Blunkett back in spotlight for election

1:25pm Thursday 7th April 2005

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David Blunkett is telling a joke, and it’s a funny, self-deprecating one.

It is about a time the former Home Secretary visited a nursery school and was sat hunched on a small child’s stool waiting to meet the class of seven-year-olds.

He said: “I put my arm around the little person next to me, and said ‘How old are you, my love?’ She said: ‘I’m 24.’”

The audience laughs, the ice is broken, and a relaxed and chatty Mr Blunkett breaks into a speech on his favourite topics — crime, ID cards, and how to tackle anti-social behaviour.

It is certainly a different Mr Blunkett from the man whose tear-stained face was plastered over the front pages of newspapers in December as he climbed into a ministerial car for the last time.

Then, his departure – amid accusations that he fast-tracked a visa application for his former lover Kimberly Quinn’s nanny – was mourned by friends as a personal tragedy of epic proportions.

Headlines screamed he was a ‘Giant on a front-bench of pygmies’, ‘Destroyed by the woman he loved’, and a ‘Big man capable of doing a big job’.

His enemies, however, were gleeful. The scourge of the liberal left was labelled a politician with right-wing tendencies whose policy of locking up terror suspects without trial had threatened 700 years of legal history.

He was attending a meeting at St George’s Church Hall, in Hertford Road, Enfield, on Thursday, to give a last-minute push for National Identity cards, invited by Enfield North MP Joan Ryan, a staunch supporter of the scheme.

Following the meeting, Mr Blunkett spoke to the Independent. He explained why his battle with the people he once labelled ‘Hampstead Liberals’ is an argument he can’t afford to lose.

He said: “There’s a big battle going on intellectually in this country as to how to get the balance right between individual rights and rights we hold as a community.

“The second is about protecting ourselves and understanding that if the fabric of a community falls apart, then the rights of the individual are meaningless.

“That battle between the individual wanting everything for themselves, and the community protecting itself, is what a democracy really ought to be debating.”

But why, after almost eight years of a Labour Government, are so many towns and cities blighted by such low-level yobbish behaviour?

He said: “I think it’s beginning to turn around. You can feel that the community spirit is coming back. The Government’s job is to act as the funder, the legislator and the catalyst, but it needs the will of the community to do something about it.”

When Home Secretary, Mr Blunkett did indeed act as legislator, pushing through a prodigious amount of bills allowing local authorities to get tough on crime. He seems shocked when told Enfield Council has only issued eight Anti-Social Behaviour Orders (ASBOs) in two years.

He said: “I would have expected more from the local authority, not because there’s any target for ASBOs, but because of the level of problems people are experiencing. No doubt local people will be asking the same question.”

Since leaving the cabinet, Mr Blunkett has been out of the spotlight, but has played a key role touring the country in preparation for the upcoming General Election.

Last month, one of his more liberal policies was questioned when his successor, Charles Clarke, introduced a review into the decision to re-classify cannabis from a class B drug to class C. Was the change a mistake?

“I don’t think it was,” said Mr Blunkett. “Firstly, cannabis is dangerous and we never said it wasn’t. Secondly, it’s nowhere near as dangerous as crack cocaine and heroin, which are killer drugs, and thirdly, re-classification has saved an enormous amount of police time.

“What we did was to ratify what the Met police was already doing, which was to treat cannabis differently to drug dealing and class A drugs. That has freed up 14,500 police hours across the country,” he added.

In December, the intrusion into Mr Blunkett’s private life, the break-up of his relationship with Ms Quinn, and his departure from the Cabinet, left Blunkett a broken man, some people claimed.

But the Sheffield MP is on fine form, and many believe he will make a swift return to frontline politics if Labour secure a historic third term.

He says he has moved on from events at Christmas: “I found it deeply unpleasant, but I don’t blame the media, they had a story and until I stepped down, I was not able as a cabinet minister to join in the public furore about it. I don’t blame anybody other than the people who did this to me, and I have forgiven them.”

A possible return to Government could be Lord Chancellor, a cabinet position now available for the first time to those who are not lawyers or judges.

Mr Blunkett laughs heartily: “I would hate to give the judges palpitations. I think we better leave that until after we win a General Election and after the Prime Minister has decided who he wants in his cabinet.”