So it seemed a fitting time. And Tony Blair has treated that as a personal attack, which I find slightly odd. It would have been perfectly possible for him to say: 'Well, this is a serious allegation, we'll have to look into it.' But he attacked me very vehemently and the subtext of that is saying that it's all right to do it."
She claims the "hysterical" media have distorted her revelation, on BBC Radio 4's Today programme, about the spying.
"It had been going on for some time, transcripts of telephone conversations and papers, which is an undesirable practice but not particularly insidious until you get to a time like the differences there were over the Iraq war," she says. "And then it becomes very insidious, because of course Kofi Annan was trying to keep the UN together and was not in the same place as the UK - and then the fact that his office is being spied on becomes very disrespectful of his office and of the Security Council. So it had been going on for quite some time, continuously."
But how does Short know this?
"Because I saw the material over some time," she says.
Was that material identified as being from telephone transcripts and buggings?
"I haven't said telephone transcripts. I said spying on his office, transcripts and papers. I am using language accurately," she says.
Turning to more local matters, what does she think of the stalemate in the Northern Ireland Peace Process?
"The stalemate is unfortunate but I think the progress is invincible," she says. "It is not going to go back to a full-scale IRA campaign. I hope that's not complacent but that is my deep sense of it, that Ireland is moving forward and the economy in the South is fantastically strong, higher GDP per head than Britain. My father would be delighted, because they always used to say the way to get rid of the Border is for the South to prosper."
So the Peace Process will continue to move forward, albeit with halting steps?
"It is having its difficulties at the moment but my own sense, and I hope this isn't complacent, is that it will continue to stumble on and it won't really go backwards; well, it won't go back to violence," she says.
Then we are back with Iraq and Blair. As war loomed, she was about to resign as international development secretary.
"Then Tony Blair pressed me very, very hard to remain, on an absolute undertaking that the UN would be given the proper lead in reconstruction and we would internationalise it," she says. "So the war was unstoppable but the reconstruction would be properly done. And then all those promises were breached."
The word is that Tony Blair does not want to make a martyr out of St Clare. He hopes that if he sits tight, people will eventually tire of those insistent Brummie tones. Time will tell if the strategy works, but she is showing no sign of going away.
Clare Short may have resigned, but she certainly hasn't given up.