A biography of former home secretary David Blunkett exposes his rejection of all things left wing, writes Illtyd Harrington

David Blunkett by Stephen Pollard
Hodder and Stoughton, £20

This David strode around the dangerous and dark places of Whitehall challenging any other Philistine.
They might be civil service mandarins, the Lord Chancellor or the Lord Chief Justice, asylum seekers, illegal immigrants or football hooligans.
Sadly, unlike his biblical predecessor, it now seems very unlikely that he will inherit the political crown.
On his 57th birthday, June 6, 2004, he confidently believed that the front door of number 10 would be flung open for him. But by August 2004, it had been slammed in his face. In his autobiography On a Clear Day, he painted a self-portrait, which I cruelly called The Picture of Dorian Gray Part Two
Stephen Pollard retells the saga of his climb up the greasy pole. We are bidden to pause and gaze in wonder at his phenomenal workload, his incredible retentive memory, which could be very selective and his rages at imperfection in others.
Often we are told he was “incandescent”, not a familiar quality in a former Methodist lay-preachers. If you rang him between 5pm and 5.30pm on a Sunday afternoon, he would apparently “hit the roof”.
Labour had apparently found its Cossack general. He took on education. In passing, he confronted the NUT and other politically left-leaning teachers, but as home secretary he mollified the Police Federation, even mentioning to them that a long lost cousin was one of the rank and file delegates.
He had a real policeman in the family.
This generosity of spirit did not extend to many of his leading cabinet colleagues. Gordon Brown, John Prescott, Charles Clarke, Patricia Hewitt and Tessa Jowl did not come up to his rigorous standards. For those who enjoy venom and invective read between pages 23 and 29. He has the sting of a bad tempered viper.
This, however, does not extend to some unlikely friends like the editor of the Daily Mail Paul Dacre and the chief executive of the Press Association and Rupert Murdoch’s right-hand man, Paul Potts.
Mr Potts is “a radical Thatcherite” and Mr Darce, the Roman Catholic editor of the Mail, is one of his confidantes.
“The Mail is a well known and reliable newspaper,” Blunkett told the House of Commons, and he might have added, a gracious and generous lunchtime host.
The Duchess of Devonshire is one of David’s friends and leases him a cottage near her baronial pile near Chatsworth. Judge him not by his enemies, but by his friends.
Again and again his leadership of Sheffield City Council is held up as a model for local government.
How unkind, then, of the voters to endorse the Liberal Democrats after 38 years of Labour rule.
He walked out of a play in Sheffield when he was told there was nudity on stage. He abstained over the Gulf War, in 1991, but was visible in his excitement over Iraq in 2003.
His favourite book as a child was Enid Blyton, not ‘Marxism for Babies’. He married Ruth Mitchell in 1970 and produced three sons.
Recently his apologists have described it as “a loveless marriage”. This, by any standards, was a biological coupling, beyond the most prurient mind. They are divorced.
My encounters with him in the 1980s were when he was leader of Sheffield and a strident voice of rebellious local government. They are not echoed here.
My cynicism sharpened when I read: “I was trying to keep things going for local government, despite Livingstone causing havoc in London.”
That was not how I recall Blunkett of the barricades, but then Stalin re-wrote history.
In May 1994, John Smith, the leader of the Labour Party, died of a heart attack, and thereafter, Blunkett hitched his wagon to Blair’s ascending star. Suddenly, in 2004, he fell from grace and his passion for Kimberly Quinn, the publisher of the Spectator, aborted his ambition.
After his tearful TV interview, I thought he might join Fathers For Justice.
There’s one delightful incident among this piece of hagiography.
It occurs in Buckingham Palace, when the victorious cabinet members assemble to kiss hands with the Queen in the formation on the second Blair government in 2001.
There was general confusion, which Jack Straw added to, by pointing Blunkett in the wrong direction. As it ended, a bemused Queen said to her newly anointed cabinet:
“I hope you run the country better than you’ve managed over the last 15 minutes.”
She said it all.
• Illtyd Harrington is the former deputy chairman of the Greater London Council.