I admired Tony Blair. I knew Tony Blair. Prime Minister, you are no Tony Blair

There are few feuds as destructive as the squabble over a legacy. In Bleak House, the case of Jarndyce vs Jarndyce provides Charles Dickens with one of fiction’s most debilitating contests — a battle over an inheritance which blights all those involved. But Westminster is still, nevertheless, absorbed by the struggle to lay claim to a legacy.

The inheritance which is the object of so much attention is the right to be recognised as the ‘heir to Blair’. When the former prime minister left office the general consensus among commentators was that he had overstayed his welcome. Those of us writing in 2003 that he was, at last, proving himself a proper reformer were a small band. Those of us still arguing, as of 2006, that he was now at his best and Labour would be mad to get rid of him were roundly ridiculed.

But nevertheless, in the last few weeks, Blair has become the new black.