Budd Lite
‘HOW can Sir Alan Budds conclusions into the matter of Kimberly Quinns nannys visa application lead to two utterly different headlines?
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| ‘Ha! Ha! Affair with a married woman. Good one. Next you’ll be saying she’s standing right behind me’ |
While the Telegraph looks at the document produced and announces Blunkett In Wilderness As Inquiry Fails To Clear Him, the Guardian looks at the very same piece of paper and concludes Humbled Blunkett Tipped For Comeback.
So what is it to be?
Well, you see it can be both…or neither…or a combination of the two…or, perhaps, an exciting third new way.
As with Hutton and Butler, the result of Budds investigation is another nasty case of splinters in the arse from too much fence-sitting.
As Simon Carr in the Independent says, the report contains such judicial phrases as: I have been unable to link Mr Blunkett to…; I could not discover…; It doesnt imply any implication about his conduct; and I have not been able to determine whether Mr Blunkett gave any instruction in relation to the case and, if so, what they were.
Looking at that lot, the only conclusions we can muster with any certainty is that Sir Alan Budd is a typical civil servant and a lousy detective although dealing with a case where so many leading players suffer a pernicious form of amnesia did not make his job any easier.
The suggestion is that Blunketts sole offence was to have denied the accusation that Leoncia Casalmes visa application was fast-tracked, when it looks like it had been.
As the Telegraph says, there is no direct accusation that Blunkett lied well, how can you lie when you keep forgetting the truth? but his honesty and good memory have taken a blow.
That papers Andrew Gimson compares this entire farce to a game of Cluedo, in which he offers the solution: It was David Blunkett with the nannys visa application in Mrs Quinns town house in Mayfair.
We too have seen the evidence and offer our explanation: it was Mrs Quinn in the bedroom, on the stairs and in the library with David Blunkett and Simon Hoggart and her husband and a fourth man…
And with a civil servant peeking through the curtains…’
Posted: 22nd, December 2004 | In: Uncategorized Comment | TrackBack | Permalink
