Charles Rodway Clarke (born 21 September 1950) is a British Labour Party politician who held various Cabinet positions under Prime Minister Tony Blair from 2001 to 2006, lastly as Home Secretary from December 2004 to May 2006.

His long association with Kinnock and with the general election defeat in 1992 was expected to handicap him in his career, but Clarke bounced back.

Elected to the House of Commons in the Labour landslide of 1997, Clarke served just over a year on the back benches, before joining the government as a junior education minister in July 1998.

[1] As Education Secretary, he defended Oxbridge, encouraged the establishment of specialist secondary schools, and allegedly suggested that the state should not fund "unproductive" humanities research.

He explained:[2] I argue that what I described as the medieval concept of a community of scholars seeking truth is not in itself a justification for the state to put money into that.

[3] Following the first resignation of David Blunkett on 15 December 2004,[1] Clarke was appointed Home Secretary, one of the senior positions in the Cabinet.

During the 2005 British Presidency of the European Union, Clarke pressed other member states to pass a directive to require communications data to be stored for law enforcement purposes.

At the end of June 2006, he did a series of interviews in which he criticised John Reid for claiming that the Home Office was "unfit for purpose", and that the Prime Minister ought to have defended him to enable him to continue seeing through the reforms he had initiated when first appointed to the post.

[7] On 8 September 2006, Clarke gave an interview to the Evening Standard in which he criticised the 'presumption' that Gordon Brown would succeed Tony Blair as prime minister, helping trigger further disputes about the Labour leadership.

[9] Clarke with Alan Milburn set up The 2020 Vision website[10] to discuss the direction of the Labour party after Tony Blair ceased being prime minister.

On 4 September 2008, Clarke once again attacked Gordon Brown's performance as leader of the Labour Party and prime minister, claiming that he only had "months" to improve or else should face a leadership contest.

[13] On 1 May 2009, Clarke joined David Blunkett in criticising Gordon Brown's leadership and declared that he was "ashamed" to be a Labour MP, citing the Damian McBride scandal.

[14] In September 2009, Clarke gave a speech in which he said that Brown should stand down as prime minister to help the Labour Party avoid "a hammering" at the 2010 General Election.

[17] On 20 September 2010, it was announced that Clarke had been appointed Visiting Professor to the School of Political, Social and International Studies at the University of East Anglia.

[22] Clarke introduced the idea of the "too difficult box"— an explanation why politicians often opt out of taking action to fix many serious political issues.