This piece originally appeared in the September 2014 issue of GQ

What's the first thing that comes to mind when you think about Tony Blair? The man who spent ten years in Downing Street has left an undeniably formidable legacy. Perhaps it's the enduring peace in Northern Ireland, which he brokered in the build-up to the Good Friday Agreement? Or the 1.4 million people in the UK making a tenable living as a result of the minimum wage? No? Us neither.

Betting is, you're thinking of one thing: Iraq. Coffins draped in Union flags. Abrams tanks rolling through scarred thoroughfares. Blood on sand.

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The further it gets from the 2003 invasion, the further the country seems to be heading towards a Hobbesian nightmare where life is nasty, brutish and short. To many, the mission to export democracy not only looks futile, but startlingly grievous. It appears to have brought fundamentalist terrorism to a place where, once, it did not exist. The current insurgency spells years of relentless sectarian bloodshed as the country rots from the inside out.

And then there are his other perceived failings. His record as a special envoy to the Middle East, for instance. The only thing he's got the Israelis and Palestinians to agree on, so the joke goes, is how much they wish he'd just leave them alone. Then there's the vast wealth that he's accumulated since leaving office, through his advisory position with JPMorgan Chase and his ability to charge a king's ransom for after-dinner speaking (hundreds of thousands, if the reports are to be believed).

Blair's virtues slip easily from memory. Ask a psychologist, and they'll explain this as a "halo effect". It's the cognitive bias whereby certain positive associations, or in this case negative ones (a "reverse halo"), disproportionately colour an overall opinion about someone or something. You're already well acquainted with it. The quiet sense that Amanda Knox, simply because she's attractive, is the victim of a gross miscarriage of justice. Or the smoker's belief that "organic" tobacco is somehow less harmful than the regular kind. And it's exactly this cognitive short circuit that happens when we talk about Tony Blair. The Iraq War polluted our judgement of everything else that he has done. It's why, if you are to mention in polite company that you have an affection - nay, even a scintilla of sympathy - for the man, people treat you as if you'd just revealed that you were wanted under Operation Yewtree.

Indeed, the aftermath of Iraq has been so appalling that we ignore the war's one area of success. Regardless of Blair's maneuvering, or the nature of the intelligence that led to the campaign, one thing is clear: the operation liberated an oppressed people from a crime family. There's a recent tendency to romanticise Saddam Hussein's Iraq, but don't forget that he killed possibly a million of his own people. What if he hadn't been toppled? Sometimes it's the things you don't do that are more damaging.

Blair won the battle, even if he lost the peace. There was a time when we were marginally more sympathetic to that. In May 2007, the month before Blair left office – and four years since the war began – he was only two points behind David Cameron in the opinion polls. Blame for the current insurgency cannot be laid solely at Blair's door. The prevailing ideology implies that all right-minded MPs hold him responsible, ignoring the fact that heavyweights such as William Hague disagree. In June, the foreign secretary said: "There are other major forces at work here - the growth of sectarianism in the Middle East, rivalry between different states in the Middle East, the rise of religious intolerance - which are not necessarily provoked or subdued by Western intervention."

We've bought a partial, revisionist version of his premiership. Its myth is that Blair didn't achieve anything; in truth, he transformed the country (Charlie Burton)

Whatever your views on Iraq, however, in many ways we would be lucky to have Blair back in British politics today. Every now and then he re-emerges to remind us as much. Take the time he went on The Andrew Marr Show for his first big interview since leaving Downing Street. Suddenly, after his three years away, we remembered: this is what a leader is supposed to look like! Even when he dodged a question (and he didn't dodge many) he appeared to engage it head on. More recently, he went on Radio 4 to talk about the European elections. His manner telegraphed absolute credibility, his lines did not seem rehearsed and his arguments were more robust, coherent and convincing – not to mention better articulated – than anything we'd heard from those in power. In the context of the current government, it was like listening to Franklin D Roosevelt.

Blair's marquee policies were consistent with what he presented as his convictions. After all, his willingness to keep re-stating his original position on Iraq, fully aware of the obloquy that it provokes, is astonishingly steadfast. Contrast that to David Cameron. It was no shock to us when he switched from hugging trees to hating wind farms, or changed his emphasis to pander to UKIP voters. Where the coalition seems to have been successful, it has often built on Blair's groundwork. Michael Gove's free schools are the genetic descendents of Blair's academies. Tory members privately despair over how little Cameron seems to stand for.

When Blair went into Iraq he said that history would judge whether it was the right decision. The problem is, we've bought a partial, revisionist history of an entire premiership. Its great myth is that Blair didn't achieve anything in office; the truth is he fundamentally transformed the country. It's not just Northern Ireland and the minimum wage: he left a vast legacy. Civil partnerships. Bank of England independence. The Welsh Assembly. The Scottish Parliament. A mayor of London. A plunging crime rate. Even abroad, his brand of liberal interventionism in Sierra Leone and Kosovo was a success. He is a hero to Kosovan Albanians, many of whom have named their children "Tonibler" in his honour.

Such far-reaching achievements are entirely down to Blair's abilities as a politician. While being "good" at politics might seem cynical, it is also exactly what it means to be effective as the leader of a nation. Ed Miliband, with his inability to be heard on the big issues and failure to stop the party turning against him, seems unlikely ever to fulfil that role because political nous is the sine qua non of serious governance. Blair's messaging was ironclad - he was an arch strategist, anticipating problems and rebutting accusations with ruthless efficiency - and in the "third way" he had an ideology with which to make sense of his decisions to the electorate.

The Tories lack any such cohesive philosophy or general theory. They almost had one, once upon a time, with the "big society". And here's where you can isolate the difference between Cameron and Blair. Cameron allowed it to become widely misconstrued as a volunteer programme. (Newsflash: it was actually about a fundamental devolution of power at all levels of government. No, we didn't get that either.) Blair would never have permitted it to wither on the vine in such a fashion. He would have war-gamed with Peter Mandelson; Alastair Campbell would have unleashed hell on journalists who misrepresented it. Blair's proficiency enabled him to see off four Tory leaders in a protracted battle royale (John Major, William Hague, Iain Duncan Smith and Michael Howard) and win two landslides. Tantalisingly, in 2012, Blair said he'd like to return to British politics. If he managed it, he would expose the current party leaders as profoundly wanting.

While being 'good' at politics might seem somewhat cynical, it is exactly what it means to be effective as the leader of a nation (Charlie Burton)

That's the kind of figure you want representing you on the world stage. He has an understated charisma that is as winning as Bill Clinton's. In EU meetings, he made attendees swoon at his ability to negotiate in fluent French. He is an exceptional public performer who can extemporise finely hewn rhetoric at a moment's notice, and is able to speak with great moral sincerity. No wonder, at his last Prime Minister's Questions, following his emotionally charged sayonara extolling the possibilities of politics as an arena for the pursuit of noble causes, the House – Tories included – burst into a standing ovation. Famously, Cameron once described himself as "the heir to Blair".

What's more, it's a mistake to think that his seven years since leaving office have been a shambles. He has brought the same vision he had in Downing Street to his work in civilian life. Plenty of former prime ministers fade away into grey blur, whereas Blair has managed an extensive and diverse portfolio of organisations, from his Sports Foundation to the Africa Governance Initiative. He also runs the Tony Blair Faith Foundation to help prevent religious prejudice and extremism; in 2010 he won the Liberty Medal from the National Constitution Center in Philadelphia (for "men and women of courage and conviction"). Through his consultancy, Tony Blair Associates, he often works with wayward governments to nudge them back into line.

Of course, to the right-wing press, this is yet more evidence of his iniquity. And so perpetuates the fiction that he always was and continues to be a poisonous character and that we knew it from day one. But there's a viral video on YouTube that has taken on a peculiar, unintended resonance. It was shot after Blair resigned and shows a little girl bawling her eyes out uncontrollably. "What's wrong, Zoe, why are you crying?" asks her mother. "Because I just want Tony Blair to come back," she replies through her tears, "and I want him to be prime minister." "Why?" "Because I just do." "Why do you want him to be prime minister still?" the mother presses. The girl looks down. "Because I love him." His detractors, in years to come, might well sympathise.

This article was originally published in the September 2014 issue of British GQ.