Ruth Kelly's elevation to Cabinet as Education Secretary at the age of 36 is the first hint of what the top echelons of New Labour will look like - a tantalising advance glimpse of Life Beyond Blair. By moving into Charles Clarke's shoes, she has eclipsed her old friend David Miliband, the School Standards Minister who had been tipped to move up into the top job and the sundry ranks of thirty-something New Labourites anxious for a seat in Cabinet.

Ms Kelly has had a meteoric rise through the ranks since 1997, all the more impressive given that she was the first "Blair babe" to produce a baby in 1997 and has since had three more children.

Her calm, even downbeat manner and measured speech does not always carry well on the airwaves, where some of her performances have been criticised as excessively "safe". She tends to stick tightly to the loyalist script and continued to do so a fortnight ago on Any Questions, even when she was hit by some of the slurry thrown at her fellow panellist Robert Kilroy-Silk. And, in answer to a humorous question about leadership directed at the controversial UKIP leader, she replied with a screed of praise for Tony Blair.

"No one even died of excitement listening to Ruth make an argument," says one Treasury colleague.

But her calming influence is seen by Mr Blair as an asset when emotions run high among the Cabinet's alpha males. She was the token Blairite sent to Gordon Brown's Treasury team and earned the Chancellor's respect for her diligence and ability to get to grips with complex issues such as public-sector pensions, on which she has just published the Government's official document. Her reputation for plain dealing and ability to bridge two camps resulted in her being sent to do what many describe as "the most difficult job in Labour" - as No 2 to Alan Milburn on the electionplanning team she is responsible for negotiating between Mr Milburn and his ancestral enemy Gordon Brown about the content of the election

manifesto.

Her contributions to electionplanning meetings impressed Mr Blair. Amid speculation about her possible move to Education last night, one minister was so convinced of her irreplaceability in the election role that he predicted she simply could not be moved.

Proof of her privileged status with Government as one of the few genuinely finely tuned brains was underlined last week when she took over policy on public service pensions. As perhaps the only minister who really understands the subject, it was she and not pensions minister Malcolm Wicks who made the announcement.

The education job will, however, prove extremely testing for a Cabinet minister in her first senior role. Mr Blair has built much on improvements in

schools. But the party still remains vulnerable to the charge that it fails to take seriously enough the anxieties of middle-class parents about standards of teaching and discipline, and that it has relied on an excessively selective view of statistics to defend its record.

An Oxford graduate and trained economist, Ms Kelly is naturally at home among intellectual elites. She must decide how far she wants to push the Government's message on widening social access to universities without alienating the top universities which already complain about pressure to bend admissions policy to recruit students from poorer backgrounds.

As a practising Roman Catholic, Ms Kelly has made clear her opposition to abortion and euthanasia. But one of the most striking characteristics of this high-flyer is her sheer productivity. She holds the record for the number of children born to any sitting MP.

She married Derek Gadd in 1996 and within a month of Labour's landslide a year later, she had given birth to her eldest son Eamonn. Within the past seven years she has had Sinead, now five, Roisin, now three, and Niamh, now one.

But professionally she is also the most productive member of the Government. She demands a strict divide between her political and home life. She works relentlessly during the day but is the only minister who does not take any ministerial red boxes home at night.

There is no question that for Ms Kelly her family has equal importance with her career. The family has a nanny but Mr Gadd also plays a key role in childcare.

The couple live in Wapping in a former council flat. When the neighbouring flat came up, they bought that too and have since created a home big enough for their ever-increasing brood. A firm believer in state education, the children have the advantage of good Catholic schools.

Every morning, Mr Gadd walks over Tower Bridge to his job at the head of the Association of London Government, while the minister sets off in her government car for Whitehall.

But for Ms Kelly, the strict division between her political and home life may be much harder to maintain now that she has been catapulted into one of the most exposed jobs at the heart of government.

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