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. The new Work and Pensions Secretary James Purnell has anointed himself heir presumptive to the Blair crown, while those around Gordon Brown are briefing that he is now, in thought, word and deed, a born-again Blairite. Yet, on the backbenches, Charles Clarke regularly mounts critiques of the Brown style of government which compare the Prime Minister very unfavourably with his predecessor. It’s clear that for Charles, and others like John Reid and Alan Milburn, the idea that Gordon is a continuation of Blairism by other means strains credibility.

While this squabble within Labour ranks may be every bit as harmful for all those involved as Jarndyce vs Jarndyce there are reasons why the rest of us should still take notice. Tony Blair’s experiences in government provide us with a lesson in how real reform requires a movement with the times much more profound than anything Gordon Brown is attempting.