The Department for International Development (DFID), which administers the overseas aid budget, owes a lot to a political gaffe. Clare Short, its most noteworthy recent minister, was handed the portfolio shortly before Labour came to power because she was too dangerously outspoken to be trusted with the transport brief she had been shadowing. The move may have been intended as a demotion, but someone forgot to tell Ms Short. She kept her cabinet rank and, more importantly, a close relationship with Gordon Brown, the chancellor of the exchequer. And her willingness to speak unvarnished truths won her admirers in the development world, where polite euphemisms abound.
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