This fresh-faced, very earnest young man arrived at 10 Downing Street due, in part, to having managed to untether the Labour party from the Socialist policies which had made it unelectable.
   But a major contribution to his success was 'not being the Tories' as the governing party had grown slack and sleazy through 18 years in office and as a result of inadequate safeguards against corruption.
   A large section of the electorate wanted to see the back of John Major & Co. because they were fed up with the same old screw-ups by the same old Tory faces.
   How ironic it is that the man who promised to be purer than pure while trying to wrap himself in Lady Thatcher's successes should end his career as a raddled old political tart; as someone dipped to the eyeballs in lies, corruption and sleaze.
   How ironic it is that a man who was ever ready to apologize for every single one of his country's imagined past misdemeanours never saw the disgrace in his own crimes against the British people; the most serious of which was pushing his country into a war cooked up by the United States against Iraq on the basis of manufactured evidence of weapon of mass destruction.

Blair carried on to the end insisting that everyone thought he had done the right thing, and that he was viewed as a combination of Lady Thatcher, Winston Churchill and Mother Teresa, with a touch of Eric Clapton thrown in for good measure. Everyone else; those able to voice an honest opinion; saw a corrupt liar, who postured, failed and moved on to another disaster. He became the first prime minister ever to be interviewed (several times) by the Old Bill following the exposure of New Labour's policy of selling honours for donations and loans to the party.
   His story is a lesson in how to cling on to political power when the opposition is non-existent. His legacy is a graphic account of how not to do the job of prime minister and how not to govern a country ably and honestly.
   His story illustrates the perils for a democracy when its leader has no beliefs, no sense of direction, no respect for the democratic process and no sense of shame. Welcome to the world of a man who thinks that drawing a line under his failures is an acceptable way of making everything okay and allowing him to move on to the next shambles.

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