Tony Blair: You fool, it could've been so different

Imagine a parallel Universe. Al Gore became President. Rightly so, since he won the popular vote. People made more of a fuss of Florida's morally bankrupt voting system. Jeb Bush was rightly seen as the sneaky opportunist that he was, trying to get his dim brother and corrupt cronies into power. I could go on forever about this rather neat state of affairs. Al Gore would make certain that a promise was kept to Kyoto; Arnold Schwarzenegger would still win California's governorship, but find himself more in tune with the prevailing orthodoxy of Al Gore's environment drive; the Middle East roadmap would be further drawn and an uneasy truce would be bashed out, without needless recourse to an Orwellian "War on Terror"; there would still be a Palestine question, rather than an "Axis of Evil". I can dream, can't I? But this is about the bloke in the U.K. who just announced he was leaving at the end of his Presidential reign... um, I mean... the end of his premiership.

Bookended at each end of Tony "You can call me Tony" Blair sweeping into power was Northern Ireland. A true legacy. It could've been so different. Tony, your idiotic soundbite of "This isn't the time for soundbites, but I feel the hand of history on my testicles" (ok, I admit, paraphrased) would be so vindicated by that frankly tear-inducing vision of Martin McGuiness and Ian Paisley standing "shoulder-to-shoulder" (parallel Universe echoing present Universe), that the staunchest critic would have eaten humble pie.

"Okay, Tony, you didn't quite deliver on your pledge of repeating 'Education, education, eduction' ad fucking nauseum; but the rest of the U.K. did okay. The filthy rich got richer, but thankfully, the poor didn't get poorer, like under Thatcher and Major. In fact, lots of people escaped the poverty trap thanks to your policies. You could've gone further - feck, a lot bloody further, considering your ringing mandate. But you brought peace, a stable peace, to Northern Ireland. Your obssession with being a legacy PM would've come to fruition and that is how History would've remembered you."

Two days - two bloody days, before Tony announced his resignation, he was sitting beside a gently bizarre comedy double-act of a Sinn Fein representative and staunch Unionist, anxious to work together. To end the Troubles forever.

Another comedy double-act, normally not short of words, had their final few words on Tony's premiership on Channel 4 news; namely the wonderful Armando Iannuci and irrepressible Boris Johnson. Even they were baffled about how they could put it, without mentioning the "Iraq" word. Both normally stern critics, they shrugged their shoulders and actually thought old Tony did an okay job. Except for his bizarre non-comedy double-act with Dubya.

Instead, Tony's crying shame of a "comedy double act" was with a President so stupid, he almost aged Queen Elizabeth by about 200 years in a speech yesterday.

Good riddance, Tony. And I really didn't want to say that after voting for you 10 years ago.

You pillock. You self-deluded pillock.