Resentment of New Labour is Fuelling the David-and-kimberly Scandal

Let's start by admitting the obvious. This is more arresting than any lurid airport novel with shiny silver titles. It is more absorbing and simply odder than any soap. Indeed, a scriptwriter or aspiring fiction queen who came up with the True Tale of David and Kimberly would be shown the door. It is utterly implausible, this surreal narrative of passion and betrayal spiralling through the press and the courts, its denouement hanging in the future.

Are we interested? We would be dry, inhuman sticks not to be fascinated by it all - the unexplained story of the Quinn marriage, the trysts on island villas and in rural England, the wild exhibitionism at parties (completely missed by the hacks on whom the joke was being played) and the dark plunge into savage emotional warfare. There is nothing in Trollope like it. Even gorgeous, pouting Sylvie Krin is left at the starting gate. There should be no hand-wringing hypocrisy about that; we are gripped because it's gripping.

None of this makes it right. We have to remember that this is not Anna Karenina. It's not WestEnders. Right now, in the middle of London, there are real, flesh-and-blood people suffering horribly and contemplating the wreckage of their hopes. There is one child - and soon there will be another - whose whole life will be shadowed for ever by this public frenzy of accusation and denial; there are three adults in total torment. Sometimes, these things happen, but for most people they happen in decent privacy, where wounds can be bound and lives worked out. Not here. So it comes at a price, this confusing of the public being interested and public interest. It behoves all of us watching to remember the difference between entertainment and reality.

I know some people disagree, and feel that David Blunkett, by his public moralism and emphasis on duty, has left himself no right to privacy. As with the Tories, "back to basics" brings its own revenge. But whether you agree or disagree with his authoritarian streak, Blunkett's messages have been about crime, violence, harassed communities - none of that relevant here. He may have behaved with foolish passion, but no one can say he has behaved hypocritically. So, despite our human curiosity, we don't have any right to have it further fed. The Kimberly-and-David story should disappear into the silence of the courts, and then mutual reticence. We would all wonder: "What happened next?". Better for all if we never know.

What is in the public interest is the question of whether Mr Blunkett abused his position as home secretary to do favours for Mrs Quinn, a lady who seems to repay affection in deadly fashion. That is now for poor Sir Alan Budd - I bet he never thought his economics training would lead him into these muddy waters. But again a reality check is needed.

For the truth is that most people in power, asked for small favours by those close to them, tend to oblige. How many newspaper editors leading the charge against Mr Blunkett have ever got their secretaries to ring up football clubs or theatres to obtain hard-to-get tickets? Would they tell their offices not under any circumstances to mention their names or jobs? Would they hell.

This doesn't mean that if a visa was fast-tracked on Mr Blunkett's orders, that's OK. It clearly is not, and some retribution should follow if it turns out to be true - we shall know soon enough. The abuse of office is always wrong. But at some point, the country needs to get back some sense of proportion - to balance, just a little, the competence and record of a minister against the human blemishes.

There is a lot that Mr Blunkett does that I disagree with - as well as other things I'm for. But the proposition that we should automatically lose a highly talented, unusual and passionate man who plays a central role in the Labour government because of all this is at least worth challenging. He may have had a turbulent personal time. But he seems to have been working amazingly hard, and effectively, throughout it. I have come across corrupt people in politics. David Blunkett isn't one of them.

Yet there is a larger message, which the right understands better than the left, and Labour needs to consider. People do believe that there is in Britain a nomenklatura of people at the top who do one another favours all the time, scratching backs and oiling wheels; and it causes intense resentment.

During the Tory years, it was essentially a private-sector issue, the legions of fat-cat directors, the money men rich on privatisations and City deregulation who avoided tax, grabbed the best of everything, and were able to count on Conservative ministers and MPs to do them favours. There was an arrogance and swagger, which ended in the political crash still labelled "sleaze" and was one of the main factors behind New Labour's triumphant takeover in 1997.

The letdown that followed - the funding rows, the resignations, the lavishness some New Labour people indulged themselves in - is too well known to repeat here. But now we are seeing something else. It is the public sector equivalent of the private sector swagger, a liberal nomenklatura that has the potential to cause Labour as much damage as the other did. It is the "one rule for them, another rule for us" reaction to top lawyers being exempted from the Treasury pension cap. It is the resentment about MPs' and civil servants' pension security, felt by people struggling outside. It is the grand holidaying. It is the general sense that the party has been in power long enough to have lost its feel for ordinary life.

As it happens, this is mostly unfair, more perception than reality. The government is full of unpompous, hardworking people who live normal lives and do strive to remember what their constituents want from them - Mr Blunkett is a good example. His dignified, restrained plea yesterday to be treated as innocent until proven guilty, and his evident pride in his reputation for trust, was not the wriggling of a man fighting desperately for survival. My guess is that the public will agree; I hope so.

But all ministers need to understand that the days of taking a degree of public affection for granted have gone. People look at them through narrowed eyes. They are the boss class, and have been for years. It is a cynical country; in the past, Labour ministers have helped to make it so. Now they can't expect to be automatically trusted when they appoint this inquiry or that one. They need even tighter rules about public life, ever more independent layers of scrutiny.

It may not be pleasant, but it is the price of modern power. Under the voyeuristic fascination of reading about David and Kimberly there is a layer of resentment; and that's what ministers should be worrying about.