I don’t know, and can’t easily imagine, what the reaction would be in other countries if a powerful newspaper announced that the Minister of Justice wanted DNA tests done to establish that he, and not her husband, was the father of his mistress’s two young children. Yet this is what David Blunkett has done, according to the splash in today’s Daily Mail.
The American equivalent would have been John Ashcroft having an affair with the publisher of The New Republic, and then claiming — after she went back to her husband — that the children were his. Do American readers think that would have been a story?
It may not be one here, of course. I see no mention of it on the Mail’s web site; and none of the other papers has folowed it up. So perhaps the lawyers have eaten it. But it was all over this morning’s front page.
As of 18:30 tonight, AOL has this as its headline news when you log in, together with fetching pictures of the most bearded and the most post-pregnant of those involved. However, if you click on the beard (or any other tempting linky part), you get an AOL version of a 404.
I’m not tempted to try and prove the story’s paternity.
R