Next year sees the tenth anniversary of Tony Blair’s election as leader of the British Labour Party. For most of this time his position has been unassailable. Taking over a party which had lost four elections in a row, Blair systematically gutted Labour’s core principles in order to win power. Many in the party who were unhappy about this chose to remain silent, such was their desire to win power. It was hard to criticise their silence as Labour won a landslide victory in 1997 followed by an unprecedented second thumping win in 2001. Blair, never loved or even liked by those he led, was secure only as long as he remained popular with the voters. As his popularity has drained away, more and more Labour members have come to see him as a liability rather than an asset.

It is unlikely that Gordon Brown will ever openly challenge Blair for the job which the Chancellor believes to be his by right. It also seems unlikely that the party would risk a bloody leadership coup so close to the next general election. So Blair’s job is safe? Perhaps not. The Prime Minister may decide he has had enough. In recent months his appearance has become more haggard and his musings on his own future more pessimistic. Add in the heart scares and the once untouchable PM may yet fall on his sword.

If he does, how will history judge him? It’s hard to avoid the word “disappointment”. Successive landslides gave Blair a parliamentary position which other PMs would die for. Always with an eye on the next elections, Blair has sacrificed this opportunity on the altar of placating Middle England.

His domestic programme comprised creeping privatisation of the health service, increasing the cost of higher education and neglecting the transport infrastructure. In Blair’s Britain public sector was always the problem, private sector always the solution. Those who didn’t see it that way were branded “dinosaurs”. It never occurred to Blair that business had to change too, that forcing British workers to work longer than anyone else in the EU was never a recipe for productivity.

On the international stage Blair will be remembered for his close alliance with both Clinton and Bush in their international adventures. He has sent British troops into harm’s way with alarming regularity: Serbia 1999, Afghanistan 2001, Iraq 2003 – three more wars than all his Labour predecessors put together. These wars have all been closely associated with Blair, with his hand-wringing concern for the human rights of those he was liberating via cluster bombs. Although planned on Pennsylvania Avenue, these wars were sold with the most gusto by Downing Street.

The Iraq war, in the shape of the Hutton report, may prove to be Blair’s downfall. For a man who always put presentation above all else this was one spin too far. The tissue of lies he used to frogmarch his party into war has come back to haunt him. A large section of the party and the public whom he deceived will welcome his dispatch over this issue.

Blair’s will be remembered as a squandered premiership. With a huge majority and a healthy economy, Blair never took the opportunity to recast Britain as a fairer, more egalitarian society. Compared to the great landslide governments of 1906 and 1945 his achievements look puny indeed. Baby steps when great strides were possible.