I've been a very silly man with Clare Short ... it's cost me my wife

Cabinet Minister Clare Short was last night accused of being a marriage wrecker after having a passionate affair with a Labour MP - and then dumping him.

Jim Marshall, who is now separated from his wife Sue, told close friends: "I've been a very silly man with Clare Short. It has cost me my marriage."

It is the second time Clare has been the "other woman" in a love triangle - she fell for her late husband Alex Lyon while he was still married.

But Premier Tony Blair's controversial Secretary for International Development is unlikely to be toppled by any storm over sleaze - she ended the fling with Marshall in the run-up to the General Election.

Twice-wed Marshall, MP for Leicester South, has moved into a one- bedroom bachelor flat in the city centre while his jilted wife, 46, lives alone at the two-bedroom flat they once shared three miles away.

It was the Marshalls' eleventh wedding anniversary last Tuesday. Despite the break-up, Sue is still working as her husband's constituency secretary in his Leicester office.

Clare, 51, Marshall and Sue all refused to comment on the affair yesterday.

But privately Sue is said to be "seething with anger" over Clare stealing her husband. She does not want to go public with her views for fear of attracting bad publicity for Mr Blair.

Clare grew close to Commons backbencher Marshall, 56, when he provided a shoulder to cry on after Alex Lyon's death in 1993.

The left-wing pair formed the backbone of Margaret Beckett's campaign team when she ran for the Labour leadership the following year.

A close friend of Clare's claimed: "Jim's marriage was either over or in decline when they were seeing each other."

The friend added: "It is over and finished now and all parties have accepted what has gone on.

"Both Clare and Jim have agreed that it is water under the bridge and that they are not going to talk about this."

Clare's critics will point to history repeating itself.

Alex Lyon was a Minister in the Home Office when Clare worked as his Civil Service secretary for three years in the 1970s.

Their affair resulted in him leaving his wife and three children and ultimately marrying Clare. Lyon, who died aged 61 in a nursing home following an agonising five-year battle against Alzheimer's Disease was forced to quit his Cabinet post when then Premier Jim Callaghan learned of the scandal.

It was an episode which still haunted Clare years later.

She once revealed: "Some people seem to equate morality purely with sex. I believe that having beggars in the streets is a moral question. We shouldn't have fallen in love, but we did.

"We let down his first wife, and hurt her, and that was wrong. We did try. We had a hundred endings.

"We still felt guilty when we moved in together. The first six months to a year weren't very good. I felt so bad about it all."

Clare, MP for Birmingham Ladywood since 1983, is no stranger to controversy or tangled emotions. She has hit the headlines for attempting to ban Page Three girls and for her support for the legalisation of cannabis.

Neil Kinnock dumped her from his Shadow Cabinet for opposing his views when he supported the Tories over the Gulf War.

Her personal life has been a roller-coaster. She was first married to fellow Leeds University student Andrew Moss in 1964 but it ended in divorce seven years later.

Last October she had emotional reunion with the son she secretly gave up for adoption as a teenage mum 31 years ago.

She presented London-based lawyer Toby Graham - a Tory supporter - to the world in an extraordinary House of Commons press conference after he made contact with her.

They said: "We are happier than we have been in our lives. It is like falling in love but less complicated and it is guaranteed to last forever."

Clare, who lives in a large Victorian detached house in Clapham, South London, has not been publicly linked with another man since Lyon's death, which left her devastated.

In the past she has revealed there is a soft-centre to the outwardly tough politician.

She has said: "All women feel terribly happy and clucky and think it's lovely when they fall in love. They are so terribly romantic.

"All women really want is to grow up, fall in love and live happily ever after. Everybody does. I did. I still do."

One of seven children of a devout Irish Catholic father, Clare also said: "I'm ruthlessly puritan when it comes to any kind of cheating or corruption, but I'm not in any way against pleasure."

Friends of Yorkshire-born Marshall, who has a son and a daughter from his previous marriage, say he is now "a desperately unhappy man".

He lives alone in his apartment in a converted church opposite Leicester railway station. A message on his answerphone there only mentions Jim Marshall.

Meanwhile, his wife Sue has remained at the marital home - a housing association flat in the city's leafy Stoneygate suburb.

Each weekday she leaves there for a 10-minute drive to her husband's office in the city centre.

It is less than five minutes walk from his new home - but friends say she never calls there.

They say the blonde former betting shop clerk does not want to give up her job because she enjoys trying to help his constituents...and needs the money.

She has told friends: "Jim stays somewhere in London during the week while he's at the House of Commons, but he hasn't given me the address.

"I doubt whether he would give it out."

When asked about her separation from the MP, she said: "I've got nothing to say to you." Sue's mother, Eileen Carter, who has been comforting her since the split, said: "I'm not interested in talking about it."

Jim Marshall is known among journalists and commentators in the Commons as the "silent MP" because he is so reserved, but he is popular among colleagues with his ready wit.

A former research scientist, he won Leicester South for Labour in 1974 but lost the seat to the Tories in 1983 by just seven votes.

Until he won the constituency back in 1987 he ran a stall on Leicester market.

On the Opposition benches he has been a spokesman on Northern Ireland and Home Affairs.

Yesterday Clare was up at 7am to go swimming at a sports centre near her mother's Birmingham home. Afterwards she held a surgery to give advice to her Birmingham constituents.

Asked to comment on her affair, she said: "I have no wish to say anything. I have made that quite clear."

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