UK HOME SECRETARY, DAVID BLUNKETT

An Authoritarian Inhales

EVEN his Conservative opponents will admit over a good enough lunch
that David Blunkett is a formidable politician. Indeed, David
Willetts, his Tory opposite when Mr Blunkett was still in charge of
education, remembers feeling confident only once that one of his
parliamentary assaults on Mr Blunkett was striking home. For reasons
that Mr Willetts could not quite fathom at the time, a speech he was
making in the Commons began to cause visible consternation not only to
Mr Blunkett himself but also to the whole Labour front bench.

Encouraged, Mr Willetts yammered on. Only when he was half-way through
his peroration did he receive a chastening handscribbled note. The
consternation opposite had been caused not by Mr Willetts's debating
shafts but by the fact that Mr Blunkett's guide dog had just been sick
on the Commons floor.

The guide dog--or, at least, what the guide dog represents--is of course
part of what makes Mr Blunkett formidable. Nobody who has been blind
for most of his life, and bone-poor for all of his childhood, rises to
the cabinet unless he has something special about him. But this is far
from being Mr Blunkett's chief advantage in politics.

His chief advantage arises from his having been a hero of municipal
socialism when he was leader of Sheffield City Council during the
Thatcher years, and now being a completely sincere adherent of New
Labour. In the Labour Party, this bridging of traditions gives him a
moral authority that lesser cabinet ministers can only aspire to. By
the time of the general election last June, the drive, the legend, the
moral authority, the imminence of a book of great political thoughts
and his elevation from education secretary to home secretary had
conspired to set off speculation that he and not Gordon Brown might in
the end inherit the leadership from Tony Blair.

Four months on, how is Mr Blunkett faring?

The book of great political thoughts is, frankly, a bit of a bore.
"Politics and Progress: Renewing Democracy and Civil Society" (Politico's,
UKP8.99) will not propel the home secretary into the bestsellers' list with
its calls for rebuilding democratic dialogue, lifelong learning, an active
welfare state, a stronger sense of citizenship and other familiar ideas.

On the other hand, being home secretary, especially after the
terrorist attacks of September 11th launched a thousand editorial
columns on the proper trade-off between public safety and civil
liberties, has propelled Mr Blunkett even further up the news agenda
than he was as education secretary. This, of course, is both a danger
and an opportunity.

The Home Office is famous for tripping up even the most agile
politicians. For Mr Blunkett it held an extra danger.

His reputation as a social authoritarian primed critics on Labour's
left to expect a home secretary who would be "even more right-wing"
than Jack Straw, the man he replaced.

One of the first things Mr Blunkett did at the Home Office was to sack
Keith Hellawell, the drugs "tsar". Mr Blunkett recognised that the
drugs policy was going nowhere.

Despite having some of the toughest anti-drugs laws in the developed
world, Britain also has one of Europe's worst addiction records.

This week, Mr Blunkett announced his intention to reclassify cannabis
from a class B drug to class C, putting it in the same category as
anti-depressants and steroids.

Technically, cannabis will remain illegal, but people will no longer
be prosecuted for possessing it. The use of cannabis for medical
purposes will be legalised, after more research.

The government may also consider reclassifying other drugs, such as
ecstasy.

This is a sensible change on the margins of drug policy rather than a
radical move towards decriminalisation. But even this had been
rejected by Mr Straw for "sending out all the wrong signals" when it
was recommended last year by the Police Foundation, a rather superior
committee of the great and good. Mr Blunkett's U-turn might of course
suggest a simple difference of policy opinion: he was influenced
largely by the disproportionate amount of police time wasted in
cannabis-related arrests. But it also suggests that this supposed
social authoritarian is less wary than Mr Straw was of exposing
himself to the charge of being a liberal, and more able to persuade Mr
Blair to change direction.

It also fits in well, his friends say, with his general political
philosophy. Shocked by the low voter turnout in June's election, he
has been arguing that politicians lose respect when they pass or
retain unenforceable laws.

Twin Towers

So far, so admirable.

September 11th, on the other hand, poses more delicate challenges. A
home secretary who does too little to rebalance civil liberty and
public safety looks complacent. One who does too much looks
authoritarian. Just before going to the Labour Party conference last
month, Mr Blunkett wrote an article in the Guardian promising to
approach this balancing act "with care". Quoting his new book, he
stressed the need to secure democracy by "reinvigorating democratic
engagement" and revitalising "wider civil society" so that individuals
can truly be "active citizens". Freedom, he asserted, does not just
mean doing what you want without harming others. "It means engaging in
the wider collective endeavour of shaping our society."

Well, maybe.

But after the twin towers, it is not "positive" liberty--active
citizenship, more voting and all that--that is at risk. It is that
old-fangled right to do what you want if it does not hurt others that
Mr Blunkett needs to weigh against the demands of public safety.
Instead, he proposes to make it easier to detain suspects without
charge, to suspend parts of Mr Straw's Human Rights Act, to introduce
a retrospective law to penalise anthrax hoaxers, and to frame a law to
ban the incitement of religious hatred.

Exceptional times do of course demand exceptional measures.

But it is hard to escape the conclusion that when municipal socialism
meets New Labour, liberty is not prized as it should be. Perhaps that
book of his deserves closer scrutiny.