Smash hit

On his third night in power in May 1997, he went out for dinner with Cherie. When they got back to Downing Street, “An official came up to me with the first editions. I said, ‘No thank you’.” He has not listened to The Today Programme since 1998. Doesn’t he watch the news? “No.” Newsnight? He laughs. To the Blair camp, Newsnight, and Today, and most of the BBC, is the enemy. More than three years on, the wounds of Gilligan-Campbell-Hutton have scarcely healed.

Blair says sometimes new people in his office make the mistake of telling him about something abusive in the press because, “The PM ‘ought to know’. But why read something that’s going to upset me?” Such isolation can lead, some might say, to self-delusion. “It’s why you think everything is going so well in Iraq!” one of his aides tells him, to much laughter.

Still in Scotland, out at his hotel by the Clyde, Blair changes into a T-shirt and trainers for dinner with a dozen or so insiders. David Hill, Campbell’s replacement as his communications chief, has arranged for a TV to be set up in the dining room. It’s Chelsea v Liverpool, Champions League semi-final, first leg. Chelsea win 1-0. “They’ll need more than one goal, won’t they?” says Blair. Turned out he was right.

For dinner Blair has the foie gras, the beef, a couple of glasses of red, doesn’t eat the pudding. We have this peculiar dialogue, peculiar in that a dozen other people are listening. “The hardest thing about leadership,” he tells me, “is learning to ignore the loudest voices.” Of support as well as opposition? I ask, mindful of the pop-star welcome he tends to receive. A chill descends on the gathering. “Yes, both, support and opposition,” says Blair. The temperature climbs back to normal.

Blair casts himself as EU president candidate

Speaking on French TV, Tony Blair sang the praises of the EU and sketched his agenda for its future, all in fluent French

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“It’s been a real privilege,” he says, moving on to Peter Mandelson and Alastair Campbell, both of whom he obviously misses, “to work with people who, in their own way, were geniuses. They were risk-takers, they always went for it. Peter was a real loss to the Government. The DTI was in mourning when he went.” Of Campbell, Blair chuckles when he remembers his pugnacious adviser gunning for the Beeb in the summer of 2003. “I said, ‘Alastair, you’re supposed to be the one clearing up after me.’”

The following morning, he is in his suite writing a speech. I hang about across the corridor, in another room hired as an office for the two travelling “garden girls” (secretaries) from No 10. Press, protocol and policy aides mill about. “I think it’s best if we get him dressed,” says one of them. Blair, and his wife, when she’s around, live even their private lives mostly in public, especially on the road.

He wants five minutes in the sun before leaving. Thus does a bizarre little parade troop out into the hotel garden: Blair, me, photographer, policeman. I mention Leo, his fourth child. What’s he like? “He’s a lovely lad, actually,” says Blair, as if thinking about it for the first time. “Downing Street and Chequers, it’s the only life he’s known.”

On it goes. The motorcade sweeps around Glasgow to a community centre in Neilston. Blair makes his anti-SNP stump speech. “It’s an old-fashioned notion to wrench countries apart,” he tells the crowd, employing one of his favourite bogey words. Indeed it is a paradox of the man that he possesses such old-fashioned good manners and yet regards that epithet as an argument-clincher. In Scotland, “Nationalism is an old-fashioned idea.” In Ireland, “The conflict was old-fashioned.” In Europe, “Euroscepticism is old-fashioned.”

On the train from Barhead to Kilmarnock, an ex-soldier, Raymond Forrest, slightly the worse for drink, plonks himself down next to the PM. They chat amiably for a while. “He’s the best Prime Minister we’ve ever had!” Mr Forrest tells the assembled press. Meanwhile, David Hill has taken against a local cameraman. “I don’t f****** trust him,” he whispers to his boss, “he’ll have his microphone on.” Blair stares ahead and nods. The shadow of “Yo Blair!”, the two words that probably sealed his fate last summer, lingers on.

I can’t help noticing Blair’s watch is a cheap model. Weeks later, in the kerfuffle over George Bush’s disappearing timepiece in Albania, I learn that Silvio Berlusconi’s watch cost £270,000, Vladimir Putin’s £30,000 and Blair’s £63.26. “It’s an ordinary sports watch,” he says, “I’m not big on the trappings of power.” Won’t he miss the gilt? The grandeur? The windows three times the height of a man? “When you’re working, you’re working,” he says, “you don’t take it in.”

A week later, another Wednesday, we’re in the Prime Minister’s office in the Commons shortly before Prime Minister’s Questions. Blair hates PMQs. “Every Wednesday, three minutes to 12, it’s the worst part of the week.” In fact, I don’t think he likes Parliament in general. Certainly, he’s been criticised for not going there enough. I can’t say I blame him. It’s a pompous place, dark and doomy, pumped up on cheap theatrics and self-regard.

And it’s a lose-lose deal, PMQs. Perform well, like Hague, and nobody beyond Westminster takes any notice. Perform badly, like Duncan Smith, and you’re toast. Beforehand, Blair looks harried, his voice testy. Afterwards, he sits at a long table eating a plain bread roll. Facing him, his people stand and tell him how well he’s done. “It’s an Evening Standard 3-0 to Blair!” says David Hill. Blair shrugs. Is he bovvered? I don’t think so. “It’s always better when it’s over.” It nearly is. Then, in early May, he had another five or six PMQs to go. Now, his last is on Wednesday. After that it’s the Palace, and off. Won’t he miss the cut-and-thrust? “If I do it’ll be a classic case of not remembering what it was really like.” He looks at me. “Ah well,” he says, “it’s all bollocks.”

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