He’s gone!

After 10 seemingly endless years, the old ham has gone.

We’ve criticized him enough on this non-political site so don’t intend to give him a Syntagma drubbing today.

A colleague who knew him well — and liked him — summed Blair up this way : “He’s charming, courteous and kind. He has all the manners of a top British schoolboy. He means well, and has worked hard for the country.”

You sense a “but” coming and you’re right.

“But he has no intellectual curiosity whatsoever. He knows very little about anything outside his narrow specialism of the criminal law, and believes that charm (his) is all he needs to be Prime Minister. He can’t even send an email and finds computers utterly baffling.”

Tony Blair is hopeless at detail, mastering only the emotional tone of a brief. Decisions were made on the basis of, “Does this make me look cool?” That quality made him a star in America, especially after his unqualified support following 9/11.

In Britain, however, his lack of grip and concentration meant he botched every level of domestic policymaking, and leaves the country in a worse state than it was in the mid-1970s when another Labour government brought it to its knees economically.

Verdict? He didn’t do the detail, and Britain suffered the result.

He will not be missed — at home at least.