Shriti Vadera: the Downing Street bruiser who made grown men cry

Baroness Vadera, AKA 'Shriti the Shriek', is as renowned for her temper as for her intellect. Now the former banker turned Downing Street advisor is off to work for the G20.

Greater love hath no prime minister than to surrender his most trusted adviser to the cause of global economic stability. That was the spin Number Ten tried to put on the departure of Shriti Vadera, "Gordon's Representative on Earth", as she heads off to lick the G20 into shape. "No doubt scores of civil servants are heaving a sigh of relief," remarked The Guardian. As renowned for her temper as for her "fierce intellect and ferocious willpower", 'Shriti the Shriek' has been known to make grown men cry.

No one denies that Vadera a former Warburg banker "is a tough nut", says The Times. But is she really the virago she's made out to be? "The serious-minded but likeable thirtysomething I knew has transmuted into the assassin of Railtrack, the ass-kicker of Transport for London, the axe-wielder from the Treasury," observed Martin Vander Weyer in a 2007 Spectator article. But that was small beer compared to the opprobrium others heaped on her back. Depicted as heartless for her treatment of Railtrack's small investors (though she never actually made the remark about grannies "losing their blouses"), she was mocked as "Shooti" for talking up the economy's "green shoots" during the dark days of January.

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