The Blair mantra may have been "education, education, education" but his political legacy will long be associated with "Iraq, Iraq, Iraq". Yet there was much more to this remarkable career than the association with Bush, man and project, that came to sour perceptions of him.
How sad, though, and ironic, that speech in Paris in 1997 in which he seemed to encapsulate the bright new day many saw in him after the bleak Thatcher years: "Mine is the first generation able to contemplate the possibility that we may live our entire lives without going to war or sending our children to war". He would send British troops to war six times, the nobility of the Kosovo and Sierra Leone missions later overshadowed by the ill-considered disaster of the Iraq adventure.
Yet this is also the man who transformed what many believed was the moribund British Labour Party and who in 1997 created its biggest electoral success. And then two more. Appropriating Bill Clinton's successful "triangulation" strategy - the wrapping of conservative themes in social democratic garb - Blair's Third Way expressed brilliantly the desire of a nation to go beyond ideological rigidities and confrontation, but to preserve a Thatcher-lite ambition with softer edges. Old wine in "new" bottles, "New Labour", "New Britain". . . he ushered in the age of spin with the classic advertiser's slogan.
Domestically, the Blair age was marked by a number of important constitutional turning points that have transformed the dynamics of British politics: devolution for Scotland, Wales, eventually Northern Ireland, a mayor for London, the reform of the House of Lords (though Labour's use of other means of elevation would produce serious blowback), and the Human Rights Act. Post 9/11, though, the turn to repressive measures would be at one with the obsession with Iraq.
But a decade of stable growth did make room for impressive social gains. Some 600,000 fewer children live in poverty. Low-income families have been lifted by the minimum wage, tax credits and substantial real increases in benefits. Maternity pay doubled while time off trebled. Dilapidated hospitals and schools were revamped, illiteracy among young children declined sharply, hospital waiting times declined . . . some comfort to old Labour perhaps although income inequality increased significantly. Nevertheless, Mr Blair's success in defining the political agenda of the age is such that, in order again to make the Tories electable, David Cameron has had to dress himself in the prime minister's clothes.
Mr Blair's commitment to Ireland has been noted and is worth recording again - a passionate engagement, a commitment to the long haul, to detail, a conviction that the impossible was possible, and a willingness to take political risks. Pity, Ireland might say, about Europe. The early promise to engage Britain in the heart of the EU evaporated. The euro was never a runner. Never willing to lead from the front, Mr Blair's Britain remains as semi-detached from the Continent as ever.