There is now, inevitably, a book to be written. All prime ministers, like all US presidents, have debts to pay when they leave office - and thus kindly publishers who can come up with the necessary. "Your memoirs, sir? Certainly? Let's say a million or three for worldwide rights plus serialisations. Are you a personal friend of Mr Murdoch, sir?" How Tony and Cherie could do with cash of that calibre. Youngish retired statesman with youngish expensive family to support needs way of paying mortgage on crippling Connaught Square property venture.
So the weeks of relaxation this summer have not been as relaxed as heretofore. He's surely had the approaches already. They came over cocktails the moment he said he'd be handing over to Gordon. The money isn't exactly bankable yet, but the smell of it keeps creditors at bay.
Yet words on paper, even for a rhetorician of Blair's limpid skill, can't be tossed off on exotic beaches between games of touch football. They're his legacy, after all. They're supposed to be history. But when, between slapping on Leo's sun oil and calls from Prescott, do I have time to think? And what the hell would I say if I did?
The little library of exemplars by the bedside isn't exactly stimulating. Mrs Thatcher may or may not have been a towering PM, but her prose crawled to flaccidly tedious conclusions, more telephone book than open book. Mrs T belongs to the Harold Wilson school of memoir construction: the unmemorable in pursuit of the unreadable. Which is only slightly better than Ted Heath: the interminable in pursuit of exculpatory.
Curiously enough, the best modern exponent - because he seemed to have written it himself and let a little of that self shine wanly through - was John Major. But is The Book of Blair to be no more than a minor Major variation? Neither millions nor history lie that way. No; the size of the natural ambition - and publisher's advance - needs a transatlantic twist. Come in Bill Clinton, guiding light for The Tome of Tony.
Except (back to those long holiday nights of wakefulness and wondering), how the heck can that trick be turned? Random House and chums aren't random when it comes to sensational blurbs and big cheques. They want revelations for their loot. They wanted Bill on Monica. How can I compete? My occasionally animated discussions with Gordon? The trouble with buying flats in Bristol? What I told Mandy over coffee?
That sort of thing isn't quite seemly or timely. The need to finance my mortgage is now, or a week on Tuesday, because the damned mansion is eating thousands every month. And, alas, the frontiers of ethical and political propriety extend rather beyond that.
So Gordon will be top dog, the one with the cars and security men, for my launch party. I'll be sitting on boards, chairing this, lecturing about that. I'll need the illusion of access to him and my party. But there's no way of getting that if I'm dishing dirt on his Granita delusions.
I mean, I have to be on the same side, just as I was with dear Bill or dear George. Do I regret toppling Saddam? Of course, I regrette rien. Just as I don't regret Cherie and that Carole person. I think New Labour remains a beacon of hope for the world, and Alastair Campbell never put a word or fist out of place. I'm proud of Stephen Byers and formula one and Silvio Berlusconi and Lord Cliff of the Carib. What else can I say?
Jacques Chirac? Let me be utterly frank: he is sometimes difficult to get along with, to be sure: proud and impetuous. But he knows that I was always right, that I stand at the heart of Europe - and he respects that, he admires my French and my eloquence. Indeed, if you keep Bin Laden, Saddam and Gwyneth Dunwoody out of it, everybody I know feels that way about me. It's gratifying - but it doesn't exactly set blurb writers salivating.
And there's the rub. If I write about how successful I've been, how I helped our globe through a dodgy patch, then prudence shifts precious few copies, particularly if Alastair is peddling his own diaries, JP is releasing Deputy Dog, Jack's auctioning Men of Straw and the gold rush is on. Who wants memoirs minus dirt, no matter how honestly, sincerely truthful? But I can't play dirty myself, it's not me - and, even if it were, it would cheapen the image I need. The curse of Edwina.
Nobody coughs up millions for nothing. I could always do the Bill thing and write hundreds of pages about growing up a bastard in a log cabin. But I didn't. I could try and put my essential philosophy on paper. But that's only a short chapter.
I wish I'd kept a diary, but I was too bloody busy. (Maybe Piers Morgan could "reconstruct" one for me?) Meanwhile, those zillions just hang there like coconuts on a palm tree, waiting to drop.
Cherie says we should do the Bill and Hillary thing in a single volume ... the Viagra Dialogues of Downing Street, Mr Middle of the Road and Ms Keep Left struggling for Labour's soul and 20 pages of the Daily Mail. She reckons we could be the 21st-century blurb writers' answer to Richard and Judy and make some "real money". Eureka! I cry. I mean, is there any other kind?
