One of the most spectacularly promoted members of the 1997 intake, Ruth Kelly entered the cabinet at the age 36 as education secretary in December 2004. It was only twelve years after she had left full-time education herself.
It was an unexpected acceleration in a fast-tracked career which had up to then been largely devoted to economic matters. And it proved to be a fast learning curve.
An able economist, she worked for the Guardian newspaper and the Bank of England, and is a member of the Fabian Society and the Christian Socialist Movement. Selected to fight Bolton West in 1997, she had no connections with the Lancashire town but won the seat from the Conservative minister Tom Sackville with a swing of 11.3 per cent.
An MP at 28, she served for a year on the Commons Treasury select committee, where her questioning of her future boss Gordon Brown caused him to revise his economic forecasts. She later went through the foot-and-mouth crisis as parliamentary private secretary to the then agriculture secretary Nick Brown.
She was promoted to economic secretary to the Treasury at the start of her second parliament in 2001. Less than a year later she moved up another notch in the Treasury team, promoted to financial secretary in the reshuffle after the resignation of Stephen Byers. Her main achievement was the introduction of child trust fund payments and she also handled the sensitive issue of Equitable Life and compensation for collapsed pension funds.
In September 2004 she moved from working with Gordon Brown to join the returning Alan Milburn as minister of state at the Cabinet Office, working on policy in advance of the general election.
But another resignation, this time of David Blunkett, gave her another promotion, to become the youngest member of the cabinet by a decade, and the youngest woman ever.
But she faced a series of difficult tests. She was jeered at a conference of the Secondary Heads Association as she struggled to explain her policies.
There was deep disappointment among many professionals at her decision to keep GCSE and A-level examinations rather that adopt the full recommendations of the Tomlinson report for a new-style diploma. Headteachers accused her of patronising them and making promises she could not keep. Some called her experience into question.
A staunch Roman Catholic, she also attracted wide publicity over her connections with the strict Catholic organisation Opus Dei. There were even calls for her resignation, but she insisted her faith was a private matter.
As the minister also charged with promoting equality, she once again found herself under attack for her religion, with gay rights activists pointing out that she had missed twelve Commons votes on issues of homosexuality. She refused to say whether she believed homosexual practices were sinful. Opus Dei were said to be unhappy that she did not do more to oppose regulations requiring Catholic adoption agencies to accept same-sex couples.
Her main challenge as education secretary was to steer through the reform of secondary schools in the teeth of opposition from many Labour MPs. She made concessions and strenuous efforts to talk the rebels round. But 76 Labour MPs failed to support the bill, and it only survived with the help of Conservative votes.
But she was not to be around to see her legislation through. In May 2006 she was shifted to take over most of John Prescott's departmental duties as secretary of state for communities and local government, as well as becoming minister for women. She inherited a local government white paper and promised to increase social housing.
But she inherited plans for home information packs, a policy espoused by the junior housing minister Yvette Cooper, close to Gordon Brown. Kelly tried to jettison the idea but was overruled by Brown and then had to carry the can when the plans fell apart in May 2007, with an embarrassing Commons statement.
Some saw her days in the cabinet as numbered. But Brown kept her on as transport secretary in his first administration, with road pricing tests and a new railways strategy in her in-tray. She said she wanted a public debate on how to spend £20bn on road, rail and airport schemes.
Born in 1968 in Northern Ireland, she had a largely private education including two years at Westminster School, and has degrees from Queen's College Oxford and the London School of Economics. As an economic journalist on the Guardian she is said to have spotted that the Tory chancellor Norman Lamont had broken his golden rule in the 1992 Budget. She set up the seven wise women panel of economists.
She married Derek Gadd, an archaeologist and Labour Party agent in 1996, and gave a new meaning to the term Blair babe when she gave birth to a son, Eamonn, a week after her maiden speech. She called for a creche at the Commons, and put down a question about a national childcare strategy.
She had a second child, Sinead, a year later, and continued to match pregnancies with promotions. By 2004 she had a son and three daughters. An admiring Boris Johnson said: "She must be identical twins."
But there was some criticism when it was revealed in January 2007 that she had sent her son to a £15,000-a-year private school, after advice that he needed specialist support because of substantial learning difficulties. The couple's decision was defended by Downing Street, and by the Conservative leader David Cameron. The Press Complaints Commission rejected her complaint about the coverage.
This year she was absent from the vote on the second reading of the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Bill. She also voted against the provision to allow the creation of hybrid human-animal embryos and for a reduction in the upper limit for abortion to twelve weeks at committee stage.
It is thought to be her reluctance to support the Bill at its third reading - which Brown has asked all ministers to do in exchange for being allowed to abstain or oppose at earlier stages - along with her desire to spend more time with her family, prompted Kelly to tell the prime minister before the summer recess that she intended to step down at the next reshuffle.
Her resignation from the cabinet halts a meteoric rise through government - at least for now.
Information from www.dodonline.co.uk
