"Che" Blair

I haven't read Tony Blair's abysmally titled memoirs, "A Journey" (been watching too much reality TV, Tone?), but I've already come across the most gobsmacking claim in recent literature: "my soul is and always will be that of a rebel.”

Well, now it really does all fall into place: the mooched holidays in edgy Barbados with the infamously seditious social activist Cliff Richard; the mooched holidays in Tuscany with the ultra progressive Silvio Berlusconi; the attempts to get the taxpayer to buy him a jet (Blair Force One) to ferry him about the place; the accumulation of a large property portfolio; the pro bono post-retirement work with progressive financial institutions like JP Morgan and Zurich Insurance; the hobnobbing with the famously enlightened rulers of the Middle East. How did we ever fail to recognise over the years that we were in the presence of a modern-day Oliver Cromwell, a Che Guevara for the new millennium?

Blair may be more self-deluded than Jedward, but at least he's brought us one of the great headlines of this or any other year, courtesy of a Times sub who knows how to wield a colon. The print edition's front page today leads with "Blair: why Labour lost". He sure was.