Mixed media: The private lives of public people

Eroded boundaries

ONLINE COMMENT: Blunkett might well attack the tabloids' appetite for gossip, but in this case he has made his own bed ... In fact, this Government has done more than any other to erode the boundary between public and private life.

Blair has long sought to found his public authority on his personal sincerity, with his "trust me, I'm Tony" approach. In policy terms, the notion of a private life seems to barely register on the official radar.

Blunkett's criminal justice reforms, for example, undermine personal autonomy and enable the authorities to keep tabs on us. Britain could use a bit more public scrutiny and a bit more private decorum - and that goes for the statements issued from the dispatch box as well as for the pages of the tabloids.

* Spiked Online

INDIAN ANGLE: In a desperate attempt to save his beleaguered Home Secretary, Tony Blair virtually redefined the code of conduct, saying ministers are free to pursue private lives without moral censure. He added that he regarded ministers' private lives as totally separate from their public office.

When Blair came to power for the first time in May 1997, he had promised a new era of integrity in politics, but at a press conference on Monday he repeatedly refused to pass judgment on the allegations that have put Blunkett's reputation and job on line.

* Hindustan Times

ESTABLISHMENT VIEW: It is inevitable that the loop of allegation and innuendo will continue. Once matters such as these are in the open, they are in the open. It is a tragic and fascinating tale, at one time private, that has become very, very public. Among all the tangled behaviour, broken trust and questionable motivation, one can only spare a thought for the children caught in the middle, and for Mrs Quinn's husband, Stephen, who seems, more than anybody else involved, to be acting in the best interests of those children.

* Editorial in the Times, London

CIVIL LIBERTIES BLOGGER: Home Secretary David Blunkett has said: "I shall continue to keep my private life private". Good for him. I'm certainly not going to invade his privacy.

I just wish Big Blunkett would do us the same courtesy. Yet he wants to impose on us his expensive and intrusive national identity card scheme. ID Cards and the national identity register will destroy privacy in the UK forever.

* Big Blunkett



Confused issues

SCOTS VIEW: David Blunkett is hardly my favourite Home Secretary of all time, but the media seem to be confused about which issues are serious and which aren't with their current Blunkett "scandal". If the allegations that he fast-tracked his lover's nanny's asylum application are proven true then it will certainly have been an abuse of ministerial power but a relatively minor one. The allegations are also insignificant compared with Blunkett's policy of "detaining" (ie, jailing) asylum-seekers indefinitely without a fair trial or his repeated proposals to remove the right not to be jailed without a fair trial by jury from UK citizens. Would you trust a secret tribunal presenting evidence gathered by MI6, which is not shown to the defence, to give you a fair trial? Yet none of this seems to be front-page or television-headline news.

* Duncan McFarlane of Carluke (see link provided)

LIBERAL COMMENTATOR: Ask yourself this question: Do you really - and I mean really - believe that modern politicians are entitled to a private life, as Tony Blair asserted in his defence of David Blunkett? The claim to privacy sounds so reasonable and so right, and at first sight indeed it is ... The awkward truth is that the way people live their private lives does tell us things that can help to make judgments about them as public people. Their sex lives may be less indicative here than less conventionally dramatic things like how they get on with their children or what they do with their spare time. I'm not sure which is more illuminating: the fact that Tony Blair likes going on holiday in Tuscany or the fact that Gordon Brown doesn't. But each tells me something that I'm glad to know.

* Martin Kettle in The Guardian

AUSTRALIAN VIEW: Nobody does a political sex scandal quite like the British ...

But the Blunkett affair has a tragic dimension and real political consequences for Mr Blair. As the most senior Western politician with a serious disability - he has been blind since birth and spent his childhood in an orphanage - Mr Blunkett has been an inspiration and a model for others. Just as important, Mr Blunkett's tough-minded approach towards law and order issues has been a key element in New Labour's appeal to its blue-collar base. Blunkett has now initiated an inquiry into the nannygate claims, but with a general election likely early next year the timing for Mr Blair couldn't be worse. And he won't be consoled by the observation that, in its own sordid way, the Blunkett scandal is the best of British.

* The Australian

COLUMNIST'S TAKE: I happen to think it is rather admirable that the Home Secretary, a man who is driven by a strong sense of duty, wants to take responsibility for two children who even his former lover now seems to concede are his. Too often in the past, politicians have tried to shake off their "illegitimate" offspring. I am also suspicious of a mother who wants to prevent her children from having contact with their father in an attempt to make her own life, and her own marriage, more straightforward - particularly when she appears to be mounting an extraordinary media campaign to get her way.

* Rachel Sylvester in The Daily Telegraph