You lot attacking Blair are genuine fools. Stop living in your land of conspiracy theory and dinner party snobbery and actually look at how much more prosperous, better run and just Britain is today.
Here was a prime minister who acted out of belief and principle, who came to understand that market reform is the best way of preserving public services and who genuinely tried to make the world a better place.
Iraq was about two things. Not oil and not kowtowing to the "dreadful regime of Bush". No, it was about removing a tyrant who consistently attempted to get his hands on weapons of mass destruction and who murdered his own people on a scale exceeded only by Lenin, Stalin, Mao, Pol Pot and Hitler.
You lot would be screaming for peace with Hitler in 1941. There is an old word for you : DEFEATIST.

Richard, Norwich,

I did not agree with TB on many issues but I miss him. He never said die and was and is a "can do" person. Never a Tory or Labour, I have always admired that the best policy is one which works. Sometimes one has to be hard headed like Maggie, but what a brilliant change she made!

I also believe that you don't get to be PM by being thick - a fact that other name-calling correpondents have not yet grasped.

Bob Chapman

Bob Chapman, Lowestoft, England

You can't be serious!!
"I only know what I believe" is not conviction - it is total self delusion.
Blair has had a few months to reposition himself retrospectively but to talk about "Blairism" or a "Blairite formula" is to collude with a fantasist. He is getting limelight withdrawals.
Iraq is and was always going to be a bloody mess. Domestic policy is shambolically incompetent. The nostalgia for the Blair years is simply because Brown cannot compete with Blair's easy snake-oil charm. Only now are we getting the bill for the last ten years of manic spending on waste and trivia.
Good riddance to Blair. Now, please, don't encourage him.

Tricia, E Sussex,

I do hope you are wrong.  Mr. Blair was one of the most disastrous Primes Ministers we have had for a very long time..He was a destroyer of almost everything he touched.  He ripped into our constitution without apparently any idea of what  he would put in its place.  He achieved very little and was constantly the victim of unintended consequences. He corrupted our electoral system, would listen to no one.  His  behaviour over the Iraq war was appalling and far short of what we are entitled to expect of our  Prime Minister.  The nasty, bullying, lying regime he ran at No 10 , expecially over the death of Dr. Kelley was shaming and atrocious.  Devolution was a mess and ill-thought out.  We are well rid of him, and I hope we never see his like again.

Mary Willis , Redhill, Surrey, England

Interestingly, both Blair and Brown started out as New Labour which basically was to find a 'third' option between the left and right in order to solve a problem.

However, once in government Blair realised that the 'Third Way' will not solve the long-term problems with this country and started to look at the 'ends' of policy rather than the 'means'.

The case in point was health and education. WIth Blair, new Labour started looking at bringing private enterprise and money into the NHS and into the school system via the academies.

Brown is already starting to reverse these policies.

And this is Brown's problem. He is more concerned with 'means' rather than 'ends' of a policy.

One classic example is the Children's Trust Fund which 'means' to give young people capital at the start of their adult life. The 'end' result is that most of that money given to children at 18 will end up in the tills of pub owners and Spanish hoteliers.

Mark Hewitt, Grays, Essex