David Blunkett
speaker
119 appearances
1 recordings
1 series
first heard Jul 2026
last heard 16 Jul
David Blunkett’s voice in public audio — every appearance, attributed to the second.
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recordings per month · last 12 monthsRecordings per month over the last 12 months — 1 in all, peaking in Jul 2026 with 1.
Appearances
There were three strong candidates.
I thought the other candidates were better.
He had not been very enthusiastic about some aspects of devolution a couple of years previously when we were looking at health devolution.
But I think Andy had looked at what had happened in Greater Manchester since 2011 and I think had recognised that there's something a bit special going on here.
And it did offer a really quite serious alternative to a life in Westminster that he perhaps wasn't enjoying very much.
He asked me fairly soon after the election if I was willing to be deputy mayor, if I'd keep the economic portfolio, which I'd held since 2012.
And yeah, I said I would be happy to do that.
And I take that as an indicator that Andy wasn't interested in old battles.
He wanted to get things done.
Right.
Well, he certainly wasn't worried about sitting through lots of boring local authority meetings because he arranged more of them.
Did he?
He was very keen to work and engage with particularly the leaders of local authorities who were his cabinet.
And one of the conversations I had with Andy very early on was that he had a cabinet that he didn't appoint, that he couldn't sack and he couldn't tell them what to do.
To be fair to him, he adopted that new way of consensual working in partnership.
But very early on, Andy clearly stood for election with a manifesto.
And it's absolutely clear that the manifesto was law, that he was going to do everything possible to deliver.
I've come to the city centre to speak to people who've been here overnight sleeping rough.
I promised to do something about it and that's why I'm here.
Even Andy came to accept that in the way it was framed within his manifesto, it was a laudable thing to want to do, but it was not deliverable.
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