NS reader predicts the return of David Blunkett
If, as seems to be a racing certainty, Tony Blair is safely back at No 10 tomorrow and announces his new Cabinet it seems almost as certain that a refurbished David Blunkett will be back in office. We have been warned by the man himself what he thinks about those amongst us whom he calls ‘the disaffected.’ He seems to mean everybody who once supported Labour but who have been upset enough, whether by Iraq or by other things, to cast their votes elsewhere in today’s election. This, we all thought, was our democratic right. But not so, according to Blunkett. As he told ‘The Independent’: ‘If the disaffected in the electorate end up with such a small majority that the disaffected in Parliament can rule, then it’s the disaffected per se in the electorate and Parliament that run the show. That is not good for democracy.’
Blunkett used to talk about ‘disaffected pupils’ when he was at Education - but he has extended his concern to us, the electorate. The Concise Oxford Dictionary has it that ‘disaffected’ means ‘disloyal, especially to one’s superiors.’ Bertoldt Brecht once wrote of an East German Communist Party leader who stated after an uprising that ‘the people had forfeited the confidence of the government and could win it back only by redoubled efforts.’ Would it not, asked Brecht, be easier in that case for the government to dissolve the people and elect another?