Profile Folgen

Mary Ann Sieghart profiles Iain Duncan Smith whose Work and Pensions Department will be hit during next week's Spending Review. His proposed welfare reforms have been described as 'the biggest since the war-time work of Beveridge' and a white paper is expected after the Spending Review.Iain Duncan Smith started out briefly in industry after leaving the army where he served twice in Northern Ireland. His father was a famous World War II flying ace & his mother a ballerina. In the 1990s, he was best-known as one of the Tory party's most strident euro-sceptic MPs. His short two year leadership of the Conservative party was mostly unsuccessful. The "quiet man" was unable to unite his party. But it was during this time that Iain Duncan Smith began to see the need for welfare reform. After he was ousted from the leadership he set up the Centre for Social Justice and is credited with forming much of David Cameron's social agenda. Mary Ann Sieghart talks to his political allies & foes, long-standing friends and the people who began to change his political direction. Producer : Rosamund Jones.

For this week's BBC Radio 4 Profile, Mary Ann Sieghart focuses on Yvette Cooper, recently announced as the new Shadow Foreign Secretary.Yvette Cooper became an MP in 1997 and became politically close to Gordon Brown. She's held a number of Ministerial roles, introducing sometimes controversial legislation and facing controversy herself during the MPs' expenses investigation. She has juggled high profile jobs with bringing up three young children and she won this week's shadow cabinet elections - by a large margin. So how did Yvette Cooper manage to become so popular so quickly? And with this latest promotion, where might her political future take her in Ed Miliband's new Labour Party?

Brazilians go to the polls this weekend, to elect a new president, replacing the charismatic Lula da Silva. And, with Dilma Rousseff far ahead in the polls, it looks like the country could get its first female leader. It's been an amazing journey for Rousseff, the daughter of a Bulgarian immigrant. In the 1960's, she joined a revolutionary urban guerrilla group after the military coup, and was imprisoned and tortured. She is now seen as Lula's successor, nicknamed 'The Iron Lady', though there are questions about her own public charisma and in which direction she will take this booming country of 200 million people. If she wins, she could become one of the world's most powerful leaders.