A chill Cabinet

In a taped diary entry for April 2003, David Blunkett describes a terrible dream: ‘a dream that had all the undertones of being on the outside, of being alienated, of being given the cold shoulder, of being friendless and leaning on a stick, having fallen out with Tony Blair and then having challenged him in the middle of a speech in the Commons and humiliating him by raising something that left him floundering.’

Well, you don’t have to be Freud to analyse that particular nightmare. This is an important book, though not for the reasons many anticipated. On the subject of his private life, and the personal background to his first Cabinet resignation, in December 2004, Blunkett has nothing to say, except to express his ‘regret’ for some of the claims he made at the time. Those looking for salacious detail will be sorely disappointed. If anything, there is a mournful sense of honour at work in these pages, a longing for redemption.