Tony Blair, Margaret Thatcher and why parties always turn on long-suffering PMs

As the former prime minister says he left office at his least popular, Sean O’Grady looks at why leaders get no thanks from the parties whose fortunes they have transformed

Blair says he didn’t enjoy his time in No 10 (PA)

Despite appearances – toothy grin, leaping on to planes to sunny summits, doing comedy vids with Catherine Tate – it turns out that Tony Blair wasn’t living the dream during his 10 years as prime minister after all. Now he tells us!

According to the man the Tories enviously knew and studied as “The Master”, and who dominated the political stage for so long: “I don’t think I did enjoy the job because the responsibility is so huge ... Every day you’re making decisions and every day you’re under massive scrutiny, as is your family. So I didn’t know if I enjoyed it.”

Actually he also always used to say that he hated being leader of the opposition, so Blair’s personal odyssey of pain goes all the way back to 1994. Maybe he wants compensation for hurt feelings and loss of earnings (compared to what he might have got as a barrister, though it’d be hard to press that case too far, given his proven money-spinning abilities since he quit Downing Street in 2007).