Blunkett's the daddy

2004-12-27 09:06

London - DNA tests have proved that former British home secretary David Blunkett, who resigned earlier this month in a scandal linked to his affair with Kimberly Quinn, is the father of her two-year-old son, The Sunday Telegraph reported.

Now three DNA tests have shown positive links between Blunkett and the boy, the weekly said, without providing sources.

The Labour politician is pursuing a legal bid to win paternity rights over the boy. Quinn is expecting her second child in February, and Blunkett reportedly also believes the child is his.

He resigned on December 15 in anticipation of the findings of an official inquiry into claims that he had abused his authority during a secret three-year affair with the magazine publisher.

The probe concluded that Blunkett was involved in a "chain of events" which dramatically speeded up the handling of a request for a Filipina woman then working as Quinn's nanny to stay indefinitely in Britain.

But significantly, the head of the inquiry said he could not determine whether Blunkett actually gave any direct instructions in relation to the case, thereby absolving him of direct blame.

The politician, who overcame blindness from birth to become one of Prime Minister Tony Blair's most powerful ministers, is tipped for a return to politics, given the strong public support he won as details of his affair and the "nannygate" inquiry were unleashed in the press.

On the other hand, Quinn, the US-born publisher of The Spectator magazine, an influential political weekly, has suffered from a streak of revelations about other affairs she has had since her marriage in 2001 to Stephen Quinn, the publisher of the British edition of Vogue magazine.

Sandy Leitch, a London financier turned member of the House of Lords, was named Sunday as another former lover by The Mail.

Quinn and Leitch, described by the tabloid as a close friend of Blair and his finance minister Gordon Brown, likely had an affair in 2001, after both of their first marriages ended, it said.

The journalist Simon Hoggart was also outed last week as a reported former lover of Quinn's.

The Sunday Telegraph said, however, that while Quinn had admitted to going on a "bit of a binge" after her divorce from Michael Fortier in 2000 she told her friends that there had been no "fourth man" during her marriage to Quinn.

- AFP