So he's gone then. At last we're rid of him after his strutting, farewell tour of the world stage. Good riddance.

There might now be a little less poison in the political air, though it can by no means be guaranteed. As a legacy he's left a mist of misinformation and mistrust which might never be fully dispelled.

Why do I loathe Tony Blair so deeply? It's much more than the instinctive, in-built antipathy to those in authority which has led me to take a jaundiced view of all the prime ministers I've been conscious of living under.

Some I didn't know much about. There was Winston Churchill of course, who was PM in the year I was born, 1944. He was voted out the following year (much to his surprise) but had another shot at it from 1951-55. You weren't supposed to think badly of "Winnie". After all, without him we'd all have been Hitler's slaves.

And in between his terms of office there was Clem Attlee whose government brought in the welfare state under which we grew up, with free orange juice, cod-liver oil, National Dried Milk, prescriptions, health and dental care and all the rest. Who could fault that?

Then in 1955 along came Sir Anthony Eden who made a hopeless hash of Suez the following year, at a time when I was just about becoming aware of events in the news. I learned then that politicians, even prime ministers, could be fallible.

That political awareness grew during the premiership of Harold Macmillan, which coincided with my teenage years. It also coincided with the appearance on the scene of satire, in the shape of Private Eye magazine and BBC-TV's That Was the Week That Was.

Suddenly it wasn't cool to respect politicians. They were there to be lampooned. "Supermac" came in for his share of mockery, and some of it was well-deserved. His successor, Sir Alec Douglas-Home, who hung on in there for little more than a year, was a nice chap but with his skeletal features, hesitant aristocratic manner and half-moon spectacles was eminently lampoonable.

Then came Harold Wilson, and there was great rejoicing among the young people of the land. The Tories' stranglehold was broken and a brave new world was ushered in (although Wilson's pipe and Gannex coat caused some satirical merriment). It was ushered out four years later when the Tories' Ted Heath moved in to Number 10 and the mocking began again - of his shoulder-shaking laugh, of his appalling French pronunciation, of his pastimes of organ-playing and yachting, of the way he landed Britain with the three-day week and a rota of power cuts.

Wilson returned in 1974, but somehow the shining armour he'd worn the first time around seemed tarnished. In fact there were times, increasingly, when he looked decidedly tricky.

When he left the political stage, abruptly and mysteriously (it was later suggested he'd been showing early signs of Alzheimer's disease), his place was taken by Jim Callaghan, who was less "Sunny" than his nickname suggested, got his government into a real old mess over industrial relations (even we provincial journalists found ourselves on strike, for seven weeks), and was toppled by Margaret Thatcher.

For 11 years we were all bossed, bullied, battered, hectored and handbagged by this warrior prime minister who liked nothing better than a good scrap, whether it was against the "Argies" or the people she denounced as "the enemy within" - the miners.

Under Maggie, all the soft edges were knocked off British society. It became a selfish "loadsamoney" world in which we all looked out for ourselves even if it meant stabbing others in the back.

It was a relief when hers turned out to be the next back to be stabbed and she tearfully left Downing Street to be replaced by John Major.

He isn't credited with much, other than presiding over a government that was increasingly tainted by sleaze. He was a basically decent man but a weak prime minister, much softer and kinder than Maggie, who let some of those around him feather their own nests.

When he went we got Blair, who promised a clean new beginning under a New Labour brand. And for a while we believed in him. But soon nest-feathering became a national past-time. "Spin" rather than honesty became the Government's way of doing things, so that no-one could take anything at face value any more. Integrity in public life was in retreat. Journalists were bullied. The public were misled. And worse was to follow.

Blair will never be forgotten, and should never be forgiven, for Iraq. He took this country into war on an untruth. Because that untruth was exposed BBC reporter Andrew Gilligan was driven out of his job. So was BBC director-general Greg Dyke while the rest of the BBC governors grovelled. Dr David Kelly, who did the right thing by blowing the whistle to Gilligan about the so-called "dodgy dossier", died in a remote field in circumstances which have never been properly explained.

Hundreds of British servicemen and women have been killed. So have hundreds of thousands of Iraqis. And Britain has become even more of a terrorist target.

At home, meanwhile, the health service is near bankrupt and in disarray, once-great schools l are being put into special measures, the welfare safety net is unravelling fast, Britain is on the brink of fragmenting as Scotland and Wales flex their muscles and Cornish separatists start to turn nasty, immigration is out of control, prisons are overflowing, pensioners fear for their future, banks cheat their customers, Parliament has been sidelined, democracy has been ridden roughshod over, no-one trusts anyone any more What a legacy, eh? Small wonder it's not difficult to loathe the self-seeking poser as he swans off to earn a fortune lecturing in the US and becomes a peace envoy' in the Middle East - where I suspect he isn't trusted any more than he is here.

So yes, good riddance Blair. You might be easily able to delude yourself that you're a great guy who's been the best thing to happen to this country for half a century. History will see you rather more honestly.