The wit and wisdom of David Blunkett

David Blunkett has announced that he’ll be standing down at the next election. ‘It is clear that the leadership of the party wish to see new faces in ministerial office and a clear break with the past,’ he said — I’m not sure if that’s a coded reference to Miliband’s unfinished purge of those who ran Labour at a time when it won elections. But it did make me think of two things

Blunkett’s career has been absolutely extraordinary, a blind man who was still able to read so much that he’d shoot me a caustic email, sometimes even threatening to sue me, if I wrote anything about him that he considered unfair. He was never under-briefed, and never showed any sign of his disability. He managed politics – the rousing speeches, even the sex scandals –  as well as anyone. Unlike some of those now running Westminster, he never sounded as if he had walked from the pages of a political textbook.