The Sketch: Tony Blair's BBC2 birthday shindig reveals a power-loving charmer with a zealous streak

We cope with our mid-life urges in different ways. John Sergeant, presenter of last night's 50th birthday party on BBC2 for Tony Blair, bought a nifty little BMW sports car. Mr Blair invaded Iraq. Not even German automotive engineering can offer the speed, cornering ability and acceleration of an RAF attack jet. It's one of the perks of office.

As William Hague observed in Happy Birthday Mr Prime Minister: A Portrait of Tony Blair at 50: "Tony Blair really loves power." Certainly, we can all agree that Mr Blair has done very well in life.

True, he's never managed to hold down the job of parliamentary sketch writer, but he has made his way to the forefront of the British political establishment and stayed there, as one of the world's most powerful and popular men, for six years.

The programme reminded us how good looking he was as a young man. He was attractive without being sexually attractive. Even Cilla Black (who gave him a kiss and a toe-curling rendition of Marilyn Monroe's "Happy Birthday, Mr President") couldn't admit to finding him fanciable (too young). Somewhere in there lies the mystery of his alchemical charm.

Michael Portillo pointed out that most politicians say opposite things in their on-the-one-hand-on-the-other-hand way. Usually voters remember the position they don't agree with; with Blair they remember the one they do. "I'm at a loss to know how he does that," Mr Portillo said. It's a very good point and explains why Mr Blair is known as a Tory in some quarters, even as he presides over the doubling of public spending.

We saw the members of his first successful selection committee in Sedgefield all those years ago. They liked him. No, he wasn't too posh. He was just incredibly personable. He told them, bravely, he wasn't a committed CND sort of chap and that he believed the party should be more involved in Europe (the Labour party was very much in its mushy pea days).

"We had dinner with him to try and find out why he had joined the Labour Party," one of them said. They never found out.

The commentary from rueful Tories was good, but more interesting were insights provided by the man himself.

Two remarks in particular stood out. That one from a party conference some years ago: "I am my brother's keeper!" In the absence of a brother, Mr Blair has to exercise his pastoral instincts on us, whether we like it or not. He's bringing religion back into politics 2,000 years after Jesus cunningly provided for the separation of Church and state with his "Render unto Caesar" dictum.

Mr Blair's sentimental errors, implemented with such good intentions, will take years to work through the system. One shouldn't use the world as a metaphysical brothel for the emotions, as Arthur Koestler would have told Sergeant, had he had the opportunity.

And second: "I would never ever do something wrong or improper or change a policy for a donation, and I didn't in this case." His commentary on the Ecclestone affair must have been somewhere between a delusion and an outright lie – and all the more egregious coming as it did from this nice, young, Christian public schoolboy. He absolutely believed it at the time, people say. Which, if true, translates into a legal term: guilty but insane.

No doubt we'll have another five years to watch the story unfold and see how it ends.

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