I am yet again moved by empathy for a victim of a love triangle - strangely, this time it is a man. Stephen Quinn, husband of David Blunkett's light o' love, has been dragged into the pitiless media spotlight, and I know just how the humiliation burns. He is 60, and the reports have been inclined to discount him, as if at this age he is beyond it and can be painted out of the picture. Behind the soggy, Mills and Boon depiction of the illicit romance between Kimberly Fortier and David is a bitter and unresolvable conflict in which no one will live happily ever after, least of all the two children, one as yet unborn.
David Blunkett does not need special consideration because of his blindness, his unappealing looks, his tough early life and his loneliness. He has already surmounted all those disadvantages. This authoritarian minister, so intent upon lecturing us about family discipline while demolishing our rights, is ferociously protecting his own messy personal problems with threats of litigation and gagging injunctions. He is the prototypical gamekeeper-turned-poacher. What a pity there is no mechanism for relieving him of his duties until he has mended his ways.
Blunkett's metamorphosis of character in his rise to power is well documented. It is a process that, in the days when I was admitted in a wifely capacity to the Westminster stockade, I watched with fascination occur in several individuals. I recall Nigel Griffiths as a worshipful young lieutenant, canvassing for my then husband, Robin Cook. He was slavishly deferential, a sure sign of autonomous ambition. I met him soon after his election as an MP, a freshman in those hallowed halls, and greeted him cheerily with: "Hi, Nigel. Are you enjoying yourself?"
He looked me up and down with lofty and chilly reproof, rather as if I had just belched at a royal tea party. "Oh no, Margaret. I'm not here for enjoyment. I'm here to do very serious and important things."
My fascination with the psychology of power extends to the way people behave when no longer in with the in-crowd. In which context, I must emphasise how pleased I am that Robin Cook has rediscovered his CND credentials after his slide from the pinnacle. I am unreservedly admiring of the stance he took on the war in Iraq, and I was in no doubt that he made immense personal sacrifice in standing up for it. He and I are now on terms of tentative politeness. We met for the first time after the marriage break-up rumpus at his mother's funeral, a year or two ago. It was an event that was thankfully free of media interest. I also met Gaynor for the first time. Would you believe it, she said: "Nice to meet you." And I replied: "Nice to meet you, too."
I retired from my NHS consultant job two years ago, suffering from premature burn-out, as do most of us these days in the hostile business atmosphere that now pervades what used to be a most benign and supportive workplace. The rot started with Thatcher's illusory internal market, impossible to implement because no hospital could be allowed to fail in a competitive commercial market. Since then, under new Labour, the delusion that round services can be forced into market squares has continued to prevail.
Some people boasted that under the private finance initiative, the biggest hospital building programme of all time had been undertaken. Indeed, but they gloss over the concurrent and even bigger hospital closure programme that has had to happen, besides a huge loss of beds. In Edinburgh, in the context of the new PFI-built Edinburgh Royal Infirmary, a chief executive was heard to talk of "turning away trade" (trade being commercial-speak for patients) to achieve the required 25 per cent reduction in bed numbers - a reduction required for shareholders' profit, let it be understood. It is more expensive to park your car in the hospital car park here than at the airport. Patients spend £16 or more a week to use the hospital's TV sets and phone calls are £1 a minute. Ward staff spend time and energy shuffling patients and beds around simply to accommodate them all, discharging folk sometimes at three o'clock in the morning.
Cherie Blair is perceived as the most powerful woman in Britain. I find this bizarre. It is power with a gagging clause, a minder and a lifestyle guardian, an enduring obligation to toe the Tony-line and never to speak out of turn. What is power without free speech?
