MUCH has been said in recent weeks about Tony Blair’s speech on Islam. Most of it has been vitriolic. As Bagehot noted in his column last week, Mr Blair attracts an astonishing degree of opprobrium. On the right, Peter Oborne has daubed him with “the degradation of our democracy”. On the left, Seumas Milne described his speech as an “anti-democratic tirade”. This is unfortunate. Whatever one thinks of Mr Blair’s views on foreign policy (or his generously compensated retirement pursuits) his past actions have much to teach today’s politicians. Knee-jerk hostility obscures useful precedents.

Consider the current panic about UKIP. David Cameron has spent the second half of his first (and perhaps only) term in power reacting to the threat it poses. He has issued tough talk on immigration, a guarantee of a rush-referendum on EU membership and, most recently, an oddly anachronistic insistence that today’s sceptical Britain is, in fact, a Christian country. To little effect: in recent months support for UKIP has soared. Mr Blair (who despite his own faith always refused to “do god” as prime minister) would have avoided such concessions, preferring instead to aggressively challenge Nigel Farage’s arguments and factual distortions as he did when the two clashed in the European Parliament in 2005.

The European question in particular demonstrates how sensible Mr Blair's approach was. For all the current talk of a popular clamour over Britain’s relationship with the EU, voters' interest in the subject was much more lively in the early 2000s. In the 2001 election campaign the opposition Conservatives, convinced that voters were exercised about the issue, campaigned on a fiercely anti-EU platform. Mr Blair largely ignored this, insisting that European engagement was in Britain's best economic interests and betting that voters would reward him for concentrating on bread-and-butter concerns. It paid off: he was rewarded with a second landslide victory. By contrast, Mr Cameron has allowed an anti-European party that has won no parliamentary seats—and whose leader is strikingly reluctant to expose himself to popular judgment—to dictate much of Britain’s foreign policy.

But beyond Mr Blair’s stance on specific issues, it is his broader demeanour that has most to teach the politicians of 2014. Some chide the former prime minister for being an “actor” and attribute the disillusion of those Britons now flirting with UKIP to his and others’ showmanship. They are wrong. Populism is not new. Nor are the economic struggles of ordinary voters. Those who chalk up UKIP’s success to joblessness and stagnant wages should look at unemployment rate in the 1980s, or wages in the mid-2000s. Neither explains the insurgent party’s recent surge. Nor does it explain why figures like Boris Johnson—just as showy and well-established as Mr Blair—continue to thrive politically in post-recession, UKIP-tinged Britain.

The truth (unpalatable to many in Westminster) is that voters like leaders like Mr Blair: salesmen, performers and, yes, actors. Politicians who win their affections should not feel guilty. They are doing their job as representatives: persuading people, speaking their language, garnering their trust.

So in their irrational hatred for a man who thrice achieved a level of popular approbation—a parliamentary majority—that still eludes David Cameron, commentators are missing an important point: the more UKIP’s star rises, the more Westminster needs a hefty dose of Tony Blair. After all, can anyone imagine David Cameron delivering the riposte to Mr Farage, in the middle of the European Parliament in Strasbourg, that Mr Blair did in 2005?

Let me just tell you, sir, and your colleagues: you sit with our country’s flag; you do not represent our country’s interests. This is the year: 2005, not 1945. We’re not fighting each other any more. These are our partners. They’re our colleagues and our future lies in Europe. And when you and your colleagues say ‘what do we get in return for what we contribute to enlargement?’, I’ll tell you what we get. We get a Europe that is unified after years of dictatorship in the east. We get economic development in countries whom we have championed. We get a future reform that allows us—once and for all—to put an end to discussion about rebates, common agricultural policy, and get a proper budget for Europe. That’s what we get if we have the vision to seize that opportunity.

Anyone?