Don’t be misled — the London bombs were a direct response to the Iraq war

MPs set off on their holidays this week amid a mood of national consensus. Tony Blair’s reputation has never stood so high, and its lustre stretches across all parties. Conservative MPs look at him nowadays with adoration. They laugh when he laughs, and grimace when he grimaces.

One of the main candidates for the Tory leadership, the moderniser David Cameron, has come to base his candidacy on the sublime proposition that he is the natural successor to Tony Blair. Cameron’s supporters openly claim that just as Blair, not John Major, was the inheritor of Thatcher, so Cameron rather than Gordon Brown will take on the gleaming Blair legacy.

Meanwhile, leading figures from all parties have come together to confront the national emergency. Charles Kennedy, Michael Howard and Tony Blair sat around the Cabinet table in Downing Street this week to express their common opposition to terror.