It is fashionable these days to ask in sneering tones: "What exactly is Tony Blair for?" The presumption is that, apart from winning elections and dragging the country into an unnecessary war, Mr Blair's premiership has been essentially vapid. If the prime minister were just to disappear, carried off perhaps by some combination of Hutton and ill-health, he would, it is argued, leave little trace on the political landscape. Although unfair-this government has made quite a lot of things a little better and only a few things worse-it's a charge to which Mr Blair is increasingly sensitive. Which in part explains his willingness to risk pretty much everything to get his way over university tuition fees.
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