KEY POINTS:
Ten years is a long time to lead any democratic country. Tony Blair, who has announced the date he will hand over to a successor, July 2, has led Britain almost as long as Baroness Thatcher did and longer than any Labour Prime Minister before him. Like Helen Clark in this country, also the first of her party to win three successive elections, Mr Blair will be counted a success deservedly for what he did not do more than what he did.
He did not reverse the economic reforms he inherited. He did nothing that put the country's new prosperity at risk and in fact enhanced it by the mere fact he was a Labour Prime Minister, credibly using comforting social sentiments to maintain the country's course. He was not primarily an economic leader; it seemed to be part of a pact with his old rival and now near-certain successor, Gordon Brown, that economic policy would be the preserve of the Chancellor.
Mr Blair will be remembered for the style more than the substance of his leadership, and that is not a criticism. His style has been attractive and vigorously engaging, qualities Britons may miss more than they yet realise after a year or two of the more sombre Mr Brown. They have probably taken some pride in the way Mr Blair has represented them to the world, excepting his excessive deference to the United States and its consequences in Iraq.
A leader's fatal mistake is always more memorable than his successes. And Iraq proved fatal for Mr Blair's time in office. It cost Labour so many seats at the last election that he had to agree to step down before the next. Yet in time Iraq may be blamed less on Mr Blair than on a longstanding bent of British foreign policy.
Britain since World War II has held one foreign policy goal above all: that nothing must be allowed to divide Britain and America. That lesson, drawn from the darkest wartime experience before the United States came to the Allies' aid, was reinforced by the Suez crisis of 1956 when Britain briefly forgot its limitations.
Post-war Britain regards its prime role in the world as the go-between for the United States and Europe. It does its utmost, as Mr Blair did over Iraq, to keep the two sides of the Atlantic together. But when it fails in that self-appointed task, as Mr Blair did on Iraq, there is no question which side British foreign policy will support. Experience has left the conviction in Whitehall that the security of Britain and the West depends ultimately on ensuring the US is never left alone.
An America left alone raises two fearful possibilities for British foreign policy: a reversion to popular isolationism in US politics or unilateral adventurism. Neither is a comfortable prospect for international good order and every country's ultimate security. Mr Blair went to much trouble to convince the Bush White House to seek a United Nations blessing for the action it was determined to take. President Bush duly sought an endorsement from the Security Council without much conviction.
He knew Britain would ultimately support him whatever he did. Mr Blair made that clear. By doing so he was doing no less than all British Prime Ministers since Suez. The question now is, will his successors follow suit? Mr Brown seems strongly pro-American, though he will be looking for a release from Iraq and his style will be more reserved.
In his first parting address last week Mr Blair said of Iraq: "Believe one thing if nothing else: I did what I thought was right for our country." He did that. He deserves credit for doing so probably knowing the price he would pay for the American folly. It is not how he would have wanted to end his tenure at the top, but it is an honourable epitaph.
