Private life was main disability

DAVID BLUNKETT’S tangled private life has finally cost him the career he loves, after 34 years as a political battler.

His contest for contact with his ex-lover Kimberley Quinn’s son and the revelations it sparked have put paid to the top flight career of a man once tipped to become Britain’s first blind Prime Minister.

Stern and authoritarian to opponents but warm, generous and steadfastly loyal to friends, he sometimes seems to revel in the division he creates.

But what friend and foe alike all agree on is his capacity and appetite for hard work.

Mr Blunkett took responsibility for the tough political battlegrounds of immigration and crime when he was appointed Home Secretary following Labour’s 2001 victory.

However, he has also faced unprecedented pressures over security in the wake of the September 11 al-Qaida strikes.

Despite his blindness, Mr Blunkett, 57, appeared to shoulder the relentless workload with ease and until late summer all but his close circle assumed he was “married to the job.”

However, disclosures about his three-year affair with married magazine publisher Ms Quinn proved he was able to forge a life outside politics.

A life-long Labour man who joined up at 16, the Sheffield Brightside MP has been unafraid to take on opponents inside and outside the party.

Not a lawyer himself, his tenure at Queen Anne’s Gate has seen regular confrontations with the profession over legal reforms and civil liberties.

Identity cards has been the most recent bone of contention, with Mr Blunkett managing to upset store card bosses as well as the “airy fairy libertarians” so often in his sights.

However, the immigration issue provided him with one of his grimmest moments in politics.

Mr Blunkett showed typical loyalty to minister Beverley Hughes when she became embroiled in a scandal over a visa processing scam. But the Home Secretary’s full backing could not save Ms Hughes from a drip-feed of allegations, something that may now feel familiar to him.

Born the son of a Sheffield gasman, his early life has shaped Mr Blunkett’s combative approach to politics.

He was sent to a boarding school for the blind at the age of four and his father died in a horrific industrial accident eight years later, leaving his mother in poverty.

He then had to fight the school authorities to take examinations before winning a place at Sheffield University.

Mr Blunkett went on to become the youngest ever leader of Sheffield City Council in 1980.