David Blunkett
David Blunkett
David Blunkett, Baron Blunkett, PCis best known as a British politician and more recently as an academic, having represented the Sheffield Brightside and Hillsborough constituency for 28 years through to 7 May 2015 when he stepped down at the general election. Blind since birth, and coming from a poor family in one of Sheffield's most deprived districts, he rose to become Education and Employment Secretary, Home Secretary and Work and Pensions Secretary in Tony Blair's Cabinet following Labour's victory in...
NationalityBritish
ProfessionPolitician
Date of Birth6 June 1947
For six and a half years, I had responsibility for leading the Labour party policy on education and delivering on our promise of improved opportunities for all our children.
I encouraged Tony to serve out as much of this term as he can as PM. I think that's what he'll do, and I hope he'll want me to do this job through that period. I think he will.
History teaches us that, whatever we say, racists will always distort the words of mainstream politicians to make themselves sound more respectable.
Human nature is you get carried away, so we have to protect ourselves from ourselves.
The people we are dealing with are sophisticated, well organized and entirely ruthless, but they are also in a position to exploit the very freedoms we seek to protect.
I have made mistakes in the past, but when I have, I have always said so.
If, in the name of liberty, we allow individuals to act in a way that damages the wellbeing of the whole, it will inevitably mean the breakdown of mutuality, thereby changing the very nature of our society.
If I pleaded guilty to a mistake while I was home secretary, it wasn't that I didn't get tough - my God, I put immigration and security officials on French soil for the first time.
I didn't come into politics to have to deal with the issue of clandestine entry, illegal working, or an asylum system that allows a free run for right-wing bigots.
If surveillance infiltrates our homes and personal relationships, that is a gross breach of our human and civil rights.
I believe that, if the parole board decide it's necessary, such offenders should stay behind bars for the whole of their sentence and then be closely supervised for years after their release.
I am totally in favour of reform - but it must be reform that changes the nature of British politics, not simply the makeup or operation of parliament.
To punish MPs because of the distance they live from London - those with fast train journeys quite close to London as well as those at some distance from both the capital or an appropriate airport - is perverse, but also dangerous to democracy.
Being an MP is not a desperately hard life, like going down the pit or working in the steelworks - with which I am all too familiar, having been brought up in the city of Sheffield; and it certainly isn't badly paid compared with any of my constituents.