Word: blunkett
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...STEPPING DOWN. DAVID BLUNKETT, 57, British Home Secretary, following a scandal over his alleged involvement in expediting a residence visa for his ex-lover's nanny; in London. Although Blunkett denied any wrongdoing, the scandal capped a string of career-damaging revelations, including nasty remarks about his colleagues made in a recent biography, the disclosure of his three-year affair with American publisher Kimberly Quinn, and his claims to have fathered her two-year-old son. Born blind, Blunkett rose from working-class roots to become one of Prime Minister Tony Blair's closest allies; his security initiatives were...
...court case is not the only sign that Blunkett's judgment has been affected by his feelings for his lover. There is speculation in Westminster that the original kiss-and-tell story that made the affair public was planted by the Home Secretary himself, with the apparent goal of getting Quinn to come back to him. Now she has claimed that he misused his office to help her when they were lovers, putting his reputation and job on the line...
...Blunkett has already repaid $340 for free rail travel enjoyed by Quinn, which was was meant to be reserved for M.P.s' spouses. In another incident, he sent two senior Home Office civil servants to a meeting between Quinn and her lawyers when news of the affair was about to break. Most damaging, he is alleged to have fast-tracked the visa renewal of the Quinns' former nanny, though the evidence is inconclusive and he strenuously denies it; the matter is now being officially investigated. Last week Quinn was in the hospital, dehydrated and vomiting, having apparently collapsed under the strain...
...Blunkett's private pain has public importance beyond the normal ups and downs of life in Westminster. He is genuinely popular as a remarkable man who overcame blindness and poverty to reach the top of British politics. But many critics also accuse him of a deep authoritarian streak. He has introduced indefinite detention without trial for foreign terror suspects; he wants everyone to carry an identity card containing biometric identifiers; he tried to cut access to jury trials and wants to tell jurors the details of some defendants' past convictions...
...Detractors point to abundant evidence that authority in Britain is not always benign: racist police botch major investigations; faulty government databases regularly cause chaos; people are imprisoned for crimes it later turns out they did not commit. When the heat of his struggle with Quinn subsides, Blunkett - if he survives as Home Secretary - will be standing in a landscape littered with evidence that even good people can do screwy things. The next time Britain's top cop is writing a bill to stiffen punishments or restrict liberties, that's something he would do well to remember...