When I first came across the name of David Blunkett in the mid-1980s, it is fair to say the then leader of Sheffield City Council ranked among the people I most admired in politics. I was a rather impoverished journalism student in Sheffield at the time and had cause to be grateful for his cheap bus fares policy which enabled me to travel anywhere in the city for 10p. But it wasn't all about self-interest - it was impossible not to admire a man who, even then, had achieved what he had in spite of his disabilities and humble start in life. In that sense, Mr Blunkett is far and away the most remarkable man in British politics, notwithstanding the intellectual brilliance of Gordon Brown and the political genius of Tony Blair. Already a national figure by the time he entered the Commons in 1987, it was not surprising that many saw Mr Blunkett at the time as the great hope of the Labour left. Instead, he moved decisively away from the social libertarianism he espoused in the 1980s to become the voice of the party's authoritarian right-wing and a pillar of New Labour. If Mr Brown is the social conscience of the party, Mr Blunkett represents those Labour voters who are more worried about crime and disorder than international debt relief. And such is the prominence of these issues in Labour's pre-election agenda that the importance of the Home Secretary to Mr Blair and his party cannot really be under-estimated. It is this that accounts for the rescue operation mounted on Mr Blunkett's behalf this week as the bitter aftermath of his affair with publisher Kimberly Quinn threatened to escalate out of control. Mr Blair based his defence of his ally on the premise that the lives of ministers are their own business, enabling him to dodge tricky questions about the morality of his conduct. My purpose in writing this column is not to pass judgment on that, though I have some sympathy with the view that stealing a man's wife is actually a graver offence than hurrying-up a passport application. No, what concerns me more are the apparent inconsistencies between Mr Blair's new doctrine and his past record when similar issues were at stake. In his determination to save Mr Blunkett, the Prime Minister has in effect re-written the code of ministerial conduct to put issues of private morality beyond its scope. But this marks something of a paradigm shift since the days when New Labour was making hay over the sexual peccadilloes of Tory ministers like David Mellor and Tim Yeo. Labour in opposition was quite happy to lump all this together as a generalized attack on the "sleaze" that came to characterize John Major's Government and played a big part in its eventual political defeat. It is the rankest of hypocrisy for Mr Blair to now pretend that the private lives of ministers are no concern of his, when exploiting the private lives of Tory ministers helped win him power in the first place. But worse than that, the Prime Minister has on occasions pointedly failed to draw the public-private distinction in relation to his own ministers. In the summer of 1997, Robin Cook received a phone call from Mr Blair's press secretary Alastair Campbell telling him he had half an hour to choose between his wife and his mistress. The clear implication of this phone call was that if Mr Cook ignored the spin doctor's advice, Downing Street would hang the then Foreign Secretary out to dry. Mr Cook bit the bullet and kept his job - but a year or so later, Welsh Secretary Ron Davies was less fortunate after owning up to a "moment of madness" with a man on Clapham Common. Like Mr Cook, Mr Davies was an Old Labour irritant from the left of the party whom the Prime Minister wanted rid of. Indeed, while in opposition, the party leadership mounted a campaign to have him voted off the Shadow Cabinet so Mr Blair could give his job to fellow Welsh MP Alun Michael. Mr Davies - who was no mean organizer himself - thwarted the plan and actually finished fourth in the 1996 Shadow Cabinet elections as Labour MPs rallied to his defence. But there is more than one way to skin a cat, and sure enough, when Mr Davies was finally forced out in 1998, his job duly went to Mr Michael. Now if I was in a charitable mood, I might surmise that in the ensuing six years Mr Blair had become more relaxed about moral issues. But isn't it simply the case that while Messrs Cook and Davies were deemed politically expendable, Mr Blunkett assuredly is not? Of course the Prime Minister is nothing if not ruthless. He will already have a contingency plan in his back pocket in the event that the Home Secretary is eventually forced to quit. Expect arch-bruiser Charles Clarke to then be sent to the Home Office with a brief to step up the war on terrorism, antisocial behaviour, and - the real enemy - Mr Brown. For it is the Chancellor who has once again emerged as the big winner from a week of political machinations which also saw him deliver his own blueprint for Labour's third term. Even if Darlington MP Alan Milburn is still in charge of the election manifesto, it is now pretty clear he'll be lifting much of it from Mr Brown's Pre-Budget Report published on Thursday. To those who have sought to belittle his campaign role, Mr Brown hit back with a giant raspberry in the form of vote-winning plans for lower council taxes, extra maternity pay, and increased child tax credits. And whatever now happens to Mr Blunkett, Gordon the Big Engine continues to go full steam ahead. | 
