Blair rises to the occasion. Who says he’s there for the taking now?

Fergus Finlay

It was intended as a bit of fun, (he added hurriedly), lest anyone might be tempted to fish it out and go through the predictions one by one!

But this is what I predicted for May 2005: "The Labour party wins the general election in the UK, and Tony Blair commences his third term as prime minister, an all-time record for a Labour leader. The British media announce that this is surely the beginning of the end for Blair, and the tabloids run headlines announcing that Britain's love affair with Blair is over at last."

Granted, I went on to predict that Michael Howard would pack it in as Tory leader, and that Margaret Thatcher would re-emerge and declare war on Argentina again to revive Conservative morale.

But one of the easiest predictions to get right was the one about Blair that he would win again, that he would be attacked throughout, and that the end of the Blair era would become a prime topic for the British media the moment the election was over.

The funny thing is, Tony Blair has spent an entire career confounding his critics, and it looks as if he has done it again. After one of the most extraordinary weeks that Britain has been through in its recent history from the elation of the Olympic bid to the horror of the al-Qaida attack on London Britons needed their prime minister. They needed his capacity, his focus and his determination. Among all the images that will be remembered from last week, a couple stand out.

The image of Tony Blair, head bowed in concentration, as he gathered his thoughts immediately after being told of the bombings in London. And the image of Blair uttering a rallying call to his people, in front of the microphones at Gleneagles, with the leaders of the world standing solemnly in a row behind him.

Who now is going to say that Tony Blair's day is past, or that he should hand over in a hurry?

When you talk to people in Britain, there are things they don't like about Tony Blair. And there is no doubt whatever that the vast majority of Britons don't support his position on Iraq, and don't believe a lot of the things he told them in justification of that position. But still, they feel lucky that he is there in a crisis.

Crisis, of course, is what makes a politician. If the al-Qaida bombings hadn't happened last week, and if either the G8 summit or the Olympic bid had gone wrong, Tony Blair would have carried the blame. The media in its entirety would have sneered at his last-minute trip to Singapore, or mocked his failure to win converts to the cause of justice in Africa.

But London won the Olympics, coming it seemed from nowhere, and the G8 went a good bit of the road on the issues of aid, debt and trade. And in the middle of all that, the greatest crisis he has had to face in recent years erupted. And he dealt with it.

Of course he will continue to be attacked. Tony Blair and the people around him decided years ago that the British media would never help Labour to win an election. They had seen what the media had done to his two predecessors, Michael Foot and the Neil Kinnock, when the chips were down.

Blair and his people came to the conclusion they would have to live on very controlled messages, and that they would have to convince some of the media at least that a Labour win would be in their interests, if they were ever to get a fair shake. And they have lived by that rule ever since.

The consequence of that approach has been that some media have given unstinting support to Blair certainly more than ever supported his predecessors. But the rest behave as if they hate him even more viciously than they hated Kinnock. It's why you've read all the stories over the years about Blair the control freak, all the attempts to belittle his wife and family, all the derision about spinning and power-crazed spindoctors.

BUT try as they might, they have never been able to associate Tony Blair with the sleaze that surrounded John Major's cabinet, or the autocracy that became a feature of Margaret Thatcher's rule. Blair has run honest, tough, focused governments from day one, and the legacy he has built, in economic, social and constitutional terms will reflect that.

It may be that many of the people who felt they had his measure underestimated him from the beginning, and have never got over that. I know that the first time I met Tony Blair, I wasn't particularly impressed.

He was then leader of the opposition, and Dick Spring, both as leader of the Labour Party and as Ireland's Foreign Minister at the time, was anxious to get to know him. We had a long dinner in Iveagh House, at which all the most important topics of the day were discussed.

My abiding memory of that dinner is of two images. Tony Blair's eyes visibly glazed over when the subject of Northern Ireland came up. And when we were called to go down to meet the press in the hall below, his immediate reaction was to go to a mirror to check that his tie was straight and that his shoulders were free of dandruff.

A vain man, I thought, with no interest in the subject of most importance to us. Not someone who was likely to play much of a role in solving the biggest problem we faced.

We knew the in-depth involvement of the British prime minister was key, and he seemed to be more preoccupied with his appearance than anything else.

I was wrong on both counts. Tony Blair may be a vain man, for all I know. But his main reason for looking in the mirror was simply that he had developed an instinctive attention to detail based on the knowledge that any photograph that could reflect badly on him was more likely to be used than any other.

And the reason he didn't focus as we wished him to on Northern Ireland at that dinner was simply that he wasn't ready.

It was the time when debate raged about EMU and the development of the single currency, and he was completely immersed in that. In due course, he would turn his attention to Northern Ireland and, as we know now, develop a complete mastery of the detail of that complex and tangled issue.

How long more will Tony Blair last? I don't know, but I suspect he will surprise us all by going at a time of his own choosing, and when he is not under pressure to do it.

Warts and all, he has already done enough to merit a significant place in Britain's modern history. And indeed, in our history too.