Does David Blunkett need to live like a monk? I fear he does. At the weekend, the most copious details of his relationship with Sally Anderson, an estate agent from Berkshire, appeared not in a tabloid but in the Sunday Times, which put the story on the front of the main paper as well as on the first two pages of its News Review section.
"Sources close to Blunkett" are in action again, this time arguing with "friends of Anderson" instead of "friends of Kimberly Quinn". Like Quinn, Anderson finds she, too, is denied a private life and her other relationships are under scrutiny, even though, unlike Quinn, Anderson is single.
As a journalist who has spent a lifetime on posh papers, I should now denounce the prurience and intrusion of the British press, compare us unfavourably to the French and call for tough privacy laws. I am sorry to disappoint. Our politicians have the press they deserve. They have abandoned any coherent commitment to ideas, principles or policies. They do not take clear positions on, for example, global warming, pensions or Europe. Rather, they ask us to trust them as good folk of sound judgement. They do not confront tax-dodging multinationals, monopolistic supermarkets, retailers of polluting 4x4s or, for that matter, big newspaper groups. On the contrary, they accept fat donations from such sources or, in the case of the newspapers, seek proprietors' views before they make policy and conspire with downmarket journalists to leak stories with a "helpful" angle. Meanwhile, they lecture the rest of us about inadequate parenting and antisocial behaviour, and bundle us into the street if we dare interrupt their speeches.
It is politicians who have trivialised public life. Since nobody now has the faintest idea what the Labour Party stands for, voters can judge its leaders only as personalities. Newspapers try to help, fitting politicians into a dramatic structure. So Tony Blair is slick and charming, Gordon Brown dour and conscientious. And Blunkett is a silly old fool and a bit of a bully.
Lest we forget, an inquiry found that, during Blunkett's affair with Quinn, a visa application for her nanny had been "fast-tracked" through the Home Office. That was why he resigned as Home Secretary, though it wasn't clear he had personally broken any rules. I feel sorry for him. But according to the rules of modern politics, his love life is fair media game. If he wants privacy he must return again to the back benches. He probably won't, because ministerial office gives him pulling power. Which is another reason why the press can justify intrusion into his private life.
I think I was the first person to give a national newspaper byline to Allison Pearson, now anointed as the late Lynda Lee-Potter's successor at the Daily Mail and therefore to be hailed quaintly as "the first lady of Fleet Street". I was then (1990-91) news editor of the Independent on Sunday, and Pearson was a senior sub-editor known as "Mrs Thatcher", not for any political reason but because of similarities in looks, dress and hairstyle. I published a piece of hers about the shortage of women's lavatories at theatres and other public places - a brave decision on my part because the then editor, Stephen Glover, was deeply suspicious of anything to do with either women or lavatories.
Pearson's story was astonishingly well written. She herself was astonishingly stroppy, bombarding me with protests when a few dozen words were cut. On both counts, I detected a star in the making.
A year or so later the IoS fell out with its TV critic, and Pearson, by then deputy arts editor, filled in while we looked for a replacement. Everywhere I went over the next three weeks people asked: "Who is Allison Pearson?" I cannot remember any other writer making such an instant and positive impact. Naturally, we gave up the search for a new critic.
Pearson will bring class and sophistication to the Mail, as well as a few liberal instincts, so she will balance the paper's other new recruit, the Sun's Richard Littlejohn, the nearest British equivalent to the "shock jocks" of American radio. She also has a fragile ego and an erratic temperament, and is what we in the trade call a "high-maintenance" writer. The Mail's editor, Paul Dacre, is not renowned for charm and gentleness of manner, but if Pearson wants to go on at length about lavatories, I advise him to grin and bear it.
I have frequently expressed concern about the newspapers' unwillingness to report global warming seriously and consistently. But now I have hope. Latest reports from the Arctic suggest that melting ice is causing big problems for polar bears. This moved the Daily Telegraph (30 September) to devote an entire centre spread to global warming, with an enormous picture of one of the beleaguered creatures. As the press sees it, humans can drown or choke in their millions, but cuddly-looking animals are a different matter.
