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
Balancing the common good with the freedom and liberty to exercise that individuality has been and remains a challenge for those committed to democracy while understanding that the polis ensures our participation and therefore our citizenship.
I prefer a positive view of freedom, drawing on another tradition of political thinking that goes all the way back to the ancient Greek polis.
We rightly pride ourselves on the safe haven we offer to those genuinely fleeing terror. But our moral obligation and love of freedom does not extend to offering hospitality to terrorists.
The people we are dealing with are sophisticated, well organized and entirely ruthless, but they are also in a position to exploit the very freedoms we seek to protect.
How to strike the right balance between our privacy and our expectation that the state will protect us and facilitate our freedom is one of the most difficult challenges facing us all.
In government, you are pressed by the security agencies. They come to you with very good information, and they say, 'You need to do something.' So you do need the breath of scepticism, not cynicism, breathing on them.
That is why with enormous regret I have tendered my resignation to the prime minister today.
I'm guilty of a mistake and I'm paying the price of it,
I grew up in one of the most deprived parts of Britain. I know the problems which inner-city children face.
In an ageing society, it makes sense to support older adults to develop new skills, prolonging their working lives.
I've had a guide dog since 1969. Not the same one, of course: I've had five.
I want to go back to a time when I was very young, when you expected the police to be part of the community and the community to be part of policing.
At this very moment in time there will be people making, breaking relationships, regretting deeply what they've done, and causing hurt, but that is a fact of life, and if we weren't full of emotion, we'd be automatons, and I don't think people want us to be that.
We all accept that there is a compelling need for more effective powers to exclude and remove suspected terrorists from our country,