Some politicians have great and lofty inspirations. They hark back to the titans of yesteryear to steer themselves through the challenges of tomorrow.

I think I’ve twigged who David Blunkett’s greatest inspiration might be. Here is Britain’s Minister of Lurve on his crusade to return people on incapacity benefits back to work.

If people… re-associate with the world of work, suddenly they come alive again. That will overcome depression and stress a lot more than people sitting at home watching daytime television.

Here is who I think is David’s source of his ideas and rhetoric:

Time for men, men with jobs, to go to work. Other men stay in bed until dinnertime watching Tots TV, thinking about how worthless and pathetic they are!

Pauline Campbell-Jones, the demonic restart officer from The League of Gentlemen.

Chillingly, Pauline’s personal philosophy sums up neatly the gist of Blunkett’s plans for welfare reform:

Everything I know about people I learned from pens. If they don’t work, you shake them. And if they still don’t work, you chuck them away. Bin ‘em.

Apparently, the Department of Work and Pensions loses £3bn a year via benefit fraud and departmental incompetence. Can you guess which one is going to see a sinister crackdown?

Blunkett’s considering the introduction of lie detectors to catch out benefit cheats. Considering, his own, ahem, moral flexibility when it come to the truth and a somewhat less-than-fastidious attitude to declaring his own benefits, you can only say: Jesus, what balls!

He also describes the Housing benefit system as a “nightmare”. How he would know, I’m not quite sure. His housing arrangements sound like they’ve been more of a dream than a nightmare. Just another unfeeling hard-arse with no inkling of what it’s like living at the sharp end in Britain today. Never mind the proles, the Daily Mail-reading public will be tumescent at the thought of scroungers struggling even more to get by under Blunkett’s depradations.

Blunkett hasn’t got an ounce of human feeling in his body (unless it’s for himself and his shit-spattered career - oh yes, and for the “little lad”) and yet we’re supposed to believe that he knows what’s best for some of society’s most vulnerable people. I bet he even laughs at the end of Charlotte’s Web.

“Look at me,” he’s telling all those people on incapacity benefit, “despite my blindness, I worked hard and became Britain’s foremost political laughing stock. If I can do that then you can at least sit in a bloody call centre for the rest of your short, painful little lives.”

Not everybody gets the opportunity - or has the sweaty, desperate ability to jettison principles - in order to become Home Secretary and impregnate rich, powerful, married women.

I suppose Blunkett would say we’ve no one to blame but ourselves.