It is “all about Iraq”, isn’t it? The Blair legacy thing that is about to start in ten days’ time. This is what many commentators seem to be chiming. Who cares what lies on the positive side of the ledger? It is “all about Iraq”, ultimately. In that sense, Tony Blair is not unlike Anthony Eden, for whom it is “all about Suez”, or poor old Neville Chamberlain, whose premiership was “all about appeasement”, or, further back, Lord North, whose time in office was “all about losing the American colonies”. End of assessment.

So certain are those in this camp that they are prepared to set aside minor details such as facts. They portray Iraq as if it was a bellicose British prime minister who made the decision to invade and somehow dragged a slightly sceptical American President along with him, which is not quite how it happened. They dismiss the self-evident truth that any politician in Downing Street in 2003 would have done what Mr Blair opted to do.

Why? Because for six decades the essence of our foreign policy has been to play Robin to the American Batman. This has been pursued by a succession of Labour and Conservative governments. It is a wholly rational stance because it maximises our international influence. Comparisons with the manner in which Harold Wilson avoided military commitment to the Vietnam War are otiose. Vietnam was a process, not an event. There was no starting gun at which the man in the White House could eyeball allies and implore “Are you with me?” This was the position that Mr Blair was in four years ago.

Not to have supported the United States in such a situation would have been seismic. It would have entailed a complete reversal of British foreign policy and a dash to become more deeply enmeshed in the EU. This would have necessitated, at a minimum, euro membership that British voters would rightly not have tolerated. It would also have meant trading down from the role of Robin to something akin to Shaggy in Scooby Doo — in theory part of a gang in which the entire group is equal but where, invariably, it is either Fred (France) or Velma (Germany) who exercises the authority. The killer flaw in the “all about Iraq” argument is that it presumes that there was a serious choice.

In addition, the idea that Mr Blair is more to blame for what has occurred in Iraq since 2003 than either the Pentagon or, more relevantly, the Iraqis themselves, who have treated their freedom as the chance to engage in fratricide, is ridiculous.

In fairness, some of those who claim it is “all about Iraq” will concede this privately. Their critique of Mr Blair is more sophisticated and rests on three suppositions. These are that he was unduly enthusiastic about a venture that he was obliged to undertake; that “he lied” about weapons of mass destruction; and that he failed to secure the revival of the wider Middle East peace process after the Baathist regime in Baghdad had been overthrown.

These might be a smarter set of indictments but they nevertheless do not stand up to much scrutiny. Let us take the accusation of excessive — even messianic — enthusiasm. It implies that Mr Blair should have sent the minimum number of troops possible into battle to keep the Americans sweet, or toned down the volume in his own endorsement of the cause. This is crazy. Is it being suggested that the Prime Minister should have cried the equivalent of “God for Harry! England and St George! Sort of”? Would that have been leadership?

Furthermore, why shouldn’t he think that removing odious dictators is worthwhile? It does not appear that much of a crime to me. Moral intervention has virtues. One notes that a number of those who attack Mr Blair for being involved in Afghanistan or Iraq are also urging that Britain becomes more entwined in Darfur, or Somalia, or Zimbabwe. Their logic results in what I will now name, in honour of the Editor of The Independent, the Kelner doctrine of foreign policy. This holds that while it might be fine to interfere in places that are of little or no strategic interest to the United Kingdom, it would be dreadful to do so in the Middle East, where our strategic interests are enormous. This is not a thesis that is destined to survive long in the harsh conditions of the real world.

Then there is “he lied” to the electorate about weapons of mass destruction. Oh, come off it. Every intelligence agency on the planet, including those serving governments that opposed the war, thought Saddam Hussein had stockpiles of weapons of mass destruction. The Iraq Study Group’s reports observed that, while the senior Iraqis whom they interviewed denied handling biological and chemical weapons themselves, many identified others in high command whom they assumed must have done so. What the tyrant’s motives were for wanting to create the impression that he had these materials cannot be divined. But if the likes of the CIA and MI6 were groping in the dark on WMD it was because Saddam had turned off the lights.

Finally, there is the aftermath and the failure to press the Middle East peace process forward. After all we have witnessed in the past 12 months or so, is it possible to place any blame at the Prime Minister’s door? Does the evidence not hint that it is Hamas and Hezbollah, Syria and Iran that have conspired to wreck the chance of a viable settlement? Those factions and countries were plotting long before the intervention in Iraq had been envisaged and would have done exactly the same thing if the US had blinked at the last moment, or if circumstances in postwar Iraq today were strikingly stable.

It is not, therefore, “all about Iraq” — although for some people it plainly always be. Future historians, I hope and suspect, will be far more rounded about the Blair record.

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