Curtain falls on Blair era: 'That is that. The end'

The chamber of the House of Commons is a remarkable theatre. Sometimes it seems vast. I remember the day in 1995 when Tony Blair said of John Major, with some force: "I lead my party. He follows his." The roar from the Labour opposition benches filled the space, and rolled on until the election. On Wednesday last week it was as small as the most intimate of avant-garde drama spaces. Blair was so restrained and quietly spoken that journalists, many of them sitting on steps in the overcrowded press gallery, leant forward to hear him.

Just before Prime Minister's Questions, Quentin Davies, the Tory defector, emerged from the crowd by the door and was led to a seat on the Labour side by Gillian Merron, a whip. He received a hero's welcome; order papers were waved; he was unmistakeably delighted to be there. We thought we were heading for an afternoon's boisterous end-of-term entertainment. But no. Blair was sombre, going straight into condolences for the three soldiers killed over the previous seven days, and then into a more elaborate tribute to the bravery of the armed forces. This included an apology for "the dangers that they face today in Iraq and Afghanistan", offset by a restatement of the rightness of the cause.

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Despite an attempt by a Tory backbencher, still brain-dead after all these years, to provide him with an easy target for a Margaret Thatcher "I'm enjoying this!" moment by asking questions about NHS reorganisation, Blair kept the tone subdued.

And when David Cameron stood up, he proved himself Blair's thespian equal, asking serious, national-interest questions about the floods and the Middle East. It meant that the outgoing Prime Minister could not hit him for a rhetorical, party-political six. And he continued to play it safe by laying on the compliments with a mechanical digger. Cherie, watching with the children from the side gallery facing Cameron, mouthed "thank you". Just in case, Cameron only used five of his six questions, so that if Blair had a prepared put-down, he couldn't use it.

Mind you, the Thatcher comparison is telling. Her swansong was interrupted by Michael Carttiss, a loyalist: "Cancel it. You can wipe the floor with these people."

In last week's atmosphere, by contrast, Blair became a senior employee leaving an organisation with a difficult past, at the centre of a small group of people, all of whom knew him personally, and many of whom had suspended their differences with him for the occasion.

The wit was deadpan, pitch perfect as (almost) always, from the multilingual farewell to Nicholas Winterton, the Eurosceptic Tory, to the downbeat conclusion, after a moment of hesitation that even the most hardened of Blair-watchers thought might have been one of genuine emotion: "That is that. The end." It took genius to bring such a cynical audience to its feet with such self-effacement.

Genius, and a highly visible piece of cheerleading by the dark-suited Cameron, waving to the benches behind him to the right to stand up.

Of course, the chamber is actually smaller than it was in 1995, because there is a glass screen in front of the public gallery now. When the general public joined in the standing ovation behind the glass, they looked like ghosts from far away.

MPs spilled out into the members' lobby: Quentin Davies unwisely did a lap of honour, accepting Labour congratulations and provoking Tory former colleagues. Alistair Burt, until the day before a fellow pro-European Tory, confronted him and called him "wretched". John Reid, looking utterly defeated, embraced Patricia Scotland, the baroness shortly to become Attorney General.

At the other end of the building, Blair was back in the prime ministerial car for the short trip to No 10 for the last time, sweeping past the anti-war protesters' tents in Parliament Square. Won't he miss the cut-and-thrust, he had been asked in one of his last prime ministerial interviews. "If I do, it'll be a classic case of not remembering what it was really like."

Back in No 10, the family's personal effects had been moved out already. Unlike the move in, when the children's toys, an acoustic guitar and 50 pairs of Cherie's shoes in canvas hangers were carried in in full view of the cameras, this time it was done more discreetly, with the last few big items, including a treadmill, carried out that morning.

"My former colleagues tell me there were plenty of tears flowing when TB and his family bade farewell to staff in the pillared room," wrote Alastair Campbell in the blog promoting his diaries, which are published next week. The staff then lined the corridor downstairs as he, Cherie and the children went out to wave for the cameras. With a parting dig at journalists from Cherie ("Bye. I don't think we'll miss you"), the two of them were off to the palace.

Then, as Brown took centre stage, Blair carried his own bag as he and Cherie took the train to Darlington. There, the television cameras dwelt cruelly on Cherie's clenched-grin, civvie-street question: "Where's the car?" The minicab to take them to his Sedgefield constituency was late. I don't know who booked the car, but whoever it was should have stayed with Elliott's of Trimdon, the taxi company the Blairs used until 10 years ago, before they had government cars to take them everywhere. George Elliott, the owner, in 1991 put a £10 bet on Blair to be Prime Minister by the end of the century and got odds of 500-1 from a local bookmaker. "He dresses smart and everything, and he comes over well on television," was how he explained his thinking to me after he had collected his £5,000.

Now Blair was on his way to tell the people who made it all possible in Labour's darkest hour, when he was chosen as their candidate in 1983, that he would be standing down and that they would need a new candidate for the by-election. He was on his way to the family's constituency home, Myrobella, soon to be the base for a Blair sports foundation for the North. Much of the furniture there has been marked for removal: a dresser labelled "Maybe", a mirror labelled "Yes".

The last public speech of the day would be at Trimdon Labour Club, the backdrop to Blair history. The place where he declared he was a candidate for the leadership of the Labour Party. The place where, last month, he announced that "the only way you conquer the pull of power is to set it down". Now he had come to tell them that the story that had begun, against all odds, 24 years before had drawn to a close.

As he was travelling, his appointment as Middle East peace envoy was confirmed. At 5.14pm a bizarre press release was issued by the Treasury in London, saying that "the Chancellor of the Exchequer" - a person who, at that moment, did not actually exist - "has this day appointed the Right Honourable Anthony Charles Lynton Blair to be Steward and Bailiff of the Three Hundreds of Chiltern". Even in the age of email, the ancient traditions - requiring an MP to resign by taking an office incompatible with membership of the House of Commons - are observed.

And that, as the ex-prime minister said, was that. The end.

Further reading: 'The Blair Years' by Alastair Campbell is published by Random House on 9 July (£25)