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
best used in the U.S. not in Britain.
Bishops and judges are some of the best politicians in the world. They know how to manipulate the political process.
The government must give men and women without power a real say over what happens to them, and the means of engaging in a participative, invigorated and living democracy.
The government wants to be able to attack extremism and hatred wherever it occurs.
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.
We need to build on what we know works - local oversight of schools to keep a check on performance, timely interventions in schools to support those at risk of failing, and partnerships between schools to help each one to improve.
Faith in technocrats over politicians is not a trend from which Britain is exempt.
What we are proposing are some sensible additional security measures.
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.
Tony asked me to stay. It could only have damaged the Prime Minister if I had stayed on.
We all accept that there is a compelling need for more effective powers to exclude and remove suspected terrorists from our country,
There is always an effort to link the public and the private.
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.
My job as Labour Home Secretary is to ensure people are prepared to listen to us when we take on our opponents across the political spectrum.