David's Daily Diversions

Demise of My Nemesis

I have been blogging about David Blunkett for about as long as I have been blogging about anyone or anything. Now the Home Secretary is the former Home Secretary. The man who spearheaded the introduction of biometric indentity cards and chipped away at the rights of the individual is back on the back benches.

It appears that the evidence was mounting against him in the scandal over whether he fast-tracked the visa application of his married lover's nanny. A smoking gun email was uncovered and that, as they say, was that.

It didn't help that he had bad-mouthed many of his Cabinet colleagues in his biography that was released today. Not the way to win friends and influence people when they are the very people you need to rally behind you to keep your job. They were otherwise perfectly willing to stand behind him in the whole matter of not only admitting his affair with a married woman, but being the one to publicise it to the papers and then hauling her into court (in her 7th month of a complicated pregnancy, resulting her hospitalisation) to press for paternity rights to both her 2-year-old and her unborn child.

Whilst the Conservatives were not "whiter than white" (as Blair promised Labour would be during the 1997 General Election campaign), in times of Tory ascendancy, this would have led to a resignation long, long before it reached the point of the Blunkett situation. But this is just a sign of the times. Neither the Government nor the governed care one bit about who is sleeping with who. Adultery and promiscuity are in. The sanctity of marriage is out. Way out.

The down side of the Blunkett demise is his replacement. It would just happen to be my other nemesis on this blog, Education Secretary Charles Clarke. Clarke has proved himself so far to be a complete idiot. The only good thing is that he is out of the Department for Education and Skills. So now he is not ruining our children, but merely protecting our nation.

Lord have mercy.