Is she finished? Chief whip's future in doubt

Hilary Armstrong's position as chief whip looked shaky long before Tony Blair's double Commons defeat last night.

Ironically, The Conservative leader David Cameron has been credited with keeping her in the post.

Ms Armstrong was widely tipped for the chop when Mr Cameron weighed in to her at his first Prime Minister's Questions appearance.

Mr Cameron leader scored a vital early point by rounding on the animated Chief Whip for "shouting like a child".

"Has she finished? Have you finished?" Mr Cameron taunted.

Ms Armstrong has "form" at such events, having hurled a copy of an explosive David Blunkett biography at Mr Cameron's predecessor Michael Howard.

The Cameron episode is thought by many to have thrown her a lifeline, with the Prime Minister reluctant to hand the new Tory leader an early scalp.

Ms Armstrong's future was inevitably in doubt following the Government's first Commons defeat the previous month.

After eight years of acquiescence from MPs, plans to allow police to detain terror suspects without trial for 90 days proved too much.

The measures were voted down by a majority of 31 in November, despite the hasty return of Chancellor Gordon Brown and Foreign Secretary Jack Straw from high-profile overseas visits.

The Chief Whip's authority was inevitably damaged, despite suggestions that she warned the Prime Minister to compromise or lose the vote.

The former deputy headmistress and lecturer has built a reputation as a loyal fixer to successive Labour leaderships.

Born on November 30 1945, she joined the party at 15 and entered the Commons in 1987, having "inherited" her father's safe Durham North West seat.

Ms Armstrong was swiftly spotted by leader Neil Kinnock, who lifted her from the backbenches the following year, and she served his successor John Smith as Parliamentary Private Secretary.

Her energetic lobbying of her sponsoring union, MSF, helped Mr Smith swing the crucial one-member-one-vote ballot at the 1993 party conference.

Those union links also proved useful in Mr Blair's battle to rewrite Clause IV of the Labour constitution, which referred to common ownership.

The Prime Minister appointed her to his Cabinet as Chief Whip following the 2001 general election after four years as local government minister.

Ms Armstrong weathered the backbench rebellions on foundation hospitals and tuition fees as well as the mass revolt that saw 139 MPs vote against the Iraq war in March 2003.

Labour's reduced majority at last May's general election has made the job far tougher and many backbench MPs had already developed a taste for rebellion.

With a key Commons showdown looming over the contentious education reforms, Mr Blair cannot afford any more blunders like those that led to last night's surprise defeats.

Sacking Ms Armstrong now would look like panic and rumours that she offered her resignation following the double blow are fiercely rejected by allies.

But with a reshuffle expected in the wake of the Education Bill, the task of instilling discipline to Labour's unruly rank and file looks set to fall to someone else.