Comments on: Blunkett is toast

By: vik

vik — Thu, 16 Dec 2004 23:45:09 +0000

dsquared, Yes that is a very good point…i think he should have waited until after the birth to go to the courts but i was under the impression that he had launched the whole court saga before it was known that she was pregnant..I’m not sure about that though but in either case, emotion has definitely won out over reason on both her and his sides in my opinion… as to blunkett’s return prospects, i am conflicted about this. on the one hand, the manner in which he has left seems ridiculous and in need of correction but then again his policies are pretty obnoxious to say the least…maybe it would be better if he was put in charge of something where he couldnt do much damage if he returns though i can’t say offhand what that would be…

By: lth

lth — Thu, 16 Dec 2004 11:25:20 +0000

Bye bye to the third-most evil man in mainstream British politics at the moment (behind Darth Howard and Kilroy-Silk). As has been commented, we will probably still end up with ID cards, which is a Bad Thing IMHO.

By: reuben

reuben — Thu, 16 Dec 2004 09:24:13 +0000

Oopos – that’s Fortier, not Quinn. Where’s my coffee?

By: reuben

reuben — Thu, 16 Dec 2004 09:20:47 +0000

your Mancs would not last ten minutes down Green Lanes In the interest of science, I should point out that for the last two years, one of my best mates, a Manc, has lived on Green Lanes. He’s done just fine. Re Blunkett, I was no fan of his heavy-handed policies, but on the personal level I think the chivalry being shown to Kimberly Quinn is more than a bit misplaced. If it’s BLunkett’s child, he has every right – and indeed a duty – to know and raise it. His desire to do so doesn’t make him a Fathers 4 Justice-type freak, and perhaps those who are condemning him for wanting to know his son should ask themselves what they would do in the same situation. If your answer is “walk quietly away from the child”, and you think that’s the moral response, well… (And to those who feel that the cuckolded husband should be left to raise the child with the cheating spouse, with “Uncle David” visiting once a year with nice pressies for his “favourite godson”, how do you know that said husband wouldn’t have eventually found out, etc, possibly leaving the child in a particularly bad lurch? Given Kim Quinn’s track record, I wouldn’t opt for maritable bliss as my default position estimate.) Re a possible return (surely it’s not too early in the news cycle to talk about that) I think it’s highly likely. Labour likes having a hard man who can appeal to the Daily Mail crowd; Blunkett fulfilled that role, and as soon as Labour start losing points to the Tories, I think they’ll bring him back in to shore up their “tough on criminals and brown-skinned immigrants” credentials.

By: dsquared

dsquared — Thu, 16 Dec 2004 09:12:49 +0000

Vik, do you not think that it might have been better to leave off the lawyers while Ms Fortier was in the final trimester?

By: vik

vik — Thu, 16 Dec 2004 08:56:39 +0000

Hm I think attacking his policies is fair game especially given their mean-spiritedness but claiming that Blunkett’s move in attempting to get access rights to his children, even at the obvious price of his career, is somehow negatively a “massive sense of entitlement only matched by his hypocrisy” rather than a surprisingly brave and moral decision from a politician is puzzling. Please say you have never had kids yourself as ignorance is the only even semi-plausible excuse for that sentiment. As for him and his relationship with Ms. Fortier, I dont think any of us can really comment on it given our lack of facts, let alone go so far as to say his motivation is to “wreck his ex-lover’s life,” even were that relevant.

By: jam

jam — Thu, 16 Dec 2004 01:45:27 +0000

Echo Martin Wisse’s comments on his private life. But your hope that “his” policies will depart with him is forlorn. They are Home Office policies, not the property of any particular Home Secretary. I’m sure Charles Clarke (is that the new Home Sec?) will pursue them with the same vigour that Blunkett showed; ministers lose credibility with their civil servants if they don’t push the departmental line sufficiently strongly.

By: Giles

Giles — Thu, 16 Dec 2004 00:27:57 +0000

D^2 No figures, just speculation that the people who are most likely to be victims of crime are the poor and so the poor tend to favor policies that are much tougher on crime. I’m using North – South as a metaphor for this as opposed to an exact geographical delimitation. However given that most of the media/informed comment is biased towards being London based and given that Blair is a reasonably canny operator, why has he hung on to Blunkett for so long? Perhaps because he realizes that Blunkett plays well in the out of the way poor parts of Britain in the North that aren’t regularly canvassed for their opinions by the media. Interestingly these are also the places where the BNP does quite well. And Milbank long ago removed the link that a local MP actually had to be from the area.

By: mikes

mikes — Wed, 15 Dec 2004 23:59:34 +0000

Such short memories. The budget of Sheffield met council still bleeds it’s taxpayer’s money thanks to Dom Blunkett.

By: mikes

mikes — Wed, 15 Dec 2004 23:25:11 +0000

Aren’t memories short. Have you all forgotten dom Blunkett’s tenure in Sheffield and the fact (I know these are in short supply at CT) that his erstwhile constituency is still bleeding from his evangelical socialism.

By: dsquared

dsquared — Wed, 15 Dec 2004 23:24:59 +0000

Giles, do you have any figures to support the assertion that authoritarian policies are popular in the North of England? I know you’re wrong about “Islington Latte Lads”. For one thing, you’re being pretty ignorant about the London Borough of Islington here; it’s no posher than Salford and contains some of the toughest estates in London (your Mancs would not last ten minutes down Green Lanes). For another, the Cabinet currently contains precisely two MPs for London constituencies (Tessa Jowell and Paul Boateng). Since we account for rather more than 10% of the UK’s population, I think this is actually pretty poor.

By: dsquared

dsquared — Wed, 15 Dec 2004 23:13:23 +0000

I’d also add that fiddling your expenses is actually theft, which is not really a trivial crime, and a full fare first class train ticket is about a hundred quid. People do go to jail for this sort of thing, particularly if they’re members of the working class who Blunkett was so keen to talk about. Speaking as one of the victims of this crime (ie, I pay UK tax), I wish that all those bloody Hampstead liberals who are keen to overlook it would think about the victim for a change. Tough on crime? …

By: Giles

Giles — Wed, 15 Dec 2004 23:09:39 +0000

While I didn’t agree with much of what he’s done, personally I have a lot of respect for the guy. Leaving aside the fact that he dragged himself up through an extremely difficult background, he was, from labors perspective a highly effective Home Secretary – responsible in part for putting Labor ahead of the Tories on home issues. Although a lot of people are critiscing him for not being “liberal” enough, I think this misses the point. His policies probably played well in the “conservative” labor heartlands i.e. oop north and without him, the labor government, from Salford, probably looks a little overloaded with islington latte lads. I expect that the Lib Dems, and BNP, are going to scent some opportunities here.

By: Martin Wisse

Martin Wisse — Wed, 15 Dec 2004 22:39:36 +0000

I do not feel sympathy for his attempts to wreck his ex-lover’s life, his obssession with getting what HE regards as HIS rights and dammn the consequences to anybody else; he reminds me of nothing as much as those clowns in Fathers for Justice. He had a massive sense of entitlement only matched by his hypocrisy. He was a crap home secretary, authoritarian, with more thought for the headlines than for good policy. Good riddance.

By: nick

nick — Wed, 15 Dec 2004 21:50:56 +0000

Can anyone name the last un-authoritarian Home Secretary? Hurd, perhaps? There certainly seems to be something about the Home Office that brings out the truncheon in politicians.