Talking at Liberty

“I don’t miss the six-and-a-half day weeks, sixteen hours a day; I don’t miss the backbiting; and I don’t miss the inability to go and see Sheffield Wednesday when there are home games,” laughs David Blunkett. Today, however, it’s almost as if he never ceased to be a Cabinet Minister. Suited "protection" lingers round Teviot Row House, where, appropriately enough, Blunkett has just spoken about "security, terrorism and civil liberties in the 21st century" in an event hosted by Edinburgh University Labour Club. Now a backbencher with a “much, much higher quality of life,” he still answers every question about government policy with a "we," never once being significantly drawn from the party line. Blunkett, even now, clearly fancies himself as something of a prime mover. An acknowledgement that he finds “being out [of office] frustrating because you often think, ‘I’d like to contribute to the inner discussion on that,’ and if you’re not in the Cabinet, you don’t,” is quickly moderated by an assertion that “I’m able to influence events in other ways by speaking, writing, lecturing, by discussions with Cabinet colleagues who are still my friends and by bringing my experience to bear.”

 

This may smack of arrogance, but it’s undeniable that Blunkett’s legacy still looms large over the government’s most pressing concerns. Last week’s announcements of changes in legislation regarding both school leaving age and anti-terrorism measures can be traced directly back to foundations laid by Blunkett during his respective stints as Secretary of State for Education and Employment (1997-2001) and Home Secretary (2001-2004). Asked about the educational reforms, Blunkett is naturally approving. His own quite potted experiences of education—he left school without any qualifications, then took O-levels while also pursuing a vocational course, before taking A-levels on day release from full time employment, eventually gaining a degree in Political Theory and Institutions from Sheffield University—must certainly underpin his view that “the principle and objective of ensuring that 16 and 17 year olds have access to education and training as well as to work is absolutely fundamental.” But to simply take the reform at face value is not, he argues, to go far enough. For Blunkett, “to deal with those who are deeply damaged or dysfunctional, we have to start much earlier, we have to examine those who left the education system at 12 or 13, either effectively by truanting or by simply disengaging from what was taking place in the classroom even if they were there.” Only then, by 2015 when the plan is fully implemented, will Blunkett accept that “we’ve achieved what we set out to do.”

 

Blunkett’s progressive views on further education are, arguably, tempered by aspects of higher educational reform which were set in motion during his cabinet tenure: most notably, the introduction of increased tuition fees for non-Scottish universities. Blunkett is at pains to point out that “we didn’t have top-up fees in the end.” Asked how he feels the introduction of these fees has gone, Blunkett is careful to remain neutral. Though pleased that the changes haven’t given rise to “any of the damaging impact that people feared,” he clearly feels that any further increase in fees would be counter-productive. He warns: “when the review comes in 2009, I hope we’re very cautious about whether we take any further steps and whether we dislocate a system that does appear to be working.” Despite this, Blunkett is unwilling to concede that increasing fees while simultaneously attempting to increase participation in higher education might be at all paradoxical: predictably he observes that “only a small percentage of total investment in higher education comes from the individual” and allows only that it becomes an issue when considering how to “make it easy for those who decide to take socially worthwhile but not very highly-paid jobs.” Momentarily, you can almost glimpse Blunkett’s past as a firebrand councillor in 1980s nuclear-free Sheffield glimmering under his government-hardened exterior.

 

Education, however, is not the dish of the day. It was his latter tenure as Home Secretary which saw him preside over another controversial policy: the development of biometrical identity cards for use within the UK. This remains very much his pet project; a large proportion of the speech he delivers today is devoted to extolling the virtues of the cards, with Blunkett summarily dismissing the oft-repeated objections to their introduction as “bunkum.”

 

Even now, Blunkett is keen to stress the integrity of the proposed system, asserting that, for him, there’s only one question which identity cards should be used to answer: “is this the person they say they are?” That they could be otherwise employed is, for Blunkett, beyond the pale. Pushed as to whether he feels the implementation of such a scheme—the only one of its kind in the world, with the comprehensive maintenance of what Blunkett continually refers to as a “clean” biometrical database being a matter of particular contention—is feasible, Blunkett concedes that it poses “a massive challenge” and that its full introduction “will take many years.” It is interesting that, to underline the potentially positive effects of the scheme, Blunkett stresses that the clarity it would offer regarding individuals’ legal rights would, ultimately, “take a lot of the fear out of the subliminal insecurity that comes when right-wing newspapers bang on about being overtaken by very large numbers of people in the country who shouldn’t be here.”

 

Ah yes, the newspapers. During (and, significantly, immediately after) his time in office, Blunkett’s eventful personal life meant that he came under extensive, and intrusive, media scrutiny. To summarise the most significant in a chain of career-compromising incidents: his affair with a married woman, Kimberley Fortier, her pregnancy and the paternity battle that ensued; and his alleged pushing through of a visa for Fortier’s nanny. Years later, this obviously still smarts: today’s speech sees Blunkett invoke what he describes as his being “hounded” by Daily Mail journalists over a six-month period to exemplify infringement of civil liberties. It would be easy for this to eclipse what was for Blunkett equally troubling: media response to his policy-making.

 

In his Cabinet diaries The Blunkett Tapes: My life in the Bear Pit, recently published in paperback, Blunkett bemoans negative media opinion in relation to identity cards. Unfortunately, this was not a concern which he could shed along with his Cabinet responsibilities. Earlier this year, The Observer—erroneously, says Blunkett—reported that a company with which Blunkett was working, Entrust, was involved in the development of Spanish identity cards. Blunkett now seems glad to be able to clarify the facts, and, while his detailing of what Entrust actually does is somewhat opaque—“Entrust’s a very interesting little company that…tries to avoid cyber crime and [aids] companies protecting themselves against intrusion and it works as part of a consortium of other companies so it doesn’t do anything on its own”—one thing at least is patently clear: “it doesn’t actually deal with I.D. cards.”

 

This considered, a degree of guardedness in some of Blunkett’s responses is, perhaps, understandable. Asked how he feels Gordon Brown compares to Tony Blair as a Prime Minister, he barely misses a beat before asserting his credentials as “a loyal colleague and someone who’s stayed with Gordon and Sarah three times at their house here in Scotland” – as if this, over twenty years of political collaboration, were a particularly impressive strike rate. The Blunkett Tapes’ candid detailing of the pair’s oftentimes tumultuous, but always eventually positive relationship evaporates entirely as Blunkett gushes, “I think we are very fortunate that, having had one leading world statesman at the helm for ten years, we now have another, as both Tony Blair and Gordon Brown are, by any measure of political leaders across the world, statesmen of the first order.” Having been against an early election “all along,” Blunkett feels it’s only a matter of time before Brown proves himself as Prime Minister by “delivering the same sturdy and imaginative leadership that he did when he was Chancellor of the Exchequer, which led to us having the most secure, stable and successful economy in the Western world.” Any idea of no love being lost is, then, categorically bunkum.

 

His tuna sandwich (which he has been lunching on intermittently throughout our interview, and which initially elicited much excitement from his current guide dog, Sadie) finished, Blunkett is ready for the off. Oddly enough, it's only now that a brief chat about Harry Potter dints the curmudgeonly politician's image he permanently presents. Nevertheless, a busy weekend lies ahead of him: he’ll shortly be speaking at a meeting about dementia—an important matter, he argues, given the fact that well over three quarters of over-80s suffer from the condition—co-convened by the University of Edinburgh and Help The Aged, and on Sunday will speak at and participate in a question-and-answer session along with Edinburgh North and Leith MP Mark Lazarowicz. While his Cabinet days are long behind him, the relish with which Blunkett apparently plops his fingers into these various pies, and the conviction with which he still relays his views, mean that, inevitably, he will be bringing his experience to bear for many years to come.

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