IN 1997, Peter Hennessy, a highly respected British historian, wrote a few months before Tony Blair assumed power: “Command premiership of a highly personalised and driven kind usually ends in tears.

Sir Anthony Eden’s and Mrs Thatcher’s did in 1957 and 1990 respectively. Getting your own way simply by stamping the prime ministerial foot is conducive neither to good government nor to personal survival, nor to a contented retirement.”

A decade later, Blair’s “command and control” premiership — as Professor Hennessy later characterised in his book The Prime Minister — has ended in tears and tragedy. The most accomplished performer-politician of his time is leaving the political stage, unsung and unlamented.

In the last few years, Blair had become obsessed with his legacy, his place in and impact on history and the verdict of history on his premiership. In the final analysis, it is achievements not performance on the stage which shapes legacy or determines one’s place in history. Focused on performance and presentation instead of on achievements, Blair’s was the most media-conscious government in British history that preferred spin over substance.

Tony Blair set records and achieved distinction during his political career which started in 1983 when he became MP at the age of 30. Eleven years later, he assumed the leadership of the Labour Party and played an instrumental role in redefining its image and philosophy and changing its traditional policies, most importantly, Labour’s ideological commitment to nationalisation under Clause IV of the party’s constitution.

Embracing concepts such as the market economy and globalisation, he re-oriented the Labour party from left to centre and rebranded it as New Labour. In 1997, Tony Blair, positioning himself as a new leader for the new millennium, led the Labour party — which had been in opposition for 18 years — to a historic victory. At 43, Blair was the youngest 20th century British prime minister. He led his party to three successive election victories, becoming the first Labour prime minister to do so. In his last term, Blair became the first serving prime minister to be questioned by police in a “cash for honours” scandal.

Inheriting a good economy from the Tories, Blair presided over the longest economic boom in the post-war period, although credit for economic management must go to Gordon Brown, the chancellor of the exchequer for 10 years and the next prime minister.

Blair tried to introduce reforms in the education and health sectors but too late in his tenure to produce any significant results. He espoused the cause of climate change and made efforts for Britain to be a leader in this field. In the first week of his first term, the Bank of England was granted independence to set interest rates. Two significant achievements of his 10 years in power are devolution in Scotland and Wales and bringing peace to Northern Ireland.

On the domestic front, Blair’s decade as prime minister was viewed as a continuation of Thatcherism in a diluted form. Known as ‘Tory Blair’ and ‘Maggie’s Boy’, Blair was considered by Old Labour as a Conservative who hijacked the Labour Party with his catchy idea of New Labour.

When Edward Heath, Conservative prime minister in the early ’70s, died in 2005, Blair, paying tributes in the House of Commons, recalled his first meeting with him in the early ’80s. He drew laughter in the House when he quoted Heath as saying, after finding out that the young Blair was a Labour MP, that he did not look or speak like a Labour MP.

In reality, Blair was a populist who borrowed ideas eclectically from both the left and the right and incorporated those ideas into an election-winning template. After 18 years in the wilderness, Labour, in 1994, desperately needed a leader who could win elections, and Blair, charming and charismatic, was the man of the moment.

A populist is not wedded to any ideology, does not indulge in institution-building relying instead on direct contact between the charismatic leader and the people and refuses to accept any institutional check on his authority. A true populist, Blair, in his presidential or imperial style of governance, displayed all these traits. Eloquent and persuasive, Blair banked on direct contact with the people and was fixated with media management.

He did not depend on any institution — such as the cabinet, the party or the parliament — for taking major decisions and showed indifference towards these institutions, although he did deliver some remarkable speeches at party conferences and in parliament. His greatest strength was his ability to reach out to the people and win elections, something he was more comfortable with than governing the country.

His populism and the ability to engage or persuade the public failed the most important test of his political career: selling the Iraq war to a sceptical public. The run-up to the invasion of Iraq fully illustrated a complete disconnect between the public and the leader.

Despite media management and dossiers on Iraq’s supposed weapons of mass destruction, the British public remained unconvinced about the rationale for an unnecessary and disastrous war. Iraq exposed Blair’s poor judgment and lack of understanding of history. His previous foreign policy decisions of liberal interventions in Kosovo, Sierra Leone and Afghanistan were successful but the catastrophic war in Iraq has continued to haunt him well into the last days of his premiership.

Blair’s close personal friendship and alliance with President George W. Bush on the invasion and occupation of Iraq (although Washington did not support London during the Suez crisis) made him unpopular at home and distanced him from European leaders. The most pro-European prime minister when he came into office, Blair found himself alienated from Europe after the decision to invade Iraq.

Tony Blair once confided in Roy Jenkins, the late British statesman and a prolific political biographer, that he wished he had read history, and not law during his Oxford years. A big believer in spin, Blair probably never uttered a truer word. Jenkins was not much impressed by Blair and later compared his government to a lighthouse, “its revolving beam alighting for a time on this issue or that before moving on to the next.”

Had Blair read history he would have placed less emphasis on attention-grabbing ideas or opinion polls showing popularity. He would have known that longevity of tenure cannot compensate for lack of far-reaching reforms or poor foreign policy decisions.

Apart from Winston Churchill, Britain has seen two great prime ministers, in the 20th century, known for far-reaching domestic reforms and successful foreign policy: Clement Attlee and Margaret Thatcher. History is unlikely to place Tony Blair, the longest serving Labour prime minister ever, in the same category. Anthony Eden’s premiership ended due to the Suez fiasco and the issue continued to haunt him during his long retirement.

Blair’s reputation has been soiled by a four-letter word: Iraq. His legacy is hostage to the fate of British troops in Basra and Baghdad. It is not his successful economic policies but his Middle East misadventure which will be the tragic epitaph for a man who lacked experience in the domain of foreign policy before he became prime minister.

ammar.ali.qureshi@gmail.com