Blunkett.

[zotz]

So, he's resigned. I expect a lot of you are very happy about that, but while it has its good side I think this is, overall, quite bad news.

Firstly, nothing has been proven against Blunkett as far as the actual allegations go. An inquiry has been launched, which implies that he at least was confident that there was nothing in them. There's a real possibility that it will demonstrate clearly that the papers are wrong. In that case, we're back to the situation at the tail-end of the last Tory government where their MPs were being hounded from office not because they were guilty of hypocrisy or wrongdoing, but because the tabloids had found a handle on them and felt it their right to have a go. Hounding people out of their jobs on grounds that may not be true isn't actually something to cheer on. As I believe I said to some of you back then in what could have become an analogous situation, I didn't want Portillo to lose office because of an alleged gay past, I wanted him to lose office for being a repulsive rightwing wanker. We escaped that for a while, but it seems to be back.

Now, Blunkett as Home Secretary has been a disaster, but then Straw was a disaster before him and it seems likely that whoever follows will have similarly illiberal views and be no overall improvement. That's the sort of Home Sec that Tony wants, because it keeps the Tory Press neutralised on a major issue. A dubious tactic? Yes, certainly, but it's almost certain to be continued given the upcoming general election.

This does not represent any sort of defeat for the illiberal ideas that Blunkett favoured. These ideas were not what the papers were attacking - indeed, the papers doing the attacking are mostly rather in favour of that agenda (only they'd rather have proper Tories implementing it). We can expect to see nearly all of his agenda continued with under whoever his successor is. What this does seem to represent is a victory for the newspapers who wanted to get rid of Blunkett whatever the truth of their allegations were. So regardless of my dislike of Blunkett's record as Home Secretary, I won't be joining in with the cheering yet.

Comments

[http://users.livejournal.com/_nicolai_/]

While I am initially gleeful, you are unfortunately mostly right.

It seems that whoever is Home Secretary turns into a jackbooted fascist - the only exception I can think of is Geoffrey Howe, and that's going back a few years.

I still think Blunkett is worse than average even for a Home Secretary.

[dj-alexander.livejournal.com]

I don't even think that Blunkett was that bad as home secretary. He proposed a lot of reforms, which people never like anyway, and that seems to be about it. Most of the idea of him being "illiberal" comes from the whole ID card proposal which a lot of people made a stink about; yet we all accept things like needing a drivers license to drive a car, and using things like Oystercards which track your movements (and from a public-private partnership at that), without a second thought.

As was pointed out in Metro today, he's been classified as everything from 'loony left' to 'right wing fascist', and everything in between, which only goes to illustrate that people will get riled about any kind of contraversial reforms made.

[inulro.livejournal.com]

Exactly what I've been thinking.

[ciphergoth.livejournal.com]

According to this, Howe was never Home Secretary.

[ant-girl.livejournal.com]

Totally in agreement with you there.

[swisstone.livejournal.com]

According to Sky News, Ultramoron Charles Clarke will be the new Home Secretary, a typical Blairite thug ...

[deliberateblank.livejournal.com]

Firstly, nothing has been proven against Blunkett as far as the actual allegations go. An inquiry has been launched, which implies that he at least was confident that there was nothing in them.

Well, we know certain things are almost certainly true.

The visa application was approved far faster than was to be expected.

Blunkett showed a letter relating to it to underlings as proof that their position on the overall state of the department was wrong.

The rest is, so far, inference. AFAIAA.

Now, unless further more damning details emerge, he comes out of this with the wiggle room of being able to claim that his forwarding of that particular case was in no way intended to preferentially affect the processing of one case that he had a personal interest in, but was purely to illustrate a deeper problem. His example was merely one that he happened to know about.

You could claim that it is right that ministers should avoid even the appearance of impropriety, and that he failed in this regard.

More serious is the issue of what happens when a superior provides a specific example of a general problem. You don't just attack the general problem and hope it clears up the example. If the example is easy to deal with (as one application is compared to thousands) you fix that *now*, then worry about the wider issue. At the very least this means next month when your boss is asking you the same questions again, they will have to find a different example to pin on you, which is a significant arse-covering move. Blunkett knew this would be the effect, and if he didn't he damn well should have done, so though he can *claim* no direct command involvement in the process, he acted knowing in advance that the net result would be to give preferential treatment to a personal interest.

That is clear corruption. IMO.

[http://users.livejournal.com/_nicolai_/]

Oh. I sit corrected.
Bah.

[deliberateblank.livejournal.com]

Not true, he has had several other "illiberal" policies besides the whole ID card thing. Erosion of burden of proof and right to trial by jury amongst others. Amazing how short people's attention span can be.

As far as the ID card scheme itself goes, there are many possible attacks.

1) The central funding will be far more expensive than they are claiming. The whole way they are handling the per-head pricing is a cynical "how much can we get away with" exercise. This is our money, a lot of it, and if we're going to be spending it we'd better have a very clear picture of the benefits it will bring and be convinced that they are worth the costs.

2) Many of the advantages they claim have not been justified. There is no clear mechanism by which what they are proposing will solve or even mitigate the problems they are saying it will. There are strong arguments that their scheme doesn't address those problems at all, and in some cases may be counter-productive. In security terms their threat model analysis looks to be fatally flawed. Some of them don't sound much like problems at all (like not being able to more tightly control access to healthcare services) and I'd really rather they went "unsolved".

3) The card will allow them to do many other things. Some people think those are bad things to allow them to do. You might claim they are not so bad, but then why aren't they admitting that's why they want them? Why are they unwilling to make sufficiently firm guarantees that certain (ab)uses will be disallowed and dealt with severely?

4) I have had no problem with having multiple forms of ID, one for each authority I deal with. This really isn't inconvenient at all.

This also allows me to choose who I deal with. If I really don't want to deal with the Passport Authority I can not travel abroad. If I don't like the DVLA I can not drive. A shared system means you don't have that choice and the mistakes of any one agency will affect your standing with all the others.

Seperate systems also severely limit the damage caused by loss or theft.

That's just off the top of my head.

To sum up, the system is:

* Low utility
* High cost
* They have consistently lied about the above two points

[blufive.livejournal.com]

Possibly my memory is faulty, but IIRC ministers were being hounded from office by the press a lot more frequently under Major than under Blair. A LOT more frequently.

[deliberateblank.livejournal.com]

Hmm. It's missing a Conservative VampireLeader

[sheepthief.livejournal.com]

Much as I dislike the bloke I have some meaasure of admiration for him, and to see him go over something this trivial seems faintly ridiculous.

And did you notice the emphasis on the TV news? It was all aimed at the woman, effectively citing her as bringing about his downfall, and while that may be true in a roundabout way I found the emphasis quite distracting.

Will it make any difference? As far as politics is concerned I'm an utter cynic, so you can guess my answer to that one.

[dj-alexander.livejournal.com]

I'm not sure "lied" is really an appropriate term. From what I remember it was more along the lines of "changing the figures after more research". ;)

But yes, ol' Dave has been dealing with a few more questionably "illiberal" policies other than just the ID cards. Point is it comes down to whather you think he's actually a reasonable human being that's trying to balance personal freedoms against what's best to maintain safety of his country, or he's some deranged sadistic maniac going on a rampage for shits and giggles.

[reddragdiva]

He is a fearsomely determined, persistent and hard-fighting individual who is not good at changing his mind or admitting he is wrong in any way whatsoever. Which is the motives of the first with the effects of the second.

[valkyriekaren.livejournal.com]

I'm actually (and probably predictably) fascinated about what none of the newspapers have been bothering to say about the whole business.

David Blunkett was in a long-term relationship with a married woman, with whom, private DNA tests have shown, he fathered at least one child. Her husband knew about the relationship. The problems only arose with the media attention, and Blunkett's desire to determine the paternity of the child she was carrying, as well as his (understandable) desire to continue seeing his son.

So why, throughout, have the papers been talking of the relationship as an 'affair' (with all its perjorative connotations), and referring to the husband as 'Blunkett's love rival'? As far as I can see, the real situation was totally different.

[zotz]

He's actually quite unpleasantly small-minded and old-fashioned in various ways. He hasn't, for instance, ever displayed any concern about the numbers of people committing suicide in prisons, in spite of the facts that

a) he's responsible for taking care of them

b) a good number are on remand and haven't been convicted of anything, and

c) a fair number of these are actually acquitted (well, a fair number of those who live to trial, anyway).

[zotz]

Joy. It was always going to be someone like that, though. Governments don't have radical policy changed so close to an election.

[zotz]

Yes. And we don't want to go back to the situation where people are chased out without good reason. Some of Major's people shouldn't have had to resign either.

[zotz]

You are very possibly right, but there's been absolutely nothing to confirm it. It's a fairly blatant hole in the coverage.

[zotz]

He claims it was mentioned in the context of him proving to them that their speedup of claims wasn't working, to spur them to further action. In the circumstance, if I knew personally of an example that would disprove what I was being told, I'd certainly mention it.

Certainly unwise, but that doesn't amount to corruption.

[king-prawn.livejournal.com]

Governments don't have radical policy changed so close to an election.

Or after, as we've seen with the Bush administration reshuffling amongst the post-election resignations.

[deliberateblank.livejournal.com]

Under (c) note that he believes that people acquitted after many years in prison due to what is later shown to be a miscarriage of justice, should be charged bed and board for the privilege of their stay. His spokesman said "Morally, this is reasonable and appropriate."

[deliberateblank.livejournal.com]

As I said, that is what he can claim.

Are you denying that he would/should have known exactly what the effects his example would have, and why that would rightly be seen as serious mismanagement?

Once the situation was brought to his attention, couldn't he have found some other less specific way of proving there was a problem? Like, for example, asking his civil servants what the current queue length was and how long people had been on it for.

If he was genuinely incapable of extracting the metrics from his underlings that he required to make decisions and enforce policy, then he shouldn't have been in that position.

[shaunotd.livejournal.com]

*!*

[zotz]

"Should have known and should have avoided" doesn't constitute corruption. Performing an action in order to improperly benefit someone is corruption.

asking his civil servants what the current queue length was and how long people had been on it for.

What he said - and it hasn't been challenged to my knowledge - is that he did precisely this and was told that nobody was going to have to wait that long. At which point he proved that they were wrong in telling him that. If you're saying that his motive in showing them the letter was to benefit his then lover, then that would be corrupt. If it was to prove that the situation wasn't improved enough and provoke further cation, and the benefit was an unintended or overlooked side-effect, then it was an unprofessional mistake.

[fellcat.livejournal.com]

That's more or less what I said. Any poor sod who falls victim to this ought to counter-sue though, for loss of earnings.

[fellcat.livejournal.com]

It was all aimed at the woman, effectively citing her as bringing about his downfall

Oh that's normal, and I so wish it wasn't. Popular culture views women as either virtuous and chaste or as evil harlots. She was unfaithful to her husband by most peoples' definition^[1], and therefore falls into the evil harlot bracket as far as the tabloids are concerned.


[1] My understanding so far is that the husband knew about it and didn't mind, and that therefore it was consensual polyamoury and not what I would call infidelity.

[fellcat.livejournal.com]

So why, throughout, have the papers been talking of the relationship as an affair (with all its perjorative connotations), and referring to the husband as Blunkett's love rival?

Because the idea of any kind of relationship model other than monogamy or pretending-monogamy-with-cheating is incomprehensible to their tiny bigoted minds. The media treatment of this mother is IMO an example of discrimination against the polyamourous.

[shaunotd.livejournal.com]

Too bloody right. Could also argue that if you are renting accomodation the Landlord is expected to give you keys, and notice of inspections etc, so they were in breach of contract & you owe them nothing.

[lsur.livejournal.com]

I don't want to carry a one-size-covers-all-your-life ID card. You never know who will have legal access to it and be able to follow you wherever you go (TV Licensing are bad enough for that, not to mention privatised water companies, credit reference agencies, etc).

I also have serious doubts about people who start off their political careers as head of a self-pronounced 'People's Republic' (of Sheffield?!) and get free higher education, and then support unlimited detention without trial.

Blunkett is one of the most dangerous people in British politics, a mix of flexible principles (to keep his job at any particular stage of his career) and fanatical ambition. If anyone should be electronically tagged, it's him, before he becomes another Stalin.

I suspect others have seen this danger, hence his removal, engineered in typical, behind the scenes fashion. Good riddance.

[shaunotd.livejournal.com]

The media treatment of this mother is IMO an example of discrimination against the polyamourous.

If she wasn't married I'd agree, but one of the few parts of the marriage vows you still can't change (IIRC) is the exclusivity clause. Whether this was consensual polyamory or not, she had still broken her marriage vows.

If you solemnly swear something & sign a contract to that effect, society expects you to stick to it. Or at least formally dissolve the contract if you decide you can't deliver. Being married and poly is fraud, as things currently stand.

[dennyd.livejournal.com]

I think "a mix of flexible principles ... and fanatical ambition" is a fair description of a lot of New Labour. Certainly Blunkett's replacement seems to be keen on pushing ahead with everything the man set in motion.