In 1967, after eight years in power, one national leader offered this word of advice to fellow politicians: “I believe that all of us ought to retire relatively young.” The speaker was then 41 years old. His name was Fidel Castro, and he remains President of Cuba, having consistently ignored his own counsel for the past 40 years.

Politicians, whether democratic or dictatorial, do not go gently. When times are bad, they cling on, determined not to depart on a low note; when times are good, the music of power is just too sweet and intoxicating to surrender the baton. The Roman ruler Cincinnatus quit office to return to his farm, so the legend goes, but even he came back for an encore.

In Western democracies, leaders must be jostled, flung or carried from office by the voters, the men in grey suits or the doctors. They never jump; they are always pushed. Some leave feet first. Sir Henry Campbell-Bannerman resigned as Prime Minister because of ill health in 1908, but remained in Downing Street, where he died three weeks later, still insisting: “This is not the end of me.” British prime ministers seldom decide when to retire: fate, democracy, human frailty or the machinations of their enemies (and friends) make that decision for them, and usually abruptly – with one obvious exception.

Tony Blair is the only prime minister for more than 60 years to leave office of his own choice, at a time of his own choosing. Blair is not quitting while he is ahead – deeply unpopular, dragged down by a disastrous war, facing a local election drubbing, widely reviled by his own party and resented by his successor – but he is quitting when he wants to, according to a timetable of his own devising. That is an unprecedented achievement, and a measure of the way that the Blair premiership has been meticulously stage-managed, from its opening act to its finale.

From wherever they are, earlier prime ministers must be looking down (or up) with envy at the way Blair has bucked history to select the moment of his departure. Attlee, Douglas-Home, Callaghan, Heath and Major were all removed by the electorate; all but Attlee then lost the leadership of their parties. Chamberlain was levered out by the Commons.

Macmillan stood down in the belief that he was suffering a fatal illness, a decision he later regretted deeply. Eden was destroyed by Suez. Wilson chose his moment to go, but in the knowledge that the shadow of Alzheimer’s was already upon him. Thatcher twisted and struggled as she clung on and on: mortally wounded by her own side, hoisted by her deputy and then finally dispatched by the Cabinet.

Even the greatest seldom choose the moment to walk away. Churchill continued to lead the Conservative Party for ten years after his resignation was first demanded in the wake of the 1945 election, and held on to office at least two years after his ailing body should have told him to go. His Cabinet colleagues eased him out in the end, a physical wreck, but ever-defiant: “All my most intimate friends recommend retirement and I will fight the lot till the bitter end and challenge them to sack me.” Churchill’s shaking fingers had to be prised, one by one, off the premiership.

The evening before his resignation, on his last night in Downing Street, Churchill sat on his bed in angry silence, still dressed in knee breeches from a formal dinner. His private secretary, John Colville, heard him mutter: “I don’t believe Anthony can do it.” Here was a man reluctantly relinquishing the pomp of office, and damning his successor. The scene seems oddly contemporary.

The historian A. J. P. Taylor once remarked: “All men are mad who devote themselves to the pursuit of power when they could be fishing or painting pictures or sitting in the sun.” Blair is just as mad, in this respect, as any of his predecessors, and perhaps madder than most in his desire to hold on; but there is method in it.

Three years ago Blair set out, in broad terms, the timing for his own departure. No leader in British politics has ever done that before. It was a most presumptuous and deliberately presidential manoeuvre: better to face the charge of being a lame duck in a final term than the ignominy of being dumped. The attempted coups came and went, Gordon Brown’s temperature rose, the Iraq war went from worse to appalling, but Blair has stuck, more or less, to his schedule. Brown’s fury may have forced him to bring forward the date of his farewell, but not, I suspect, by much: the ten-year anniversary just passed was always the symbolic milestone.

Thus Blair will achieve a feat denied to Thatcher, Churchill and the rest of his postwar predecessors. Bruised, battered and unpopular, he can appear to bow out without being forced out. That is not necessarily the mark of a successful prime minister, but it is an extraordinary tribute to his sense of theatre and his skill at political manipulation, the very hallmarks of his rule.

I was in the crowd at the Festival Hall in May 1997 when Blair’s helicopter landed, he emerged to greet the wildly cheering crowds, and the epic performance began. I remember thinking at the time that here was a man who knew how to make an entrance. Ten years later he has shown that he can also stage an exit, though hardly a triumphant one. He always had impeccable timing; perhaps that was all he had.

Slick stage management does not always ensure good reviews. The curtain is coming down at the moment of his choice, but the Iraq war, the horrendous folly for which he will be judged by history, looms grimly over him as he quits the stage. Exit, pursued by a bear.

Times Recommends

• Fragility always gets my sympathy vote
• Double it and you get the real jobless total
• Has al-Megrahi paid his council tax?