…or not in the case of Sir Tony Blair, whose comments on the current turmoil within the Labour Party were splashed all over the bourgeois press last week. Whatever he achieved in office – Scottish and Welsh devolution, ending the conflict in northern Ireland and pushing through some minor social reforms – was far eclipsed by his despicable role in supporting the American onslaught on Iraq that ended in invasion and the execution of the Iraqi leader, Saddam Hussein. The dreams of Anglo-American imperialism ended in the streets of Baghdad as the Iraqi resistance fought back to eventually free the country from imperialist occupation. Blair fell from grace soon after – leaving Downing Street to console himself with lucrative sinecures, non-jobs such as his “peace-keeping” role in the Middle East, which were given to him by the Americans as a reward for his life-time of service to imperialism.

To be fair, Blair never pretends to be anything more than he is – a mouthpiece for what he thinks is the dominant trend within the ruling class. He has plenty to say but he’s got nothing to offer workers. Or as Jeremy Corbyn put it: “Tony Blair hinks the answer to this country’s problems is AI, welfare cuts and endless spending on war. Who benefits? Arms companies and tech billionaires. Once again, Blair is wrong. The answer is a redistribution of wealth and power and the relentless search for peace.”

Tony Blair, like Ramsay MacDonald and Sir Keir Starmer, divided and ultimately betrayed the Labour Party. But to paraphrase Orwell and say “all Labour leaders are rubbish, but some are more rubbisher than others” may be going too far. Attlee, Wilson and Callaghan did have their moments – although this was largely due to the immense pressure at the time from the labour movement as a whole for social justice.

Tony Blair is a rich man who has also acquired a number of gongs along the way. These include the usual honours reserved for past Prime Ministers as well as the American Presidential Medal of Freedom and the more dubious Dan David Prize given by Tel Aviv University for Blair’s “exceptional leadership and steadfast determination in helping to engineer agreements and forge lasting solutions to areas in conflict”.

None of this has, however, restored his political standing in Britain. The fame that Blair so longs for continues to elude him. His paean of praise for the sort of American-style neocon policies that have been embraced by both Democratic and Republican administrations in Washington throughout the 21^st Century may have been music for the likes of Jacob Rees-Mogg in the Conservative party but it didn’t go down well with Keir Starmer or the two contenders for his job, Wes Streeting and Andy Burnham, and can only serve to remind them of how glad they were to see the back of him in 2007.