...and the slippery rhetoric abounds:

If there's been a crucial failing that's ruined Blair's premiership it hasn't been on his part. It's on the part of his electorate, who have been consistently unable to surmount key intellectual obstacles when considering him – those obstacles being the perceived awfulness of Thatcher when they elected him in 1997 and the Baghdad insurgency as he leaves office in 2007. Blair has no control over either and shouldn't be criticised for them.

Blair may not have control of the insurgency in Iraq now, but he certainly had some influence at some point that he could have used in a way that would have made the present not as bad. Of course he had no control over the perceived awfulness of Thatcher, but he did have control...

I too, am rather disappointed in the quality of this Speaker. Long on style and short (if not subzero) on substance. Hardly a sentence goes by without an overstated or underreasoned claim. If I wanted this, I'd read the Herald, not PA.