David Blunkett's love life - Is it news?

[waziotter]

So, is David Blunkett's love life any of our business?

On the one hand - he is unmarried and has never made any "back to basics" style pronouncements on personal morality which might make this an issue of his honesty & integrity. Therefore, entertaining though it might be, it is none of our concern what he gets up to of an evening.

On the other hand, he is a leading member of a Government which made its squeaky-clean image a major election issue in 1997 and 2001, contrasting it with "Decades of Tory sleaze". So, are the tabloids justified in bringing our attention to a Labour Minister doing something which they castigated the Tories for doing?

Debate and discuss.

[John Self]

I didn't even know about this until yesterday when a friend mentioned it to me. I had seen the Private Eye cover which says "Blunkett in Love" and I was a bit baffled. This, it turns out, is because my two sources of news are the BBC and the Guardian, neither of which touched it on the basis that it is not in the public interest.

And I think this is right. It's satisfying in a gossipy and juicy way to know about famous people's love lives but it's important not to confuse what's in the public interest with what the public are interested in. For that matter, many of the Tory sleaze scandals were probably of limited public interest - Steve Norris, Tim Yeo, so what? Maybe David Mellor did pose with his gorgeous pouting family on election literature, but even so he was at the socially liberal end of the party and frankly, the greatest public interest angle in his non-toe-sucking, non-Chelsea-top-wearing shenanigans was the revelation that a gap-toothed, flabby, floppy-haired donkey like him could get a bit of posh like Antonia de Sancha.

Of much more relevance were the financial sleaze allegations of the Neil Hamilton variety, which did actually reflect on the Tories' ability and propriety to be in government. If you hated the Tories anyway and just wanted them out, though, then anything was grist to the mill.

[Wavid]

Quite right. It might be rather interesting, but it sheds no light whatsoever on Blunkett's ability to do his job.

The same goes for the current England football manager, too.

This sort of thing can go too far though - as the Kenneth Starr 'independant' investigation of Bill Clinton showed.

[waziotter]

Instinctively, I agree my finding something entertaining (which in this case I do. Hugely) is not sufficient reason for my being allowed to wallow in it, when it has a really unpleasant effect it has on the people who are being reported on.

And yet...

Once you accept that there have to be limits on absolute freedom of speech, then it falls to someone to decide exactly where that limit is. Where should it be in this case? Clearly there are some which are fairly clear on either side - the Hamilton stuff and Jonathan Aitken's hotel bill on the side which is genuinely public interest and the Blunkett story which is clearly on the "entertaining but nastily prurient and nobody else's business" side. There is, however, an enormous grey area. For example:

Jeffrey Archer cheating on his wife, then lying about it when he sues the Star for libel. Yes, he comitted perjury, he has no integrity and is a nasty little man. It is in the public interest for us to know this, especially at a point when he was standing for mayor of London. However, should the story ever have been reported in the first place? What business is it of ours if he was sleeping with someone else?

None of this is to say that the Blunkett story is in the public interest. However, there are difficult issues to be resolved about ever trying to define what the public is in the abstract, which is what would be needed if we were ever to have a privacy law. And a privacy law is the logical conclusion of saying that we should protect public figures from this sort of intrusion.

[John Self]

I accept that the practicalities of drafting a privacy law would not be easy-peasy but I would welcome one. And I don't just mean for politicians. I have a real bugbear about the present culture of celebrity and the notion that we are all supposed to be fascinated by everything that someone who once wiped a cow's arse on Emmerdale does in their daily life - and horrified that many people apparently are.

Heat magazine is, if not a cause, at least a particularly ugly symptom of this: the week's most needless celebrity piddlepuff as Charlie Brooker once put it. I have seen in it, to name but two examples, a full page dedicated to photographs of Hugh Grant queuing for a parking meter, and a double-page spread of Billie Piper picking up her dog's shit. They have a page called something like "Caught!" or "Surveillance!" which is just a list of people who have been seen in public by their sad-eyed readers in the last week:

Gordon Brown eating a Magnum in All Bar One, Leicester Square
Patricia Hodge stroking a fluffy duckling on Blackpool's North Pier
The ghost of George Santayana with a face full of pie under the Marble Arch

All of which is emblazoned with a 'cheeky' little slogan "They can't escape us!" Is that supposed to be a boast? Or haven't these people heard of Barry Bulsara?

And as you can tell from my detailed knowledge above, the worst thing about this sort of thing is that it is quite irresistible if you do happen across a copy. Free self-loathing with every issue. :evil:

[Colyngbourne]

My problem with this is not with the headline or the news being news, but that (generally) this kind of thing isn't reported in the Indy or the broadsheets but then you get someone commenting on it in their column or in the Diary section and somehow the reader's meant to know what's going on in the tabloids as well, without being told and without stooping to reading them oneself. I know media people regularly read at least four papers at a time to keep up with all the gossip but it's annoying when they gossip about tabloid stuff I haven't got a clue about.

[pandop]

My problem with this is not with the headline or the news being news, but that (generally) this kind of thing isn't reported in the Indy or the broadsheets but then you get someone commenting on it in their column or in the Diary section and somehow the reader's meant to know what's going on in the tabloids as well, without being told and without stooping to reading them oneself. I know media people regularly read at least four papers at a time to keep up with all the gossip but it's annoying when they gossip about tabloid stuff I haven't got a clue about.

Watch/listen to a newspaper review that covers the tabloids then

Hazel

[Wavid]

Old Blunky can't keep out of the headlines, it would appear.

Is it just me that finds headlines about him 'abusing his office' slightly distateful? :shock:

[Colyngbourne]

I find the Indy tabloid-ing itself to the extent of nine pages of Blunkett-eering this morning, too much altogether. The woman in question doesn't seem too endearing.

[NottyImp]

Shoppers, is that you?

[Wavid]

One unpleasant thing is that she is referred to throughout the TV coverage as Blunkett's 'lover' - adding an air of seediness to the whole thing.

[Wavid]

December 15, 2004

Labour MP says singing Blunkett should resign
By Philippe Naughton, Times Online (http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,2-1404202_1,00.html)


An outspoken Labour MP said today that a "seriously unbalanced" David Blunkett should be forced to give up his day job, after the Home Secretary serenaded backbenchers at a Westminster Christmas party with the Fred Astaire classic, Pick Yourself Up.

The resignation call came from Bob Marshall-Andrews, the latest backbencher to question Mr Blunkett's political future in a deepening row over whether he helped his ex-lover's nanny get a residency visa.

But Mr Marshall-Andrews told BBC Radio 4's Today programme that it was not Mr Blunkett's singing that should cost him his job, but new claims that he had intervened to get Leoncia Casalme, who worked as a nanny for Mr Blunkett's former lover, Kimberly Quinn, another visa for a holiday in Austria.

"I don’t want to comment specifically on this song. But I think that there is a general view that there is now a serious failure to understand the difference between the man on the one hand and the office on the other," Mr Marshall-Andrews said.

Philip Webster, The Times Political Editor, said of the row: "I sense a shift this morning, a switch. Today's revelation about the nanny is not a killer revelation, but it's yet another one. There's a sense of pressure growing."

Mr Marshall-Andrews, MP for Medway and a regular thorn in the Government's side, recalled Mr Blunkett’s comments about how he felt like celebrating when he heard of the suicide of serial killer Harold Shipman two years ago.

"One has to ask oneself, if a High Court judge, for instance, was under investigation in relation to abuse of his privileges - if he had sent somebody to prison who had hung themself in a cell and he said he would open a bottle of champagne - if he then compounded that by making vicious and bilious attacks on his colleagues and saying that they were no good, and then at the end of the day sang a song about it, he would be removed from office," he said.

"The real problem here is that it is wholly and completely inappropriate with the high office that you hold. And I’m afraid that there is an increasing view in the backbenches that that has gone far enough."

According to reports this morning, Mr Blunkett sang to MPs at a backbenchers' Christmas party on Monday night at the Albert Hotel, not far from the Commons.

The Guardian reported today that the Home Secretary, who had been expected to keep his head down, handed out the words - 'Pick yourself up, dust yourself down and start all over again' - to the Jerome Kern standard first sung by Astaire and Ginger Rogers in the 1936 film Swing Time.

Among those watching was John Prescott, the Deputy Prime Minister who was mocked by Mr Blunkett in a biography of him published this week. "Thank God he's gone," Mr Prescott is said to have commented after Mr Blunkett left the party.

The latest allegation against Mr Blunkett, reported in today's Daily Mail, was that he may have intervened to secure a holiday visa for Ms Casalme.

The Mail said that Mrs Quinn told the nanny that she would "make a phone call" after Ms Casalme's application for a visa to visit her sister for Christmas 2002 hit a snag. It said the visa, which would normally have taken four weeks to arrive, was granted in days.

The Home Office rejected the allegation. A spokeswoman said: "Kimberly Quinn told the Home Secretary there was a problem over a visa for her nanny's trip to Austria, but neither the Home Secretary nor any of his officials became involved in the matter."
David Davis, the Shadow Home Secretary, said it was essential that the latest allegations were investigated by Sir Alan Budd, the retired mandarin who is due to report next week after an independent review into the main allegation against Mr Blunkett - that he helped Ms Casalme get permanent residency in the UK.

"These events are falling into a very disturbing pattern. It is vital that Sir Alan Budd’s inquiry gets to the bottom of these allegations and it does so as speedily as possible," he said. "These new revelations raise more questions than they provide answers."

Mr Marshall-Andrews also said he believed that the Budd inquiry should look at the latest allegation relating to Austria.

"It needs to clear everything," he said. "The truth is that the Budd investigation is now assuming almost a secondary role... I think one is dealing here with somebody who it appears, certainly to many people in the Commons and the country, is quite seriously unbalanced.

"I think that started with the Shipman business, but it has increased throughout. And it is not improved, I may say, by the Prime Minister, who is the ultimate judge here, going out publicly and saying ‘Look, this man is my friend, I’m going to stand by him’. That in itself is a misunderstanding of the nature of office."

He added: "It is the Caligula principle really. Caligula made his horse a senator. He did it not because he thought his horse would be a good senator but because he wanted to demonstrate he could do what he wanted to do. Unfortunately that is becoming apparent with this Government."

"After Shipman I thought that he was unfit for office. And what has happened since has simply compounded that view. It was a view that was a minority view when I first heard it, but I think that it is now gaining a great deal of currency."

[gil]

Is there no end to this man's abuse of privilege?

# the composer, lyricist , arranger and their heirs have copyright on music and songs until 70 years after their death
# the public performance of the work requires special permission.

There is no evidence that he paid the MCPS for the performance of the music, nor that he applied for permission to write an alternative version.

[RC]

Maybe Blunkett is a little cracked, I wouldn't know, but there are millions of people, from postmen to prime ministers, who go to work every day with a couple of bats in the bellfry, it's perfectly normal. Whoever makes an issue of a song sung at a Christmas party is in want of productive occupation, and maybe a smack for silliness.

[Wavid]

Well, he's gone.

I for one think it is a shame - he always struck me as being an affable and able politician, and a straight talker in a government full of spinners and half-truth peddlars.

[NottyImp]

I for one think it is a shame - he always struck me as being an affable and able politician, and a straight talker in a government full of spinners and half-truth peddlars.

Too much a social authoritarian for my liking, but as even his opponents would admit, you always knew where you were with him. He'll be back in some capacity given a few years to sort his private life out, I'm sure.

[Bertie]

I'm quite glad he's gone. He thrived on scare mongering and did more to harm civil liberties than any 'terrorist' ever managed. It doesn't seem like it was enough to resign over though, which makes me think there might have been something else he was scared of being dredged up.

[amner]

Well, despite the Tory papers' smugness and screeching, I must say I'm finding it hard to feel too sorry. Even the best thing we can say about him:

Too much a social authoritarian for my liking, but as even his opponents would admit, you always knew where you were with him.

sounds like Thatcher's epitaph.


Oooh, can I just say Thatcher's epitaph again?

[John Self]

Alexei Sayle - when oh when will he go back to doing excellent stand-up instead of slightly disappointing books? - used to say: "People say, Oh, well at least you knew where you were with Margaret Thatcher. Yeah - you knew where you were with Margaret Thatcher. You were fucked!"

[Wavid]

Breaking news: Blunkett resigns from the Cabinet (http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk_politics/4398004.stm) (again).

[NottyImp]

It didn't do Peter Mandelson any harm, did it? Expect Blunkett on the EU gravy-train in due course....

[Wavid]

Heh. The thing that gets my goat about this business is the fact that Blair was quite happy to wait and see if Blunkett could get away with it - despite the fact that he had quite obviously broken the ministerial code of conduct.

It's crazy that Number 10 is the arbiter on these matters - surely an independant parliamentary body should act as watchdog on ministerial conduct?

[HP]

No surprises about Blair's stance. The man hasn't got a principled bone in his squirming, side-stepping little bod.

As for Blunkett - who at least used to have a principle or two - well, I think the poor bloke's lost in the throes of a major MLC. A safe pair of hands, he now ain't - having an apparently rather advanced case of butterfingeritis.

[Wavid]

I heard it said on the radio last night that Blunkett was desperate to try and get the money back that he had lost on his fight for parental access to Kimberly Quinn's son (I forget whether his paternity was ever confirmed or not). This was money he had "borrowed" from what was to form his childrens' inheritance, apparently.

In all honesty, though, while he did break the 'ministerial code' - and who had heard of that before this week? - did he sell guns to Iraq? Did he take cash for questions? Did he lie under oath to a court? This was a very Westminster-centric 'scandal', one that I imagine most inhabitants of these islands couldn't really give a fig about. I mean, while it was a breach of the rules, he only had the job at the centre of this for 2 weeks! It is so obvious that the bloke made a mistake, rather than being on the make, that I think it is a shame he has had to leave the government, overall. I was pretty scornful yesterday about it, but now, having seen and heard a lot of the facts, I feel rather sorry for David Blunkett.

And his replacement as Work and Pensions dude is a little scary:

http://newsimg.bbc.co.uk/media/images/40976000/jpg/_40976222_hutton203.jpg

[jim]

I heard it said on the radio last night that Blunkett was desperate to try and get the money back that he had lost on his fight for parental access to Kimberly Quinn's son (I forget whether his paternity was ever confirmed or not). This was money he had "borrowed" from what was to form his childrens' inheritance, apparently.

Oh didums. This is one of the most pathetic justifications I have ever heard for wrong doing. I'll try it next time I get caught with my fingers in the pie. Oh, hang on, I can't afford to create an inheritance fund in the first place.

[Wavid]

http://palimpsest.org.uk/forum/images/nolabour.jpg
(http://palimpsest.org.uk/forum/images/nolabour.jpg)

[amner]

Dead image there, mate.

[Wavid]

Really? It's showing on my screen. Hang on.

Sorted?

[amner]

Yep. Thanks.