The true mark of Tony Blair's vanity is how he describes himself: TB. He has appropriated the name of one of the most feared killers in world history, simply because he is so vainly insensitive to anything beyond the moral confines of his own peculiar world. He is a Vulcan android, imitating what he understands of human behaviour, with learned mannerisms and learned concerns and learned passions, passing through a semblance of human life on this earth before returning home, with his baffled reports on that peculiar thing, the human condition.
So there are entire areas of popular memory outside his ken. He is aware of the political Himalayas which lie prominent on the skyline of British history, but unaware of the fat rivers which now bubble underground but which once poisonously traversed the terrain of British life. TB, tuberculosis, does not register on his radar screen, so he feels free to call himself by those initials, just as some future alien might one day be named Allan Ian Dennis Smith, and with chirpy self-righteousness refer to himself by his acronym.
Egotistical
The TB memorandum leaked earlier this week read like the work of an egotistical psychopath who feels free to tinker with law and with parliament, merely as playthings to secure the next general election. He is a frightening man, because he does not seem to recognise right from wrong, does not seem to understand what is constitutional and lawful and what is not; and this absence of a moral compass is made all the more terrifying by his truly awesome ability. He is master of every brief he reads; there seems to be no ministry in his government whose details he does not understand more comprehensively than the minister he has appointed to run them.
The memo in question should be set in gold, a jewel with a multitude of insightful facets. His is a cabinet government, yet he issued far-reaching instructions for the Home Office, the office of the Attorney General, the Minister for Defence, the Cabinet Minister Office and last - but most emphatically not least - the Chancellor of the Exchequer, about major new policy turns in all their departments; and for what purpose? Perception.
Perception first and last; and to serve that single issue, there seems to be no part of his presidential domain which may not be turned on its head. Throughout, there is an overweening and unembarrassed sense of self, as if the Vulcan scientist who programmed his brain was aware of the levels of egotisim required to become a major politician on this world, but lacked the tools to create the subtleties of dissimulation and fake modesty that are required for a politician to succeed within an earthling democracy.
British instincts
Thus could Blair yoke a nonchalant disregard for due process with an unashamed egotism, each - never mind both together - beyond parody or belief. Listing the areas of shortfall of his government, he noted: "But all these things add up to a sense that the Government - and this even applies to me - are somehow out of touch with gut British instincts." What an insupportable dead-weight of vanity lies within that single adverb, "even".
He went on: "We should think now of an initiative, e.g. locking up street muggers. Something tough, with immediate bite which sends a message through the system. . .This should be done soon and I, personally, should be associated with it. . .On the family, we need two or three eye-catching initiatives that are entirely conventional in terms of the attitude to the family. . .I should be associated with this as much as possible."
Had Mussolini settled for democratic means, this is the kind of bombastic mendacity he would have revelled in. Muggers? Lock 'em up! Families? A showy display of the obvious! Me? Give 'em more! He is bogus, bogus bogus, from the little sob in his throat as he read at the Princess of Wales's funeral service, to the coffee mug bearing the picture of his three children.
Ulster unionism
Does what this snake-oil salesman do matter to us on this side of the Irish Sea? Yes, it does; because sooner or later, Ulster unionism is going to have the snake-oil of disarmament, which he talked it into buying, rubbed into the bruises and open wounds of the electorate to which it is answerable. We are not talking about the delinquent rabble who yet again reduced the North to a smoking, paralysed wilderness, but to the plain law-abiding Protestants who loathed last week's violence, but who with equal measure loathe the prospect of being governed indefinitely by Sinn Fein ministers who remain attached to a paramilitary wing. We know Blair dealt with that problem by giving the unionists a hand-written promise on IRA disarmament that is as useful as a camel's undertakings over the future conduct of El Nino.
The Vulcan is losing his grip. He might be called back home by his masters sooner than he expected. This doesn't necessarily mean that all he helped to construct with spin and feigned sincerity in the North will inevitably fall apart, any more than the improbable bridge at Mostar collapsed, though its crooked architect, certain that it was doomed, fled before its completion; it stood for a further four-and-a-half centuries. Will and habit can sometimes outwit gravity.
And sooner than Blair might have thought, history will decide whether it will record two letters as a prime minister or a lethal disease: TB or not TB. That is the question.