There's a lovely spoof of David Blunkett's diaries in today's Times by Hugo Rifkind:

Actually, I have a friend who wants to set me up with a friend of his. He says we’d really get on. Apparently, we’re very similar. She has also had a difficult life, and she also grew up in the North. She does loads for charity and she’s going through a messy divorce. He says she’s very beautiful. I can’t deny I’m tempted!

Have I written about my friend before? His name is Abdul. I met him when we sat next to each other on a train, entirely by chance, and we really just clicked. He wants me to join the board of two of his companies. Some people might be suspicious at such a fastdeveloping friendship, but I’m an excellent judge of character.

Besides, he tells me he’s a sheikh!

FRIDAY

I’m in a glamorous Mayfair restaurant to meet Abdul’s friend. From the way Sadie’s ears prick up when she arrives, I know straight away that this is somebody special. I’ve had such poor luck with gold-diggers and publicity-seekers, but I can just tell this one is different.

“Hello!” I say, in my grandest voice. “I’m David Blunkett!” “Hello,” she says. “I’m Heather Mills McCartney.”

My review of David Blunkett's 'The Blunkett Tapes' appears in today's Times:

The Blunkett Tapes are the whingeing self-justifications of a man who has lost his judgment, says Stephen Pollard. Wait for more fireworks.

A minister who has lost his judgment is like a reviewer without a book: redundant. We need ministers to exercise their judgment, whether in bringing forward legislation or running their department. When that judgment deserts them, they serve — at best — no useful purpose. At worst, they become dangerous to the common good.

For almost all of his life David Blunkett’s defining characteristic was his impeccable judgment. Whether it was realising as a little boy that he needed to educate himself, defying the constraints placed on him by a headmaster who believed that blind children could aspire only to jobs as piano tuners or factory workers; whether it was shifting skilfully his positioning from being “loony left” leader of the so-called Socialist Republic of South Yorkshire to a pillar of new Labour; or whether it was knowing how to behave as a Cabinet minister who didn’t seem to behave like a Cabinet minister; Blunkett’s instinctive good judgment was the key to his rise up the political ladder.

There are many reasons for the destruction of his ministerial career. But they all have the same underlying cause — a sudden collapse in that judgment. Having an affair with another man’s wife, getting her pregnant, being too close to his son’s nanny’s visa application, rejoining the Cabinet when he was in no fit state to do so and “forgetting” to tell the Advisory Committee on Ministerial Appointments that he had been asked to become a director of a company that would later seek work with the department he went on to head; the old David Blunkett would have spotted the disastrous impact of any one of these.

The new David Blunkett, lacking his old judgment, remains convinced — as The Blunkett Tapes makes whingeingly clear — of the underlying rectitude of his actions. There is, though, one decision that he is happy to label a misjudgment. Indeed, despite competition from the above catalogue of misbehaviour, he had no doubt as to the “biggest single mistake of my life in frontline politics”. That was speaking to me.

In early 2001, I approached Blunkett about a biography I was planning to write. He had issued clear instructions to friends and colleagues not to co-operate with previous would-be authors. After lobbying him for months, I managed to gain his acquiescence. My book would be unauthorised, in that he had no say over the finished product, but not only would he not obstruct my research with friends, he would give me a series of on-the-record, taped interviews.

Some of the comments he gave me about his colleagues in those interviews turned out to be explosive. Remarkably, however, Mr Blunkett — a politician for well over 30 years, and a man who served in the Cabinet for almost nine — appears not to have understood the interview process. Journalist asks question. Politician answers question. Journalist publishes answers. His comments were, he complains, “put together in a collage, without context or explanation”. I ought, it seems, to have ignored what he told me over a series of on-the-record interviews, because they would prove embarrassing to him.

Certainly, as I heard his replies over the months I interviewed him, my jaw regularly dropped to the floor. I could not believe his frankness. Indeed, I was so astonished that I kept reminding him that the recorder was running; he had been so helpful to me that I did not want there to be any possibility of his not knowing full well that he was giving me on-the-record answers. But his supposed naivety is of a piece with the most striking impression to emerge from the nearly 900 pages of The Blunkett Tapes: that he is so convinced of his own righteousness that he lacks even the most basic self-awareness.

A fortnight ago, for example, extracts from his diaries were published in two newspapers. They were, one might say, a collage — without context or explanation. Not one of the ministers he quotes — revealing private conversations as well as Cabinet discussions — consented to having their words published.

One also wonders about his reliability as a guide to events. Blunkett writes that he wrote to me about an article last September, in which I pointed out that he had lied to Lord Stevens of Kirkwhelpington [the former Metropolitan Police Commissioner who was involved in a very public row with Mr Blunkett over the Pollard book]. “I received no acknowledgment or reply,” he says. I received no such letter. He says the same thing about a letter he says he sent to Lord Stevens.

Perhaps both letters got lost in the post.

This week Martin Narey, former Permanent Secretary at the Home Office, wrote that Blunkett screamed hysterically at him that he could “machine-gun” rioting prisoners, a claim which Mr Blunkett denied.

Is there a flaw here? Should one believe the word of a civil servant with an unimpeachable record, of a former Commissioner of the Met, or of a man who twice ended up resigning from the Cabinet? It’s a tough one.

The Blunkett Tapes is a tawdry book: page after page of self-justification, moaning and betrayal of confidences. It need not have been. Buried within it lies an insight into the upper workings of this government that will fascinate political junkies. But it says much about his lack of self-awareness that Blunkett can imagine that his book will do anything other than further demean an already floored reputation.

It is very sad. Blunkett should have been an inspirational figure, not just for reaching unprecedented heights with no concession made to his blindness, but for his rise from poverty. Instead, he has destroyed his good name and turned himself into a laughing stock. For a man with such a powerful sense of self-worth, that is perhaps the worst aspect of all.

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Richard Littlejohn's take on the Blunkett diaries:

Blunkett's unintentionally hilarious ramblings are a sumptuous catalogue of self-delusion and denial. They make compulsive reading.

And when the laughter subsides, they also provide a frightening reminder that at a time when foreign criminals were waltzing out of prisons, illegal immigrants arriving by the lorry-load and jihadists plotting to blow up the London Underground, the man in charge of the Home Office was howling at the moon.

...I had thought about having another crack at poking fun at Blunkett but, frankly, I can't improve on this side-splitting piece of work ("Prince Charles told me he understands what I'm going through." "Thank God The Sun is totally with me.") Priceless.

For the rest of my life, I will regret speaking to Stephen Pollard.

No, it's not an ex of mine. It's David Blunkett.

I will be sharing my thoughts on his diaries later this week...

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From the Guardian:

The Royal Institute of International Affairs, better known as Chatham House, has criticised David Blunkett for claiming that his remarks about asylum were off the record.

The former home secretary told Radio 4's Today programme this morning that remarks delivered in October 2003 - when he was still home secretary - were made under the famous Chatham House rules and were not to be reported by print or broadcast media.

He told Today interviewer James Naughtie that he that he floated the idea of an amnesty for illegal immigrants at a "little debate" at Chatham House which was never supposed to be made public. He added that his comments were "immediately released, as ever".

However, Chatham House has today issued to a stern statement questioning Mr Blunkett and insisting that he delivered an on the record speech to a capacity audience of 285 including TV crews and media after which he answered questions - again, on the record - from journalists and Chatham House members.

Funny that. Mr B has never before claimed that comments made in the presence of tape recorders, in interviews arranged 'on the record', are in fact off the record. Oh, wait a minute. I seem to recall some sort of similar incident.

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So, for the second time, David Blunkett has resigned for – as he would have us believe - doing nothing wrong.

Speaking yesterday, Mr Blunkett conceded that he had made a “mistake” in not consulting the Independent Advisory Committee about his directorship of DNA Bioscience. But that was all he was prepared to concede.

In every other respect, he insisted, his behaviour had been impeccable. What loss of judgement, he asked. Tell me where. Tell me when.

He was the very personification of defiance. All of which begged the question: if he thinks his behaviour has been so faultless…why did he resign?

How different the atmosphere was yesterday from last December, when he had to resign over the fall out from his affair with Kimberly Quinn. In his interviews then, in which he looked on the verge of tears, he poured his heart out. He had done everything, he insisted, for “the little lad”.

Back then, it would have taken a heart of stone not to feel sorry for him, as he had put his relationship with his young son above his career. He might have resigned in disgrace – he had not told the full story about his involvement in the visa application for his son’s nanny - but most people could understand why he had erred, even if they did not condone it.

This time around, things are very different. His downfall is entirely of his own making. Despite his attempts yesterday to shift the blame for his misfortunes onto others – such as the media, which he considers has hounded him for no reason – there can be no doubt that only one man caused David Blunkett’s departure: David Blunkett.

Indeed, his defiant tone yesterday is, in itself, a demonstration of why the game was up for him. The characteristic which has most marked his career has been his good judgement. The manner of his leaving yesterday showed that that has now deserted him.

The appropriate tone yesterday would have been one of humility and apology for his behaviour. Instead, Mr Blunkett chose to go on the attack, as if he was somehow the victim of circumstance.

The tragedy is that his recent behaviour, which has now forced him out of office twice in a year, is likely to obscure the astonishing and very real accomplishments of his career. His record as Education Secretary and Home Secretary stands comparison with any of his predecessors.

When, in 1997, Labour won power and he took ministerial office for the first time, the job of Education Secretary was certainly important. But it would rarely go to a Cabinet heavy hitter. David Blunkett was clearly an ally of Tony Blair’s but he was no closer to the Prime Minister or influential than many other colleagues.

Whatever one’s views of the policies he pursued as Education Secretary, by the time David Blunkett left the department in 2001 to become Home Secretary he had, through the sheer force of his political skill and personality, turned himself into one of the three most dominant men in government alongside Mr Blair himself and Gordon Brown. No other minister came close.

So it was fitting that his next job was Home Secretary, one of the biggest in government. He went there with a clear agenda – especially police reform and anti-social behaviour. No one could have foreseen that there would, however, almost immediately be another priority altogether: dealing with the implications of 9/11. From a standing start, David Blunkett had to become an expert in a matter of weeks on terrorism and how to deal with it.

He was determined from the start that he would not be like previous Home Secretaries who had behaved, and spoken, as if they were somehow different from other members of the government, speaking in convoluted language and failing to engage with voters’ real feelings. So when the mass-murderer Harold Shipman was found in his cell having “topped himself”, as David Blunkett characteristically put it, he said that he would open a bottle to celebrate. He was attacked for speaking in speaking in such terms, but his reaction would have been shared by most people.

It was precisely that ability to connect with voters which had got him to the top of politics, and which he was determined would not change.

Even if he had not been born blind, David Blunkett’s career would have been an astonishing triumph against the odds. Unlike most Labour MPs, he was brought up in genuine, grinding poverty. His father, a gas engineer, died after a terrible accident at work, when he fell into a vat of boiling water. The Gas Board refused any compensation because his father was past retirement age, even though he only stayed on because the Gas Board asked him to. As a result, his mother very quickly spent the limited savings the family had, and they were plunged into poverty.

What makes his life story inspirational – despite the mess of the past few months – is that he had, of course, an additional obstacle: his blindness.

At the time David Blunkett was educated, the received wisdom was that blind children should not have their expectations raised since they would only be disappointed later in life. So he had to fight to be educated properly and to be able to take the exams which would enable him to go to university.

The mere fact of his going to university – the only student on his estate to do so and the first blind student at Sheffield University – would have been a remarkable achievement. That he became a local councillor whilst still a student, gained a good degree and then almost immediately became a full time politician was beyond the realms of fiction.

The question which is on everyone lips today is ‘why’?. Why did so clever, so talented and so mentally strong a man as David Blunkett behave as he did?

There have always been two key characteristics in his make up: his good judgement, and his arrogance. From his first days, his mother told him that he was not just as good as other, sighted, children, he was better than them. He has taken that idea with him throughout his life.

When coupled with good judgement, it only served him well. He knew how to behave, what to say, and what to do in almost every eventuality and he had a will of steel. He knew his own abilities.

The break up of his relationship with Kimberly Quinn, however, was a huge trauma for him. He fully expected to be with her for ever and to raise their child together. Dealing with the emotional mess of that break up has had untold effects on him – and, critically, on his judgement.

It is that loss of judgement – the fact, for instance, that he is unable to appreciate why people consider him to have acted inappropriately over his share dealings – which has ensured that his comeback has not only been brief, but has also drawn a curtain over his frontbench political career.

I have admired David Blunkett for years. As his biographer, I have studied the three decades of his political career with something close to awe. I have always regarded him as a shining example of achievement.

But reading his statement yesterday, one thing is clear. His behaviour stinks. No apology. No regret. No admission that he has done anything in the least beat wrong, or even the slightest error of judgement. Just an attempt to blame others for his own mistakes. He has, he said, asked his sons to sell the shares in DNA Bioscience to protect “family and friends from further intrusion”.

The intrusion, such as it is, is entirely down to one man, and one man’s behaviour. That man’s name is David Blunkett.

You know when it’s all over for a politician when they have to resort to technical defences. When the news first broke that David Blunkett had failed to consult the Independent Advisory Committee (the body set up to deal with former ministers’ subsequent employment) about his position on the board of DNA Bioscience, he said his understanding was that any obligation to tell the committee is entirely voluntary.

Come off it, Mr Blunkett. Since when was sticking to the letter but breaking the spirit of the rules OK?

Let’s not forget that he didn’t resign in December because he fancied a holiday. He resigned in disgrace. As such, it was surely more important than ever that his behaviour was above reproach.

Yet his argument now - that he didn’t tell the committee because he wasn’t legally obliged to do so - actually makes his behaviour seem worse. It makes it seem as if he didn’t tell them because, not having to, he thought he could somehow get away with it. “With hindsight it might have been better [to tell the committee]”, Mr Blunkett said when the news emerged. Actually, no. It would be crystal clear to almost anyone – anyone except Mr Blunkett, that is – at the time that he should have consulted the committee. The reason why David Blunkett has become a walking disaster area is because the appropriate behaviour appears no longer even to cross his mind.

It gets worse. His behaviour with regard to his directorship of DNA Bioscience has been merely stupid. On its own, it would add to the impression that he has lost his judgement, but would not be a resigning issue. But what takes it into a different order of magnitude is his decision to keep his shares in the family – until forced, last night, to sell them.

The family share ownership may have been legal. It may comply with the letter of the ministerial code of conduct. But it certainly does not comply with the spirit of the sensible, decent behaviour which we should be able to expect from our politicians – let alone from a minister who was brought back into the government a matter of weeks after having to resign in disgrace. At best it is shady behaviour.

This government came to office on the back of a wave of anger at ‘Tory sleaze’. But no serving Conservative minister behaved as sleazily as Mr Blunkett has done.

He was perfectly entitled to buy the shares when he bought them. He was out of office and had no idea if he would be back in government, let alone at what department. But as soon as he became Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, and so in charge of a department which could transform DNA Bioscience’s fortunes – and thus the worth of the shares – by awarding it contracts, it is surely obvious to everyone except Mr Blunkett that he ought to have made a clean break and sold the shares.

Not given them to someone else. Not gone through a technically correct procedure. Not stood back and hoped that their value – and his wealth - would go through the roof. But got rid of them. Completely.

That he now seems unable to comprehend that his whole arrangement with DNA Bioscience stinks says all that we need to know about the collapse of his once greatest asset – his judgement.

For almost thirty years, since he became chairman of Sheffield’s social services committee in 1976, his most striking feature has been his knack of knowing the right thing to do, whether it was with whom to ally politically, what to say, or how to behave. He had superb and instinctive judgement.

However bad his personal judgement may now be, his political judgement remains as acute as ever. Indeed, his row with Tony Blair over benefit cuts is classic Blunkett. A leaked memo from the Prime Minister ordered Mr Blunkett to go a lot further than he has apparently proposed – to which the Work and Pensions Secretary responded with an intemperate letter defending his position.

But the row has almost nothing to do with its supposed subject matter, benefit reform. It is, rather, about Mr Blunkett attempting to position himself for life after Mr Blair. Throughout his time in government, he has been seen – rightly – as the Prime Minister’s soulmate. But with Mr Blair’s political strength disappearing before our eyes, Mr Blunkett is keen to be seen as his own man so that he can continue with a big job once Gordon Brown takes over.

Holding out against extended cuts is also intended to bolster his position with the Labour backbenchers. The last minister who proposed real cuts, Harriet Harman, was savaged by her colleagues. Mr Blair was unable to protect her even in his pomp. With the Prime Minister now becoming less powerful by the day, he is still less able to protect his allies. So Mr Blunkett has decided he will not suffer the same fate, and will not propose serious cuts.

But all this now looks academic. His political antennae may be in full working order, but his personal judgement has deserted him since the beginning of his affair with Kimberly Quinn - when he started (some would say quite rightly) to put his private happiness above his political career.

That has led to all the crises which have subsequently engulfed him, from the original abuse of his position over the visa application for his son’s nanny, to the farce of his relationship, however platonic, with blonde estate agent Sally Anderson, to the latest mess over his involvement with DNA Bioscience. Where once he had a sure touch, and would have run a mile from such mistakes, today he seems to plunge headfirst into embarrassments.

David Blunkett has patented his own unique and ongoing form of crisis. His behaviour may not be technically wrong, but to outside, objective observers it just seems wrong. It leaves a bad taste in the mouth.

As this latest crisis engulfs him, the question has to be asked: how can a man who no longer seems to know how to behave remain as a Cabinet minister?

Another day, another David Blunkett story. This weekend there were two: more controversy over his directorship of a DNA-testing company, and a blazing row with Tony Blair over sickness-benefit cuts. In previous weeks we've learned about his relationship with a blonde estate agent, and a letter written on House of Commons notepaper objecting to a planning application.

What on earth has happened to Mr Blunkett? He was once admired for his straight talking and decency and regarded - not least by the Prime Minister himself - as Tony Blair's outrider. Now he looks vulnerable, a problem for Mr Blair.

The most politically significant of these developments is his row with the Prime Minister. Ever since Tony Blair became Labour leader, he has relied on David Blunkett implicitly. Despite their very different backgrounds, the two men have both had an instinctive understanding of voters' minds.

It was that bond that ensured that, despite having to resign in disgrace last year, Mr Blunkett was brought straight back by Mr Blair in June. But this weekend' leak of a stern memo from Mr Blair to Mr Blunkett, and his own intemperate response, shows that their relationship is at best frayed.

Despite the Work and Pensions Secretary's severe reputation, he is resisting the Prime Minister's more draconian demands for benefit cuts. But this row is less about policy than about Mr Blunkett's political positioning. Like everyone else in government, he is looking to a time beyond Tony Blair. He wants a big job under Gordon Brown and no longer wants to be seen as a Blairite hatchet man.

In my conversations with Mr Blunkett for my biography, he would tell me how
frustrated he got when constituents would complain about their disabilities. He had overcome his; why couldn't they do the same? Whatever the detail of the debates over incapacity benefit, there is no doubt that Mr Blunkett's sympathies do not lie with those he would consider shirkers.

Yet all that manoeuvring may be called into question by the difficulties that now beset Mr Blunkett. The political skill that has served Blunkett so well since he first entered serious politics in 1976, as chairman of Sheffield City Council's Social Services Committee, is his impeccable judgment. Judgment in knowing politically what was do-able. Judgment in knowing with whom he should ally, and who he should ditch. And judgment in knowing how to behave.

That judgment deserted him during his relationship with Kimberly Quinn. He was in love with her and put that - and his bond with his son - above all else, including his career. It was over a failure of judgment that he was forced to resign. Having vociferously denied any involvement in the application for his son's nanny's visa, the official inquiry then discovered an email that showed he had indeed mentioned it to officials.

What is clear now is that his judgment has not returned - for that is the thread linking all his recent problems. As a single man, Mr Blunkett is entitled to see whomever he wants. But what he is entitled to do and what makes political sense can be two very different things. The old David Blunkett would have run a mile from a friendship that, for a Cabinet minister, was clearly misguided.

Then we learned that he had failed to consult the Independent Advisory Committee about his position on the board of DNA Bioscience. With the company seeking to win government contracts, including some from Mr Blunkett's own department, all sorts of allegations are now flying around. The old David Blunkett would have smelled the possible stench from way off.

His triumph over seemingly insuperable handicaps is an inspirational story. It is impossible not to be awed by the scale of Mr Blunkett's achievements. But it is just that awesome scale which makes the damage to his reputation so tragic. Where once Mr Blunkett was a titan, today he appears to have lost political and personal bearings.

When I first started interviewing people for his biography, it was immediately obvious that Mr Blunkett inspired exceptional loyalty. People who had not spoken to him for decades would talk to me only if he told them that they could. This loyalty had a practical side. He has always had a circle of friends and colleagues who have been his coping mechanism, from his student friends who would read him textbooks to, as a minister, aides who would dictate documents and summaries of newspapers for him to listen to. At every stage of his political life, he has had exceptionally close advisers whose judgment he respected and who revered him.

But something has changed in these relationships, too. Take the seemingly trivial matter of the letter he wrote on House of Commons headed notepaper
to Wandsworth council saying he was "deeply concerned" about a building development near a property he owns. Even if it was, as he insists, an "administrative error", his own staff should have spotted such a mistake.
His advisers used to protect him. That they did not is itself symbolic of the fact that the once tight ship, and unparalleled loyalty, is no more.

Where two years ago I could not find a word of criticism from those around him, today there are people who know him and work with him who will, albeit in tones of distress, speak freely of their concerns that he is not the man he was. They acknowledge that he has changed.

He is regarded now as fair game - a man who was brought back into the Cabinet with unseemly haste and who now seems to be a source of ongoing embarrassment to the government.

Where once he was respected by friends and opponents alike, today even friends worry he may be on the last legs of his ministerial career. His opponents see him as a vulnerable weak link in the Cabinet. That is the real sign of how bad things now are for David Blunkett.

There's something rather weird about seeing yourself as a character in a film. I saw A Very Social Secretary, the new More4 film about David Blunkett, yesterday. I'd been invited to a press screening, but had very low expectations. I'd seen Alistair Beaton's last New Labour satire, Feelgood, which I thought was dire.

In fact it's terrific, expecially Bernard Hill's breathtaking portrayal of Blunkett, which captures not just his face, his physical habits and his voice but also his chippiness, his refusal to be patronised and his bluntness. All it lacked, I thought, was his charm.

I was pleasantly surprised at how poignant the film was, too - despite some of the vicious (justifiedly so) satire.

As I say, I had no idea what it would be like. I also had no idea that I would be a character in it. So I was rather fazed when, two thirds in, the scene moves to a Simpsons or Rules type restaurant, and a fabulously fat, old, scruffy tabloid hack appears on screen. A real sleaze merchant.

Asonishingly accurate, of course.

Sitting across the table, Blunkett asks him - me - what the book will be called, and I reply, in a caricature tabloid hack's accent. "I thought maybe David Blunkett". I then ask him what state the Home Office was in when he took over, and as he replies, I slyly pull out a tape recorder and move it across the table.

A few scenes later, one of Blunkett's aides tells him that he's in big trouble: 'Pollard's got you on tape'.

The freakiest moment was when the closing credits rolled, and one of the characters was listed as 'Stephen Pollard'.

Anyway, I spoke to a few people afterwards.

You can see it on Monday night on More4.

What on earth has happened to David Blunkett? Since he first gained national prominence 25 years ago as an earnest left-wing firebrand, his name has been a byword for probity and decency. Whatever people thought of his politics, they respected his achievements in transcending his blindness, and the manner in which he conducted himself.

He gave straight answers. He seemed to understand the way the world really worked. And he knew right from wrong.

How things have changed. Today, there are those who regard him as a laughing stock; a figure to be pitied; a man whose career has spiralled downhill since the unravelling of his affair with a married woman. Worse still, he has been described as a liar and a bully.

Where once he looked at a future that held the very real possibility of becoming Prime Minister, today he is left clinging to the hope that when Gordon Brown eventually succeeds Tony Blair, he will be able to prolong a career which is threatening to go into precipitous decline.

The truth is that the David Blunkett of today is a very different man from that of even a year ago. Barely a week seems to go by without some new embarrassment, from allegations (which he has strongly denied) that he intervened to find out his son’s A-level results, to the latest imbroglio - his friendship with estate agent Sally Anderson who, at 29, is half his age.

As a single man, Blunkett is of course entitled to see whoever he wants.

The two apparently share a love of opera. But the most interesting aspect of this latest development in Mr Blunkett’s life is how he and Ms Anderson met. To anyone who knows the David Blunkett of old - down to earth, slightly dour and ill at ease in the bright lights of the big city - the fact that they were introduced at the West End nightclub, Annabel’s, is simply staggering.

As Blunkett’s biographer, I did a double take when I heard earlier this year that the Works and Pensions Minister had been frequenting, and had then joined, Annabel’s. Situated in London’s Berkeley Square, the nightclub is the exclusive preserve of the upper and moneyed classes. The word ‘Eurotrash’ could have been coined to describe its clientele.

Mr Blunkett long ago developed a liking for good food and wine. But it is one thing enjoying a glass or two of Burgundy, quite another for a Cabinet minister to spend the night in the louche surroundings of Annabel’s.

But his regular presence there is not just bizarre. It is, in reality, deeply sad. It's as if something inside him has cracked and it's affecting his very judgment.
To discover how and why he has changed, we need to look at what has happened to David Blunkett over the past 12 months.

This time last year, he was still riding high as Home Secretary. Although his summer had been dominated by revelations about his affair with Kimberly Quinn - the married publisher of the right-wing Spectator magazine - he had been treated by both the media and his political opponents with silk gloves. Not only was it widely felt that his private life should remain just that - private - there was also a general belief that he deserved some private happiness considering all he hardships he had suffered.

But everything changed in November, when allegations were made which put the relationship very much into the realms of public concern. Blunkett had, it was said, abused his position as Home Secretary to speed up the application process for a visa for Quinn's Filipina nanny.

Blunkett issued a full, unambiguous denial. By Christmas, however, his world collapsed and he was forced to resign from the Cabinet, after an official investigation which found that, contrary to Mr Blunkett’s denials, his private office had indeed been involved. And, with his resignation, his life changed utterly.

Ever since he became chairman of Sheffield City Council social services committee in 1976, there had been barely a day in David Blunkett's without full-time political responsibility - from leader of the city's council to senior Labour spokesman and then Cabinet minister. Now, although he remained an MP, he suddenly faced the prospect of empty, purposeless days - and all because of his involvement with a married woman. Blunkett’s friends worried that he would be unable to cope with the humiliation of his private life being paraded through the media and the collapse of his career.

His troubles had not been helped when my biography of him was published. While researching the book, I had conducted interviews with him during which he made a series of remarkably frank criticisms of his Cabinet colleagues. It was a sign of his confidence in his power and position that he made such reckless comments, even though I stressed to him that they would be on the record.

At a time when he needed all the support he he could get, letting it be known that he considered Culture Secretary Tessa Jowell 'weak', that Charles Clarke ought to have 'developed more' and that Patricia Hewitt did not think strategically did not help his position within the Labour Party.

At the time, I struggled to come up with an explanation for why he had given me his private views so candidly. It seemed so unlike him - so fatally lacking in the astute judgment of which he had always been the master.

It is only now, with hindsight, that I realise it was all part of a pattern of behaviour which shows that he has not, for some while, been the man he was. He has, it seems, lost his judgment and lost his bearings.

Of course, this coincided with his relationship with Kimberly Quinn and all the tragic fall-out that has resulted.

For years, he had been trapped inside a loveless marriage. He and his wife, Ruth, married young, and soon realised that they did not really love each other. By then, however, they had three children - so, for their sake, stayed together. When they did eventually divorce, the split was amicable and they have remained on good terms.

Blunkett was a wonderful father and still has a superb relationship with his sons. He was closely involved in their upbringing - even after the divorce. But he was nonetheless a profoundly lonely man, who would return from a hard day's work to an empty house and would cook his own supper. He told me once how he burned his fingers taking sardines out from under the grill.

Although he had other relationships - there was a brief fling with a civil servant in the Department for Education when he was Secretary of State - none had the potential to last, and he knew it.

But then came Kimberly Quinn. Vivacious, flirtatious and - so he thought - deeply in love with him, Blunkett believed he had met his soul mate and that they would be together for ever. She told him she did not love her husband, and Blunkett took her at face value. He was present at the birth of their son. He planned for their future together.

And then, when the relationship became public knowledge, she dropped him like a stone. He was utterly devastated - not least because she sought to deny him access to their son. Once more, he was plunged into loneliness, as painful as bereavement, but this time without the comfort blanket of political office on which he had grown so dependent to make up for the void in his private life.

As a flighty habitué of London ‘society’, who we now know had a string of other affairs (with a list of men including Simon Hoggart, the presenter of Radio 4's The News Quiz), she was as far removed from the women in Blunkett’s usual political and social circle as
one could imagine.

Admittedly, that was a large part of the attraction. Having spent so long alone, and working 16-hour days, he had been enraptured.

Suddenly, Quinn gave him a taste for a world he had never previously encountered.
As the epitome of the Annabel’s set - moneyed, glamorous and loose - she introduced him to its seductions. The old David Blunkett would, of course, have looked on such things with disdain. The new David Blunkett relished them.

But it is not just in his conduct of his private life that Blunkett has changed. Of a piece with his new behaviour is disturbing evidence of a penchant for ignoring the truth.
Blunkett’s reputation was built on his solidity and plain speaking. Where other politicians answered questions as if they had something to hide, Blunkett seemed to relish the chance to explain what he was doing and to tell it as it was. For many people, his outright denial that he had any involvement in the visa application for his son’s nanny was enough; if he had said it, it must be true.

That reputation was destroyed when Sir Alan Budd's official inquiry showed that he had indeed been involved. Blunkett claimed to have forgotten the incident. Perhaps.

But as his biographer, I found that colleagues and friends would cite his astonishing memory - the prodigious memory he used so effectively to compensate for his lack of sight - as his single most notable trait. It beggars belief that he would simply forget raising the matter of his own son’s nanny’s visa application.

In my book, I quoted critical remarks which Blunkett made to me about Lord Stevens, the former Commissioner of the Metropolitan Police. Yet when Lord Stevens published his autobiography last month, he accused Blunkett of being a liar and a bully. He also revealed that Blunkett wrote him a two-page letter when my book was published in which he apologised for all the 'rude remarks' he had allegedly made about him, claiming he had never made the comments and telling Lord Stevens that he had been a 'splendid Commissioner'.

Either David Blunkett had no memory whatsoever of speaking to me or he told the former Commissioner an outright lie. Perhaps he forgot the six hours of interviews, not to mention the days I spent with him, shadowing him at the Home Office and Labour Party Conference. Perhaps he forgot that our interviews were being recorded, as I repeatedly told him.

What was happening here was a terribly sad story: a lonely man, realising his life's ambitions have been exhausted and who has lost his personal compass - together with what used to be his prime asset - his judgment.

Indeed, David Blunkett's most powerful characteristic has always been his impeccable political judgement and timing: an ability to know with whom to ally, sensing when a tide is turning and deftly positioning himself to take advantage.

Today, however, he seems to have completely lost that touch.

As always seems to be the case with politicians, it was not the initial act which caused the crisis, but the cover-up. If Mr Blunkett had responded by confirming that he had indeed raised the matter of the nanny's visa with his officials, he would have been criticised. But most people would have understood why he would have been concerned about the treatment of his son’s nanny. Instead, he denied it, was found out, and had to go.

At a stroke, he lost his most invaluable reputation - for straight talking and probity. That can never be recovered. Nor can we ever now forget the bizarre image of him whiling away the night at Annabel’s in search of human contact to fill the void in his life.

David Blunkett was a towering figure in politics, whose extremely courageous personal story and public achievements stood as an inspirational example to us all. Today, he is just another politician, who is in danger of frittering away a gleaming reputation.

The real tragedy of his career is that there is a risk that where once he was revered, in future, he will be pitied.

Me hard? Harder than David Blunkett and Lord Stevens? I think not.

It's rather unsettling being called a liar by a Cabinet minister. Especially when you are his biographer. In Lord Stevens’s memoirs, the former Metropolitan Police Commissioner suggests that David Blunkett is a lying, backstabbing bully. Having read Lord Stevens’s account of his relationship with the former Home Secretary, it is clear that, whatever else he may be, Mr Blunkett is indeed a liar.

My biography of David Blunkett was published last December. It caused something of a stir since, among other revelations, it contained his frank — and often withering — opinions about his Cabinet colleagues. The book also made clear Mr Blunkett’s view of the then Sir John Stevens. As I put it: “Blunkett considered Stevens to be a weak commissioner, lacking in judgment. He could talk a good game but was rarely able to deliver.”

Lord Stevens’s memoirs are a clinical demolition job on the former Home Secretary, not least because they expose Mr Blunkett’s willingness to tell an outright lie — about me — to defend his position.

In my book, I cited David Blunkett’s response to Sir John’s behaviour over the incident when, in June 2003, Aaron Barschak (the so-called “comedy terrorist”) made it past the police’s supposed watertight security into a party at Windsor Castle. Sir John promised root-and-branch reform and strong disciplinary action. And yet 11 months later there was a similar breach.

I wrote this: “Clearly, Stevens had failed to do what he had promised. Blunkett called the commissioner, pointing out that both their jobs were on the line . . . Blunkett was not impressed with Stevens’s response: more bluster, as he told his colleagues, and more empty promises.” I then wrote that Blunkett had told one of his advisers: “That man [Stevens] needs to start feeling the pressure he is under.”

Mr Blunkett had been even angrier when, in February 2003, he discovered that tanks had been placed around the perimeter of Heathrow. I quoted his description to me of the police’s decision: “It was male, macho, silly laddism. Boy’s Own comic stuff. They couldn’t help themselves.”

Sir John’s autobiography reveals that Mr Blunkett wrote to him on the day that my book was serialised. “[A]long came a two-page letter from Blunkett himself . . . apologising for all the rude remarks about me, and alleging that he had never made them. Indeed, he claimed that he had hardly spoken to Stephen Pollard, and believed, on the contrary, that I had been a splendid commissioner.”

Given that Sir John’s word is surely unimpeachable — and he presumably still has the letter from Mr Blunkett — only two conclusions can be drawn from the words in the letter. Either David Blunkett had no memory whatsoever of speaking to me; or he told the former commissioner an outright lie. Mr Blunkett said in his letter to Sir John that he “had hardly spoken” to me. Perhaps he simply forgot the six hours of on-the-record interviews, not to mention the days I spent with him, shadowing him at the Home Office and Labour Party conference.

From all the interviews I conducted for the book, the most oft-cited of his characteristics was his phenomenal memory. But sometimes Mr Blunkett does appear to have a truly terrible memory. By an amazing coincidence, however, his memory failures seem to happen only at especially convenient times. When the news broke of the speeded-up visa for his own son’s nanny, he claimed to have no recollection of having raised the matter with his private office. And now we learn that he has no memory of having spoken to me for my biography.

The issue is, in reality, black and white. Either Mr Blunkett said what I reported him as saying to me or he did not. In his letter to Sir John, he said that he did not — in which case I must have lied and made the quotes up.

Mr Blunkett’s accusation goes to the heart of my integrity — and, more importantly, his. If there was any truth to his claims, I would have behaved shamefully. No journalist can be allowed to get away with making up quotes.

There is only one person who has lied, and it is not me. Lord Stevens writes that he had been advised “never go to see him alone, but always take a witness”. I had a witness with me throughout my interviews: my tape recorder. I listened to the relevant interview again yesterday. His words are crystal clear. Mr Blunkett said everything I quoted — and a lot more which has yet to emerge. Indeed, as I interviewed him I would go out of my way to point out to him that the tape recorder was running, lest he forget and, being blind, be unable to see the red recording light. So not only is it plain wrong for Mr Blunkett to assert that I made the quotes up, it is also stupid. He knows that the interviews were recorded.

With the issue of Labour politicians’ willingness to lie now at the forefront of many people’s minds, the brazen insouciance with which he defamed me to Sir John can only worsen the public’s contempt for his party — and politics in general.

Mr Blunkett clearly regretted — albeit only after publication — being so frank with me. All I did was ask him questions, in his full knowledge that the interviews were for the book. My jaw dropped when I heard his answers. But those answers were his responsibility and no one else’s. In attempting to limit the damage by lying about his own words, he has merely raised the most serious question of all: whether or not he is fit for public office.

David Blunkett, by Stephen Pollard, is published in paperback today. Hodder, £8.99

(3)

The paperback of my biography of David Blunkett is out next week (12th September). It's fully revised, with a new chapter taking in the whole saga of his resignation and comeback.

You can buy it from Amazon here.

Meanwhile, today's Sunday Times has a story taken from the new edition:

Blunkett set for comeback under Brown

David Cracknell, Political Editor

DAVID BLUNKETT has put aside his differences with Gordon Brown and can expect a senior cabinet post if the chancellor becomes the next prime minister, according to his biographer.

Blunkett’s preferred job would be as chancellor, a post to which he has aspired under Tony Blair. He has no appetite for the position of foreign secretary because of the pressure of travelling.

But it is more likely that he will be offered a job such as leader of the Commons or chairman of the Labour party.

The minister, who returned to the cabinet in May as pensions secretary after his resignation as home secretary last year following the “nannygate” visa row, has patched up his feud with Brown; he has twice stayed at his home in Kirkcaldy, Fife.

The disclosures are in an updated edition of Stephen Pollard’s biography of Blunkett. Before he left office in December, Blunkett came under pressure over comments he had made to Pollard about cabinet ministers, including Brown.

In the first edition of the book, Blunkett said Blair “doesn’t like people who stand up to him”, in contrast to the chancellor, who “only respects people who stand up to him”.

He told Pollard that Ann Taylor, the former chief whip, was sacked because of her “inept way” of telling Blair what to do or say; and that John Prescott’s “two Jags” nickname “obviously gets to him”. Blunkett was also said to have referred to Brown’s allies as “little bits of slime from under stones”.

The comments earned rebukes from Prescott — who said they betrayed an “element of personal arrogance” — and from a Downing Street spokesman, who called them “unfortunate”.

Blunkett also believed there was a Brown “plot” to destabilise him over his push for compulsory identity cards.

Pollard now claims that all this changed after Brown gave Blunkett his “strong backing” when news of his affair with Kimberly Quinn leaked out in August last year.

“Brown rang Blunkett immediately on hearing the news to offer his support,” writes Pollard. “For all the cynicism usually (and often rightly) attached to politicians’ motives, it seems clear that Brown was genuine in his feelings for a colleague who was apparently guilty of little else beyond falling in love with the wrong woman.

“But there was also a more political side to his support. Just as relations between the two had been fine when Blunkett was not, as education secretary, a rival for the leadership, so Brown could see immediately that Blunkett had been wounded by the story and thus was less of a rival.”

Pollard adds that relations between the two men improved markedly after Blunkett’s resignation, when Brown no longer saw him as a rival. Soon afterwards, Blunkett was invited to stay with the Browns.

Pollard continues: “As work and pensions secretary, Blunkett has a major job once again. But his leadership ambitions are now at an end, and he and Brown are thus likely to enjoy much better ministerial relations than for many a year.”

But for his unforeseen departure last year, Pollard believes Blunkett would like to have have been made chancellor in the post-election reshuffle.

He is now being tipped for a possible return to the post of home secretary if Blair carries out another reshuffle before Christmas. This is unlikely until after Blunkett has overseen pension reforms.

Speak to those close to Tony Blair and they will all tell you the same thing. Come May 6th, when Mr Blair appoints his new Cabinet, there will be one name returning to the front bench: David Blunkett.

Given the Prime Minister’s continuing public support for Mr Blunkett, it was a reasonable assumption that he would be back. Almost everything that has happened since his resignation has reinforced that notion. As a TV and radio performer, the government lacks – with the exception of John Reid – anyone who comes close to Mr Blunkett’s persuasiveness. Mr Blair has repeatedly said that Mr Blunkett left office “without a stain on his character”. And the handling of the anti-terror legislation by his successor, Charles Clarke, has been – to be charitable – chaotic, showing just what the government is missing without Mr Blunkett.

Without fanfare, he has already taken the first steps back. He has spent the past few weeks visiting Labour-held marginal constituencies campaigning on behalf of sitting MPs. His reception by the public has confirmed that he remains immensely popular with voters and is still a prime asset for the Labour Party. It seems that voters’ sympathies are overwhelmingly on his side. He is seen as having been the victim of a manipulative schemer.

But the operative words are ‘almost everything’. This weekend’s re-ignition of the story is the worst possible thing which could have happened to Mr Blunkett’s chances of making a return to the Cabinet. The Quinns have claimed that Mr Blunkett has been briefing the press with gossip as to the paternity of Mrs Quinn’s second child and her further affairs.

A look at the facts, and the principle of cui bono , ought to show how preposterous such allegations are, and how it is the Quinns themselves who are feeding the latest frenzy.

Mr Blunkett has never claimed to be the father of Kimberly Quinn’s second child. He thought he might be, since their affair was still ongoing at the time of the boy’s conception, but once he realised that she was sleeping with at least one other man, he was fully aware that he might well not be the father.

From day one of their affair becoming public, almost all the briefing has come from Ms Quinn’s side. A sign of how skilful a manipulator of the media she has been is the idea which took hold that she was a helpless ingénue, caught up in a maelstrom out of her control and the victim of a politician with powerful media connections. This from a woman who is publisher of The Spectator, is married to the publisher of Vogue, and whose best friend is Julia Hobsbawm, one of the country’s top PRs!

There has rarely been a better illustration of how both to prolong, and to kill, a news story. The media had a field day in the final few months of last year when there were regular briefings. The result: almost daily news stories. But once the briefings began to backfire on Mrs Quinn, in the final stages of her second pregnancy, her camp stopped. And so the story fell out of the newspapers.

Look at the coverage of the birth of her second child on 2nd February. The newspapers reported the event itself, but since neither Mrs Quinn nor Mr Blunkett was, even indirectly through ‘friends’, talking, the story could go nowhere. The result: one day of purely factual coverage of the birth of her son.

And since then, nothing. Not a line of speculation, not a single story, leaving Mrs Quinn to get on in peace with bringing up her son and Mr Blunkett to take the first steps on the road to the Cabinet.

Until now, and the news that he is not the father of her child. In theory, that too should have been have been a one day wonder – a story for the record, ending further speculation about Mr Blunkett. The news that a private citizen is not having a child by a politician is, after all, hardly a scandal.

But this is no ordinary story. It is a kind of Gotterdammerung of spin, in which both sides are engulfed and destroyed by forces which have been whipped up by their own actions and which they cannot subsequently quell.

Mr Blunkett has been going about the business of rebuilding his career, issuing a dignified statement on Friday designed to end speculation about his paternity of her second child and making no further comment. The response from the Quinns? Instead of silence, or a short press statement to kill off the story, they make, in door step interviews and through their ‘friends’, wild allegations and bizarre comments about Mr Blunkett’s supposed press briefings and gossip as to the baby’s real father. As media professionals, they must know the only possible effect of their claims: giving the story further legs.

Whether or not Mr Blunkett will return to office depends on two factors. If Mr Blair wins a large majority in May, then he will have the political strength to bring back a minister who remains popular even now. But there remains the possibility that the Quinns will drag out the story for as long as they can, knowing that with every mention, his chances of a return are reduced.

That is the context in which this weekend’s allegations need to be judged. Cui bono? The man who wants all mention of the Quinns to end, so he can focus on politics once more? Or the couple who seem to want nothing more than to destroy him? Have a guess.

If you're wandering the streets of Bristol on Friday, at a loose end and hungry, I'll be speaking at the Bristol Evening Post Literary Lunch. Come in, get some food, and grab some shut-eye.

And tomorrow I'm at the Cambridge Union.

(6)

I am tickled pink by this:

Google 'a large measure of personal greed' and I provide the top two results.

(4)

My second stinker review, this time from Lesley White in the Sunday Times:

Should David Blunkett ever find himself short of a guide dog, the author of this timely biography might fill in nicely; touchingly loyal, eager to please, skilled in avoiding tricky areas. This is the book at the centre of the home secretary’s resignation, vehicle for those incendiary comments about colleagues — Patricia Hewitt doesn’t think “strategically”; acolytes of Gordon Brown are “slime from under stones” and the rest. It has also pulled off the unprecedented feat of both canonising its subject and expediting his fall from grace. Its sales will be borne on the wings of dazzling publicity and — here’s the best bit — it was published 10 days before Christmas, a perfect stocking-filler for the season of forgiveness. How lucky can a wet-nosed helpmate get?

She didn't like it.

(1)

Here's the stinker review I mentioned below:

Stephen Pollard, an enthusiastic booster of the New Labour project, proves a reliably devoted and unquestioning biographer. He notes that Blunkett's career has been characterised by sharp reversals of ideology, but briskly exonerates his subject of the charge of political opportunism. "His attitude changed," Pollard solemnly asserts.

Pollard insists this is not an authorised biography – because it is so relentlessly fawning, this book actually reads more like a footballer's ghosted autobiography. Given the disputed accounts of his conduct of his relationship with Kimberly Quinn, it might have been useful to hear from Blunkett's ex-wife, Ruth, the mother of their grown-up children. But Ruth is treated almost as dismissively as Kimberly. The Blunketts' marriage was wrecked "by Ruth resenting the amount of time she was having to devote to her husband's career". That is one way of looking at it. An alternative explanation might be that Blunkett was a political obsessive who neglected his family, but Pollard does not trouble to investigate this possible angle.

The recent fall-out from the Kimberly Quinn affair is dealt with in a comically one-sided and hasty final chapter. It is true that neither party emerges with much credit from this sorry saga, but Pollard attempts to maintain the obvious fiction that Blunkett does not comment on his private life, even in the face of what he calls "concerted vilification attempts of his former lover".

If that is so, the reader wonders why Blunkett's biographer knows so much about Quinn's behaviour, including the detail that she, allegedly, harassed him by constantly telephoning him night and day from California over the summer as their affair became public.

Pollard had immense good fortune in completing this biography just as the Blunkett-Quinn relationship became a political issue. It is odd that he has produced a book that simultaneously makes him look absurd as a biographer, and that has helped destroy the career of a man he seems to regard as a hero.

You get the picture. He didn't like it.

Petronella Wyatt, however, in the Sunday Telegraph, did:

...All this makes for an exceptionally readable and interesting political biography.

(5)

It's Davis' Law:

One thought strikes me amidst all the pictures of Kimberly Quinn. Isn't it strange that, sooner or later, all the people you really don't like end up having their photo taken at a polo match?

(3)

I confess. It's me:

Kimberly saga: Was there a fourth man?

This is the bit which intrigues me:

[R]umours have surfaced linking a string of media personalities with her.

One, a veteran journalist and household name, is said to have visited the £2million London home of the Spectator publisher and, she told friends, once helped her fix a toilet seat.

I was 40 on Saturday. To think that for all these years, I never realised that the secret of successful Lothariodom is the ability to fix toilet seats.

(8)

It is almost always a mistake to second guess the conclusions of official inquiries. Rarely do they live up - or down - to the pre-publicity. But unlike the case with most such documents, Sir Alan Budd has already given us a sneak preview of his report with the publication last week of the so-called "timeline" behind the curious incident of the nanny's visa and the Home Secretary's private office.

Indeed, it was the pre-publication revelation of an e-mail from the Immigration and Nationality Department (IND) in Croydon to David Blunkett's office, which talked of having processed the visa application with "No favours, but slightly quicker", that in the end did for Mr Blunkett. We await Sir Alan's findings today for a fuller account of the comings and goings of the various pieces of paper. But as Mr Blunkett's biographer, I have been struck by one particular aspect of the affair.

I have spent three years studying David Blunkett's life. I have spoken to friends, colleagues, family, opponents and acquaintances. One thing has been mentioned above all others: his astonishing memory. I have heard from people who had one conversation with him, sometimes a decade or more ago, who have then met him again to discover that he can recall their previous exchange in exact detail.

It is his memory, above all else, that has enabled him not merely to compete with sighted ministers but to outperform them. And yet, when he resigned on Wednesday, Mr Blunkett told Andrew Marr on the BBC that "we didn't have a recollection, I don't just mean me, but throughout the system, of the letter [about Ms Casalme's case] actually being put into the system".

Come again? Forget his officials' involvement for a moment. Perhaps some of them really are as monumentally incompetent as some - not least the former Home Secretary himself, in his interviews with me - allege. We will need to wait for Sir Alan's findings to form a judgement on their involvement.

But there is already one element of the affair which is self-evidently preposterous. According to Mr Blunkett's explanation, he forgot putting into his red ministerial box a letter about the visa application for his own son's nanny. I am unable to comprehend how such an explanation is remotely possible. This is a man who can recall trivial conversations from 20 years ago with constituents about refuse collections; with a memory so powerful, its like has never before been seen in politics. And yet he forgot, he says, that he put his son's nanny's visa application into the system.

Pull the other one.

So what is going on? I thought I knew the man. In all my research, and in my conversations with him, I have found David Blunkett to be honest and decent. He has long valued his reputation for straight talking. But he has changed.

Once again, it is not the act itself that is necessarily the real problem but the cover-up. If Mr Blunkett had stood up and said, on the day after the allegations were first made, that there had indeed been special treatment, but that it was, after all, for his own son's nanny, then maybe he would still have had to resign. But he would have done so with his head held high, and with the understanding of most people. All he would have been guilty of was putting his family first.

Instead, he made a statement that, clearly, was not even remotely true. His office did not, we can already say with certainty, process the visa application off its own back. It did so because the Home Secretary alerted them to it. The allegations of bullying are a distraction. According to some reports, Mr Blunkett ran a regime of fear. He has been guilty of significant mistakes; but there is another agenda at play here. The former home secretary inherited a department that was a byword for inefficiency and incompetence, and ordered a large scale clear-out of the dead wood. The bullying allegations are the belated response, and deserve to be treated as piffle.

The real problem is the visa story itself, which stems from the influence exerted over David Blunkett by Kimberly Quinn, a woman who with every passing day emerges as a more unsavoury character. Mr Blunkett is rightly being held responsible for his own actions, but he became a different man when he began his relationship with her. At the very least, the old David Blunkett - the pre-Fortier version, if you will - would have been alive to the political suicide inherent in trying to cover-up his actions. But his judgement became so clouded by love he behaved like a different man.

I believe there is a pattern in his behaviour, post-Fortier, that also explains his recklessly frank comments to me about his Cabinet colleagues. He lost the judgement that had served him so well for his 34 years in politics, and behaved as if he had no care for the future, only for doing what his gut instinct told him he needed to do at the time. That meant not only helping to secure a visa for his son's nanny, but also letting off steam about his colleagues.

David Blunkett was not the first, and will not be the last, person to be brought down by falling in love with the wrong person.

(11)

Thanks to one of my commenters for pointing me to a truly fabulous rant about me:

At the end of the dark day, you have to pity poor Charlie Clarke. And when you've all done pitying, you have to run up to Stephen Pollard, grab hold of both of his great puddingy cheeks and give them a good old nip and stretch of congratulations. For this is Stephen Pollard Week. The week that the contemptible Bush-fellating slug-cum-pundit became The Man That Helped Mould History. The man that got close enough to the Home Secretary not only to stab him in the back but to give the knife a few playful twists while he was about it.

...As a result of the furore, Stephen Pollard is beside himself with smugness. He is, as those terrible burger people would have it, lovin' it. And frankly speaking, never has one schmuck's downfall been so horribly soured by the consequent good fortune of another. Pollard's revelling in the publicity backlash from the miring of Blunkett has taken all the Freude from the Schadenfreude we'd all be enjoying right now, if there were any justice in this world. Instead all we have is the Schaden. Lousy Schaden.

Bereft of the usual wealth of articles expounding on the delicious taste of President Bush's glans as Pollard guides it slowly, lovingly into the back of his throat, the journalist's blog has this week become naught but a teeming, preening mass of all the latest media tittle-tattle about him and his wretched book. And the man's levels of self-publicity would cause even the most shameless of pluggers to colour at the cheek-bone.

...Pollard has become the Ron Artest of broadsheet hackism.

Do read the whole thing. It's great fun.

(10)

There's a fabulous strinker of a review of my book in today's Telegraph by Stephen Robinson. Afraid the name means nothing to me. But I like his final sentence:

It is odd that he has produced a book that simultaneously makes him look absurd as a biographer. and that has helped destroy the career of a man he seems to regard as a hero.

(I can't find the link to the whole review, I'm afraid, but take it from me: he hates it.)

John Campbell - a wonderful biographer - on the other hand gives it a very balanced review in the Independent.

(5)

Just spotted a hilarious Polly Toynbee column. It seems I am a frivolous rightwing effete scoundrel:

...So everyone wonders what on earth this working-class minister, driven by a genuine passion for social justice for those who came from backgrounds like his, was doing with a Spectator society lady? Sleeping with the enemy, he fell among the most frivolous rightwing effete scoundrels of the Westminister political scene. That is part of the tragedy in the downfall too - seduction of a simple man by someone from a world he rightly despised.

Then, the final coup de grace. What was he doing slagging off his colleagues one by one to rightwing Stephen Pollard, who should never have been his official biographer anyway? When such an astute and experienced politician makes an error like that, it begins to look as if his marbles are rattling around. Even his dog might have barked out a warning.

Wonderful to see that she's as free with basic errors as always. If she'd bothered to do some basic research then she'd have known that I am not his "official biographer". I wrote a book and asked him for some interviews for it, which he gave me.

(10)

Three years ago I started writing a biography of David Blunkett. It was published on Tuesday.

Those two sentences, both literally true, conceal the whirlwind which has engulfed me in the past fortnight. The plan had been to publish in January. I knew I had some good stories and expected a fair amount of publicity. I cleared my schedule for the entire month and congratulated myself on my sensible planning. The new kitchen which I had promised myself was slotted in for December, and I offered a December deadline to the think tank which was publishing a booklet on Britain and the EU, which I had agreed to write.

The Blunkett book was ready to go, a few legal hiccups apart. Prepare for a relaxing Christmas, I said to myself, before the mad January rush.

And then the chaos arrived. Three Sundays ago, the Sunday Telegraph published a series of allegations about David Blunkett’s propriety. What had been a private story--his relationship with Kimberly Fortier--which was trickling along without much impact, was suddenly a major political storm. I was in despair. By January, the Home Secretary might well be no more and we could be sitting on a turkey. David who?

We had to go for broke and bring publication forward by a month.

The Daily Mail, which was due to run extracts in January, leapt at the chance to go early, and so I closeted myself away and bashed out an extra chapter bringing the book up to date. My deadline was 2nd December, and the book hit the shops on 14th, a pretty astonishing performance by my publishers, Hodder.

My life went into suspended animation as I waited for the serial to begin on 4th--a suspension which ended and which hasn’t stopped since. My deal with the Mail meant I couldn’t respond to the wall to wall coverage which my revelations about the true story of David Blunkett’s relationship generated, nor to the following Monday Mail's splash detailing his comments about his Cabinet colleagues, nor to the blanket coverage which they prompted.

It’s the nearest I have had to an out of body experience, watching myself and my book being discussed every time I turn on the news or look at the papers. Most surreal of all was watching Prime Minister’s Questions on the Wednesday, and hearing the contents my book coming from Michael Howard’s mouth.

And it hasn’t stopped since. Barely ten minutes goes by without a call from TV or radio. Even on a quiet day, such as Sunday, I did 4 interviews. And when there’s nothing more to say, I’m offered free gifts by the likes of John Prescott, who gave a dead story legs by going on the Today programme on Monday and accusing me of being greedy and politically motivated for selling my book. Thanks, John. That’s another 1000 sold.

As for pre-planning: my home is a building site. My new kitchen, so cleverly arranged for this week, is taking shape, but in between interviews I am reduced to prowling the streets for sanctuary, away from the dust and the banging.

So I’ve learned at least one lesson. The next time I have a book out, I won’t plan a thing. Go with the flow.

(The Bookseller site is here.)

(4)

According to those ubiquitous commentators, “Labour backbenchers”, it was my book wot done it. Within minutes of David Blunkett’s departure they were reported as saying, that had it not been for the revelations contained in my biography of the Home Secretary, he would still be in office.

As Sir Humphrey would have put it: “spherical round objects”. Mr Blunkett resigned for a specific reason. Sir Alan Budd had discovered an e-mail which showed that his private office had, despite Mr Blunkett’s assertions, been involved in the visa application process for his former lover’s nanny.

Yet when the rumours that the Home Secretary was about to resign started to fly around Westminster on Wednesday, my heart sank. The impact of the unfavourable comments he had made to me about his ministerial colleagues seemed to be more damaging by the day, with stories of Cabinet support draining away and the Parliamentary Labour Party beginning to lose patience. And that, clearly, would have been in large measure because of what he had told me about some of his fellow Cabinet ministers.

I felt sick. It is all very well to say — as is true — that I have merely quoted Mr Blunkett’s freely given, on the record comments. But the thought that their publication in my book might have ended the political career of a man whom I have come to respect and to admire greatly pained me.

When I started work on my book, more than three years ago, I admired David Blunkett as a man but was critical of him politically. I wanted to write his biography for two reasons. The first was political. I wanted to understand how the Home Secretary could be the same man who raised the red flag over Sheffield Town Hall in 1980. His life seemed to be a metaphor for Labour itself: beyond the pale in the 1980s, and yet the dominant political force today.

But even without the politics, I was fascinated by his life. How had he triumphed over the seemingly insuperable barriers of his blindness, his mother’s poverty and the way society treated the blind when he was young? How did he cope as a minister? How was his story possible? The more I have come to understand him, the more I have come to esteem him, as I think anyone who gets to know him and his life would.

When I heard Mr Blunkett’s resignation statement, I felt an emotion of which I am not proud: relief. I was, of course, sad to see him depart. But I did not want to go down as the man who pushed David Blunkett out of office. When he revealed that he was resigning for a specific reason, which had nothing to do with me, I felt a wave of relief.

The critical quotes from my biography certainly made a bad situation worse, but they did not cause that situation, and nor did my book do anything other than reflect accurately what Mr Blunkett had told me in our interviews. If Mr Blunkett had never met Kimberly Quinn his words would still have caused a storm — but he would have ridden it out with relatively little difficulty. Mr Blunkett’s problems arose not from my book or anything he told me, but from his relationship with Mrs Quinn, who since their split has sought to destroy him — and has now succeeded in that aim.

All sorts of bizarre accusations have been levelled at me. Baroness Nicholson of Winterbourne, the Liberal Democrat MEP, told me on air, despite not having seen the book, that I had somehow linked together all the juiciest quotes and effectively stitched up Mr Blunkett. Others have said that I must have hoodwinked him into revealing all. It has also been reported that I published off-the-record comments.

None of these accusations are true. I conducted a series of on-the-record interviews, all of which were tape-recorded. Mr Blunkett knew from the beginning that the book would be published before the next election. Indeed, so careful was I not to lead him into an elephant trap, and so open-mouthed was I at his frankness, that I reminded him as he spoke to me that the tape recorder was on. Am I supposed to have censored the remarks, knowing that they would embarrass him? And they were not pieced together, but part of a coherent whole — an analysis of how colleagues and departments were performing. No one from his office has suggested that I have put a construction on his words which they cannot bear, or been underhand. I asked questions. Mr Blunkett answered them.

One is tempted to think that if Alastair Campbell had still been around, the Prince of Wales and Camilla Parker Bowles would have been dragooned into church and married forthwith, as a diversionary tactic from the daily diet of revelations from my book. There were none, however. Indeed, as a case study in how not to handle a crisis, the behaviour of John Prescott and Hilary Armstrong, the Chief Whip, merits close attention. Both seemed determined to keep the story running and to give me as much free publicity as they could muster.

The Deputy Prime Minister attacked me on radio for “a very large measure of personal financial greed” (by which I assume he meant charging for my book) and thus prompted new stories about the very thing he was trying to attack. And then, bizarrely, the Chief Whip found a previously unrecognised use for the book as a Tory-seeking missile — throwing it at the Tory frontbench in the Commons chamber. I owe them both a free copy.

It is difficult to write of a man whom one admires and respects that he is the author of his own misfortunes, but David Blunkett is just that. No one forced him to tell me what he thought of his colleagues. No one demanded that he begin a relationship with Mrs Quinn. And no one commanded him to make inquiries, however vague, about his lover’s nanny’s visa.

(7)

A number of commenters and emailers have told me to shut up about my book, which I am apparently covering excessively. Might I make a couple of suggestions. First, have a look at the url: stephenpollard.net It's a site, you'll notice, written by me. And it is focused on pieces wrtiten by me, of which my book is the largest I have ever undertaken. So guess what? I'm linking to pieces about the book.

Here's the second suggestion. If you don't like that - go somewhere else. There's a good few million other sites from which you can choose.

Yes, I'll be covering some other subjects soon, but at the moment my days are somewhat dominated by the fall out from my book, and that's all I've time to cover.

There. Got that off my chest.

The Guardian has a piece by Martin Kettle prompted by my book, which argues that

If David Blunkett is still in his job in the new year, he will be more isolated than at any stage in his ministerial career. He will also be more dependent than before on Tony Blair's goodwill. That may be a double-edged sword. Even in Downing Street, not everyone is as robust as the prime minister in his support. John Prescott's denunciation yesterday on the Today programme will have had several cabinet ministers openly cheering over their cornflakes. Labour's senior women are especially angry.

Prescott yesterday became the first cabinet minister to say in public what many have been saying in private for days. Disaffected backbenchers such as Diane Abbott and Peter Kilfoyle have condemned the home secretary too, but many others share their instincts. The mood across the party is unquestionably that Blunkett has been diminished by the Kimberly Quinn case and his indiscretions to his biographer, Stephen Pollard. One former minister, a Blunkett admirer, confides that he is taken aback by the lukewarm parliamentary support.

Ministers say they have been astonished by Blunkett's "monumental arrogance". But the conversations with Pollard, not the Quinn affair, are doing the damage at Westminster. You might say such things to your wife or paramour, people there say, but you would think twice about saying them even to a journalist you trust, never mind to a man with a tape recorder and a book to sell. Blunkett has revealed something about himself that will be hard to unlearn.

...But Blair's support is fundamentally political. Pollard's account leaves no room for doubt on that score. Blunkett was sent to the Home Office to carry out Blair's demand for the law-and-order services to deliver. And that is exactly what he has done, sometimes badly, sometimes well, though rarely as well as Blunkett and his acolytes have boasted to Pollard. Sometimes it works. But sometimes it is hard to tell whether he is more a bully or a bull in a china shop.

...Yet, as Kilfoyle brutally reminded Blunkett yesterday, nobody is indispensable. And that is the true significance of the events of the past three weeks. Blunkett is a big figure in British politics. But it could be downhill from here on. At the outset, the Blunkett affair was about a relatively narrow, though indicative, point about his lover's nanny's visa. But now it is also about Blunkett's style of politics and even, unfairly, about him as a man. After Pollard's book, it is hard to imagine that he will now go on to greater things.

There's also a Steve Bell cartoon.

The Times has a long review by Edwina Currie:

...[T]his is an eyewatering performance. Yet these are the fruits of “hours of candid interviews” with his biographer, Stephen Pollard,in which Blunkett was “extremely forthcoming and helpful”. The words are dynamite, and could sink him.

Pollard first met Blunkett at a 1995 Fabian seminar and was intrigued by the paradox: on the one hand, a traditionalist, on the othe