Farewell ....

May Day 1997 - I remember standing on Magdalene Bridge amidst all the revelers .... drunk on the happiness that we had finally finally managed to get rid of the Tories after 18 years of power .... and that the new face of Labour politics was taking the reins - in fact yanking the reins away from the Tories with a massive huge majority ..... and what made it all even better was that this new face was one that I or my mates or any other sane person (for that read even vaguely centre/left/liberal) could identify with ....

Now switch forward 10 years .... to scenes of Tony Blair stepping down to hurled brickbats and 4-part-harmony choruses of relief from his countrymen and most of the Labour party .... after a scarcely believable year of being watched by a PM-in-waiting Gordon Brown ....

It has become so bad - that when marking his departure as PM .... the Downing street spin merchants, faith healers and political weather forecasters deemed it too fraught for Tony to do his victory lap and farewell tour of hand-squeezing amongst the people who had actually elected him ... and instead sent him to Africa .... where they hoped the people might be a bit more grateful for the cameras ... the overall opinion being that even Libyan dictator Colonel Gaddafi liked him better than the voters of Birmingham and Manchester ....

When Tony won power a decade ago - we all thought it was a new political dawn - promising social justice, ethical foreign policies and a Brave New World .... within months - the fairytale seemed to be coming true ... he was the nation's hero after Diana's death ... he sorted the Irish out ... he sorted Sierra Leone out ... he even sorted the House of Lords and the fox hunters out .... he spoke about Africa, Third World debt and the poor - his lip quivered - he cared .... there seemed little that Tony could not do ... London was centre of the universe and Cool Britannia ruled the waves once again ....

And then - came 9/11 and Iraq. From the moment that those twin towers collapsed .... Blair placed Britain firmly and squarely alongside the United States (well - ok - maybe behind it ... crouching .... eagerly waiting for scraps ...) and placed himself and his credibility alongside President Bush .... Tony gambled catastrophically on his ability to influence the Americans .... and to his credit he did advocate for much that is now finally coming to pass (UN/multilateral involvement, prioritising development, inclusion of other Arab leaders) ... but in the end - he just didn't do it well enough to actually make the difference ....

And so after 10 years of economic growth, financial security, dropping unemployment, spreading social ease, broadly rising aspiration, cultural exuberance and pride over the 2012 Olympics, manageable taxes and truly record spending on education and health - somehow Tony Blair has apparently managed to get himself roundly, fundamentally, comprehensively hated at home. Hated and mocked.

When this debacle started - Blair still had enough support at home - that when he told the British people that war was necessary to destroy Saddam Hussein's weapons of mass destruction .... that we believed him even if it wasn't clear to us how - we assumed he must just know something .... surely he wouldn't lead us into hell without reason .... later he stood accused of manipulating the intelligence to justify a war to which George Bush was already committed ....

Perhaps its an indictment of our political system that Tony Blair was able to remain in office despite Iraq. Even (suspending all cynicism) if he was not guilty of gross deception, as he insists he was not .... even if he only ever did what he thought was right .... Tony was still guilty of the grossest misjudgment - misjudgment that has led to the deaths of at least 655,000 Iraqis, over a hundred British soldiers and thousands of American troops. For this mistake alone, even if it was an honest one, Tony should probably have paid with his job ....

But maybe Tony can take solace in the fact that few British PMs have left with the love of the British nation .... Maggie Thatcher like Tony - was as viscerally hated at home as she was feted and respected abroad ... Churchill - consistently voted Greatest Englishman Ever in popularity polls (and scarily political icon to one aforementioned George Bush) .... was precipitously voted out of office - even before the Second World War had actually finished ....... His replacement Clement Atlee (voted in 2004 - the Greatest British PM ever) suffered exactly the same fate despite creating the welfare state, the NHS and many other loved-national institutions ..... probably for granting independence to India ....

There's clearly no pleasing we Brits - its our nature to hate politicians actually doing politics .... there just seems something rather tawdry about it all and even more so about actually appreciating them for it .... no British telly production company could ever make a series like ''The West Wing'' about British politics .... we'd all end up giggling .... or we'd have to make it a black comedy or some ironic, vicious satire ..... apparently the Duke of Wellington (the vanquisher of Napoleon) .... foolishly allowed himself to be made prime minister and became instantly reviled ..... and was once even assaulted by a mob on Waterloo Day .... oh the irony ....

I'm sure with the retrospectoscope of history .... Tony Blair will be remembered for making Labour and left wing politics electable ... winning three elections with large majorities (winning big being previously semi-unheard of for Labour) ... we will remember him for dragging our country kicking and screaming in the 21st century .....

He may not have been the best PM ever (even though he probably had the potential and the mandate at one time to have been up there in the running) .... but i'm pretty sure we will do worse in the future (and certainly have done so in the past!) ....and i think that although we now squirm at all the spin, toothiness and fake-charm .... i suspect (and perhaps i'm speaking a bit for myself now) that many of us still rather like him ..... and hope he does us proud in his new job .... go get 'em Tone ....