As a practical matter, Mr Blair argued that a legal right to recognition made more sense than to risk damaging strikes about it.

ECONOMIST: Labour relations

Former Met Police chief Lord Blair of Boughton argued that the change should not be allowed to proceed without primary legislation and full parliamentary scrutiny.

BBC: Government defeated on Crime and Courts Bill

Mr Blair's supporters argued that he was not meekly following the American line, but instead remained true to a position he has held for many years, that if Saddam Hussein would not disarm peacefully then force would have to be used.

BBC: The Tony Blair years

The Conservatives had forgotten how to talk to aspirational lower middle class voters in the way that Margaret Thatcher and Tony Blair had done, he argued - to agreement from members of the audience.

BBC: Why did the Tories not win the 2010 general election?

Where Mr Blair supported the war (and indeed argued Mr Bush's case forcefully to the world), many of his countrymen opposed it.

ECONOMIST: More questions than answers | The

Sir David King, Tony Blair's chief scientist, recently argued that one further generation of nuclear power stations is needed (in Britain at least) to buy time, in order to keep down emissions of carbon dioxide, the chief greenhouse gas, while new carbon-free non-nuclear technologies are developed.

ECONOMIST: Nuclear power

However, the Jenkinsite ideas lived on and, so it is argued, were taken up by Tony Blair and his team, leading to a landslide victory in 1997 by New Labour, as it was now called.

ECONOMIST: Roy Jenkins

That criticism echoes Tony Blair's attack on the Conservatives, although Mr Duncan Smith has argued he is simply standing up for those who have complaints and wants to make the system work.

BBC: Charles Kennedy