David Blunkett: Authoritarian? No, he says, just a man who speaks the language of the people he represents

The Monday Interview: The Home Secretary

Even without last week's parliamentary struggle to save the Criminal Justice Bill, the transformation at the top of the Tory party would have thrown an even sharper spotlight on the Home Secretary than before.

For David Blunkett is up against a tough former home secretary in Michael Howard, and an even tougher aspiring one in David Davis, judging by the speed with which he reaffirmed his support for the death penalty. Suddenly the Labour Party could be rather glad it does not have a softly spoken liberal as Home Secretary. If nothing else, the new slimline David Blunkett looks fit to take on a reinvigorated Tory party, having lost two stone this year through rigorous dieting.

But will Mr Howard's leadership increase in the Home Secretary what his liberal critics already believe is an authoritarian tendency? Mr Blunkett says he does not resent the "authoritarian" label.

"I smile about it, because I'm not," he says. "I speak the language of the people I represent. Which, incidentally, is not just sneered at in this country; it's the big fault of the liberals on the east coast of America. They don't understand why Reagan was liked or Bush became popular. It was not because they are vicious right-wingers per se, but because they were able to relate to people who others treated with a sort of disdain. I don't want to make that mistake.

"I want to stay in touch with the roots I came from, but I want to have the know-how to be able to persuade and carry them much further than they would instinctively go on some of the very big issues."

Mr Howard is "less pleasant as a politician than he is as a person". But Mr Blunkett adds: "He's given Labour Party members and supporters something to fight against as well as something to fight for. I think he's ensured the next general election will have a slightly higher turnout. [The Tories] may well have done us and our democracy a good turn. His instincts are those of David Davis rather than Tim Yeo. No, he's not in favour of hanging but he gives the impression he would hang you and that's an interesting combination."

As if to underline his argument that the "authoritarian" tag is a caricature, he insists the alarmingly high prison population of 74,000, Western Europe's largest, can be reduced, in part, through weekend custodial sentences and a "massive extension" of initiatives such as tagging. "The Government, and me in particular, are a lot more radical on prison and correctional services generally than is normally presented in the British media."

That will be even truer when details of the review into correctional services by the government "troubleshooter" Patrick Carter are revealed in the new year. "We have a clarity of purpose, which is to have sensible community and light-touch sentences for first-time offenders of a non-violent nature and much tougher, clearer sentences ... in terms of those who are serious violent offenders." Hadn't he laid emphasis on the judicial system being too weighted in favour of the defendant when, in fact, acquittals were less a cause of offenders going unpunished than, say, the failure to catch offenders in the first place? He has followed a highly reformist agenda on every part of his brief, including on the police. But if the outcome of trials was that you have "technical knock-outs, rather than a proper search for truth" Mr Blunkett feels that "the criminals and the community get those signals and they disengage because they became disaffected with the system. All of that affects the success of our... criminal justice framework," he says.

Even on the increase in gun crime, which has doubled since Labour came to power, he is unashamed in backing a multi-dimensional approach aimed at a "massive change in culture". He points to the Haringey Peace Alliance in north London, where the black community is working with the Met to cut armed crime. He says: "It can be done but the best practice needs spreading very rapidly because the spread of gun crime has been equally rapid. In places from Bristol to Nottingham, from Merseyside to the West Midlands, you have got a big rise. You can do something if you engage with the community ... It's a hard-edged policy that works if the community co-operate and see the problem is their problem and they are prepared to work with the police on it."

That meant people coming forward as witnesses and informants and "offering more to young men who have previously seen guns and drugs and criminality as the more attractive option to hard work and more routine ways of earning a living". It meant "civil renewal" as well as "the tougher approach we've laid out, often against the odds", including the use of the Proceeds of Crime Act to deprive offenders of their ill-gotten gains.

Does a similar twin-track philosophy apply to the continuing tough asylum measures, not yet complete, that the Home Secretary is famous for introducing? "What we are trying to do is get a grip of a system that isn't working, to build trust and confidence, to give a sense of stability and security, on which we are then on firm ground in opening up the progressive agenda of saying, 'It's in our best interests to welcome people here legally and openly to integrate them better to see off racists'." It is a matter of allaying voters' fears and then persuading them, rather than "abusing [them] because they don't like what you're doing".

Which is one argument for ID cards, which he believes would make it easier to identify bogus asylum-seekers while reinforcing the status of bona fide immigrants. It would, he says, have been easier for a less "futurist" politician to leave this alone, as he believes Labour suffered in 1979 for not having implemented Barbara Castle's plans to curb the unions a decade earlier. "Unless you are prepared to take challenges that don't immediately require addressing, because they are not hitting you at the moment, you let down the generation of the future, because they will have to pick up the pieces too late and often your own party will get the backlash," he says.

Back to the new Tory leader, who he says "provides a target and a climate in which so long as we are clear about what we stand for and how we address the future we will be able to define politics more clearly". How does Labour do that? By a belief in an "enabling, supporting facilitating" state, based on "mutuality and interdependence" and set against the "free-for-all, the individual-in-the-jungle of the political right" - what he describes as the "voucherism" of the Tory approach to health and education. He believes that the grants embodied in the child trust fund are so important because they will "help build the asset base for people to be their own salvation but aided by the rest of us ... rather than relying on the benefit system, which did help people but helped them into dependence". He even implies Mr Howard's arrival could help to reduce fissures in Labour ranks, including the recent unprecedented public spat between Gordon Brown and Tony Blair. "Elections are a great healer. There's a great propensity to come together when you are faced with the real opponent. Together we're strong. I believe, [having] spent those terrible years in opposition, whenever we have a propensity to divide we should, like Marley's ghost, take a quick look backwards at what it was like."

He shows every sign of being very happy in his job. While education was "more fun", the Home Office is "more at the centre of things". But when Mr Blair decides to go might he make a pitch for the leadership? "If I'm a senior member of the Cabinet at the distant point when the Prime Minister determines himself it is time for him to take on a new challenge, I shall be glad actually to be still there and I shall be very happy to make an assessment at that point of what the future should offer."

THE CV

Age: 56

Education:

* Sheffield School for the Blind;

* Royal Normal School for the Blind, Shrewsbury;

* Shrewsbury Technical College;

* Richmond College, Sheffield;

* Sheffield University;

* Huddersfield College of Education

1967-69 Office work, East Midlands Gas Board;

1973-81 Tutor, Barnsley College of Technology;

1970-88 Councillor, Sheffield City Council;

1980-87 Leader, Sheffield City Council;

June 1987 Elected MP for Sheffield Brightside;

1988-92 Opposition spokesman on local government;

1992-94 Shadow Secretary of State for Health;

1994-97 Shadow Secretary of State for Education/ Education and Employment;

1997-2001 Secretary of State for Education and Employment;

2001- present

Home Secretary