BACK in 1982, a young British lawyer who had recently lost his deposit in contesting a by-election on behalf of the Labour Party, sat down and wrote a 22-page letter to his party leader, hoary left-winger Michael Foot. He claimed to have been deeply moved and profoundly enlightened after reading Foot’s book Debts of Honour, a compendium of biographical essays on British radicals.

“It has shown me,” wrote the lawyer, “how narrow is our source of modern political inspiration. Look at (Margaret) Thatcher and (Norman) Tebbit and how they almost take pride in the rigid populism of their political thought. There is a new and profoundly unpleasant Tory abroad — the Tory party is now increasingly given over to the worst of petty bourgeois sentiments — the thought that there is something clever in cynicism; realistic in selfishness; and the granting of legitimacy to the barbaric idea of the survival of the fittest.”

The young man confesses that he “came to socialism through Marxism (to be more specific, through (Isaac) Deutscher’s biography of Trotsky)”. He feels Marxism “is fine if you make it your political servant but terrible if it becomes your political master.” He says he “found it illuminating in so many ways; in particular my perception of the relationship between people and the society in which they live was irreversibly altered.”

He then goes on to say that he agrees with Tony Benn’s view of the Labour Party’s rightwing as politically bankrupt. “Socialism,” he argues, “ultimately must appeal to the better minds of the people. You cannot do that if you are tainted with a pragmatic period in power.”

The lawyer urges Foot to publicly announce that “the party needs radical, socialist policies”, not least because “the job of reconstruction, particularly against a background that includes new technology and a USA in the grip of the same economic madness that Mrs Thatcher visits upon us, is mammoth”.

A dozen or so years later, the same man, a little less young and ensconced in the position that Foot once held, was endorsing Thatcher’s “emphasis on enterprise” and saying things like: “Britain needs more successful people who can become rich by success through the money they earn.” By then, his Marx-inspired “irreversible” view of the relationship between people and society had already been reversed.

According to Robert Taylor, who came across the 22-page epistle while researching a history of the Labour Party, “It is his personal tragedy, as well as the tragedy of the Labour Party, that the ambitious idealist was transformed into an authoritarian and hubristic machine that destroyed the ethical values of a Labour movement he once claimed to hold so dear.”

Maybe so, but an alternative interpretation suggests that Tony Blair — for it is he of whom we speak — was determined from the outset to destroy the party he had infiltrated. As the British writer Geoffrey Wheatcroft notes, “As soon as he became leader he began an assault that was designed not so much as an electioneering strategy ... as a ritual humiliation of his own party.” Ten years ago, he “quoted someone who knew Blair well” as saying: “You have to remember that the great passion in Tony’s life is his hatred of the Labour Party.”

If that is indeed the case, the obsequious letter to Foot may well have been intended as an attempt to secure Blair a safe seat at the next election, after his humiliation in the Beaconsfield constituency. The ploy worked: he was elected to parliament from Sedgefield in 1983 in a general election that was considered a triumph for Thatcher. (Even so, it is worth noting that a larger proportion of eligible voters cast their ballots in Labour’s favour in 1983 than in 2005.)

What’s more, in retrospect it appears that Thatcher’s greatest triumph in 1983 was the result in Sedgefield: as the Iron Lady implicitly acknowledged many years later, it gave her a worthier heir than anyone the Conservative Party threw up.

One of the many notable characteristics of Thatcher’s 11-year reign was her uncomfortably close relationship with the president of the United States for the eight years that the White House was occupied by a third-rate ex-actor whose intellectual capacity can be judged by the fact that he wasn’t always able to distinguish real life from his Hollywood career. As a visceral anti-communist, he was an ideological soulmate of the British prime minister. However, despite the preponderance of American power in both economic and military terms — whereas Britain’s attempts to punch above its weight on the international stage tended to stir pathos rather than awe — Ronnie never dared to be condescending towards Maggie. (If anything, it was the other way around: “Poor dear, there’s nothing between his ears,” Thatcher is quoted as having said of Reagan in 1988.)

The intimacy between Blair and George W. Bush is of a different nature. The former’s unquestioning subservience to the latter was initially spun by Blair’s supporters as a strategy aimed at gaining leverage: it was the price to be paid for gaining access to Bush’s ears. The prime minister, in other words, would play Jeeves to George W.’s Bertie Wooster.

One is compelled to conclude that such a relationship never evolved. If Tony ever proffered any sensible advice, Bush clearly paid little attention. Their informal encounter at the Group of Eight summit in St Petersburg earlier this month, inadvertently broadcast to the world thanks to alive microphone, confirmed that Bush does indeed look upon the British prime minister as a loyal servant, but not a particularly bright one.

It is hard to imagine even a postmodern Wooster hailing his indispensable manservant with anything more discourteous than a “what ho”, but the “Yo Blair” bit wasn’t by a long stretch the most humiliating part of the conversation. “One of my favourite excruciating moments,” writes The Observer’s pro-Blair columnist Andrew Rawnsley, “is when Bush thanks Blair for sending him a Burberry sweater as a birthday gift. The American president sends up the British prime minister by mocking: ‘I know you picked it out yourself’.”

There was worse to come, “the moment that makes Mr Blair look like the poodle of popular caricature. Worse, he comes over as a poodle who can’t even beg his master to toss him a dog biscuit ... When Tony Blair offers himself as a Middle East peace envoy, he is casually rebuffed by the American president between bites on a bread roll. Told by Bush that ‘Condi (Condoleezza Rice) is going’, the normally fluent Blair is reduced to inarticulate jabbering.

“It was awful,” continues Rawnsley, “for Tony Blair to be caught asking for permission to go to the Middle East. It was dire to hear George Bush saying he wouldn’t let the prime minister of the United Kingdom go out — not even on a pointless trip.”

What’s more, Blair wasn’t even allowed to pave the way for Condi’s mission. And he felt obliged to follow the utterly immoral British example in refusing to call for a ceasefire, let alone offer even muted criticism of Israel’s all-out aggression in response to a border skirmish.

With the possible exception of Australia’s John Howard — a relative nonentity on the international stage — no prime minister anywhere in the world has been as doggedly loyal to the Bush administration as Tony Blair. This slavering obedience has earned him the contempt not only of the majority of Britons, but even that of George Bush. When asked, at the beginning of their one-sided courtship, what they had in common, Bush responded that they both used Colgate toothpaste. Earlier this year, with Blair’s Downing Street tenure looking increasingly shaky, the US president was asked what he would miss most about his pal from across the pond. “I’ll miss those red ties, is what I’ll miss,” responded Bush drolly.

If Bush had been any smarter, the reference to red ties might have been construed as a jibe directed at Blair’s political antecedents in a party that used to conclude its annual conferences by collectively intoning ‘The Red Flag’. But he probably just meant what he said — which is more than one can expect from Blair, possibly except when he’s talking to his favourite media magnate. Blair’s path to Downing Street was paved via a detour to Australia at the behest of Rupert Murdoch, who has since moved his base to the US. His News Corporation’s annual shindig will take place this weekend at Pebble Beach, California. The guest speakers include Hillary Clinton, Newt Gingrich and — yes, you guessed it — Tony Blair.

His performance at Pebble Beach may matter more to Blair than his ritual appearance at the Labour Party conference in September, by when he is expected to have sorted out with Gordon Brown the small matter of the latter’s succession to the top job. A former Downing Street spin doctor disclosed recently that “no big decision could ever be made inside No.10 without taking account of the likely reaction of three men — Gordon Brown, John Prescott and Rupert Murdoch”. It has also emerged that Blair and Murdoch have regularly been meeting about thrice a year, occasionally in secret.

The Pebble Beach invitation could be Rupert’s way of thanking Tony for toeing the Murdoch line on Europe and the Iraq war. It has been rumoured that he may have a job in mind for the effectively lame-duck prime minister. Should the wily old tycoon make Blair an offer he can’t refuse, thereby hastening his departure from public life, for once the British public will have something to thank Rupert Murdoch for.

Email: mahirali1@gmail.com