Politics and Progress David Blunkett Politico's, 170pp, £8.99 ISBN 1842750240

After four years in government, only two Labour ministers have emerged with significantly higher reputations than they had in 1997: David Blunkett and Jack Straw. The Prime Minister and Chancellor could hardly have started with higher reputations, but Straw was widely regarded as worthy but dull, while Blunkett was considered popular but limited. The roots of this condescending attitude to the Foreign Secretary are something of a puzzle. In opposition, he was consistently one of the most thoughtful and provocative shadow ministers: from his espousal of school standards and regular testing as shadow education secretary in the late 1980s - long before such ideas were remotely acceptable to most on the left - to his 1993 pamphlet (which provoked John Smith to apoplexy) arguing that Clause Four should be abolished.

Blunkett's political autobiography, On a Clear Day (now sadly out of print), is far from the usual turgid self-justification, and is instead a simple, almost matter-of-fact (and therefore more moving) description of his background, his father's horrific and protracted death after falling into a vat of boiling water, his family's subsequent penury and the low expectations against which he has battled, to varying degrees, all his life.

Blunkett has never been as easy to pigeon-hole as his label of 1980s "loony left" council leader tried to insist. For one thing, he was pivotal in Labour's expulsion of Militant. And on many issues, he has always been instinctively conservative. On the bread-and-butter issues, for instance, the core of his beliefs has always been far more subtle than the traditional left response to poverty. As leader of Sheffield, he made some woeful mistakes and defended some pretty indefensible policies, but even then he was trying to put into practice, as the soundbite has it, a hand-up, not a handout.

His career is a metaphor for Labour itself. In the early 1980s, he was regarded by all but his party allies as a dangerous left-winger with disastrous policy prescriptions. Over the past 20 years, he has learnt from his mistakes, realised the importance of both means and ends, and grasped the way the majority of his country think and behave, to such an extent that he, more than anyone except Tony Blair himself, now represents Labour's instinctive hold on the national mindset. Listen to most of his cabinet colleagues being interviewed and you hear only speak-your-weight machines, bludgeoning you with their one single line. Blunkett engages. He answers the questions. He doesn't fear being caught out because he says what he genuinely thinks, not what he has been forced to think by party orthodoxy. While some of his less admirable cabinet colleagues happily spout whatever gets them promoted, Blunkett has only ever been on his own intellectual journey, a journey that sometimes leads him to a difference of approach from the new Labour coterie, but which is none the less down the same road as that travelled by the Labour Party as a whole.

Blunkett has now emerged as a prime contender for the Labour leadership. I would - and have - put money on him winning. With Gordon Brown having made enemies of almost the entire cabinet, ex-cabinet ministers, most junior and former ministers, and now most of the trade unions who will have one-third of the vote, and with David Blunkett having long been the darling of the party membership, it is difficult to see - Charles Clarke, perhaps, apart - who could beat him. But it is trite to dismiss Politics and Progress as simply a leadership manifesto, as have most commentators. For one thing, it is far too serious a book. It is a policy wonk's beach reading, full of participation rates, reciprocities and tax credits. It is not light reading. But if you want to see what Labour's third and fourth terms might look like, start here.

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