Labour MP for Ealing North, Steve Pound, who served under the Blairite regime, what his thoughts were of 'A Journey'.

As ever I immediately turn to the index and note with sadness the absence of my name. Without any Blairite citation I will have to console myself with a dozen or so Christmas cards, some warm and generous letters written whenever I resigned and the memories of an utterly exceptional Prime Minister who can be loved or loathed but never ignored.

Much has been made of the demotic tone of the writing and his chatty, almost slangy, prose but anyone who knows Tony Blair will immediately recognise this as his personal style.

This is not a ghost-written biography or even an attempt to establish a positive legacy – this is a book of painful honesty written from the heart and it’s no wonder that it is flying off the shelves.

I will never ever forget seeing at close quarters the immense personal capital that Tony Blair invested in the peace process in the North of Ireland and those who take stability in the six counties for granted now should remember that over 3,500 died in the “troubles” and no-one ever read out their names at Prime Minister’s Questions the names of the 1,123 members of the Army, Royal Navy, RAF, reserves and security services who were killed.

Iraq was a catastrophic error and it casts a pall over the whole book but I challenge anyone reading it to refute the assertion that Tony Blair was acting throughout on the basis of the best available intelligence and what he saw as the best interests of the people of the region. To his credit Mr. Blair doesn’t seek exculpation by citing the “successes” of Sierra Leone, Kosovo, East Timor and other arenas of “liberal intervention” and while this will come as little consolation to the Iraqi people I hope that it will go some way towards explaining why he did what he did even though he knew he was yoking himself to Iraq until the day he died.

We love pouring scorn on success in this country and Tony Blair achieved an immense amount. This book tells you all you could possibly want to know about the son of a child fostered by a Glasgow shipyard rigger who grew to become an active member of the Communist Party but turned Tory when commissioned as a Major during the War.

Sometimes there is a little too much information for the more modestly inclined but you really can’t put it down any more than the author could keep his hands off Cherie.

I have a rare unsigned copy of the book and it’s one that I will return to as a reminder of an extraordinary political career which achieved so much but which will be forever blighted by Iraq and by what might have been.