The Blair summitA generally favourable verdict on the summit's achievements may give the British PM cause for celebration, writes Frank Millar
In the prevailing circumstances it does not seem quite right to say that Tony Blair is once again flying high. The prime minister left the G8 summit to return to London last night for another meeting of the cabinet's emergency 'Cobra' committee.
For it was not just death in Africa - but Thursday's exercise in mass murder in his own capital - which overshadowed the Gleneagles gathering.
As the strain on Mr Blair's face showed all too clearly yesterday, leadership is a tough, demanding business. The political agenda moves remorselessly on. As the other world leaders flew home, Mr Blair was already immersed in briefings about the search for the perpetrators and the ongoing search for bodies 100 feet below ground in the wreckage of the exploded tube train between King's Cross and Russell Square.
In the rough, unforgiving trade that is politics there were also those prepared privately to suggest that Thursday's tragic events might spare Mr Blair some of the detailed scrutiny which would suggest he had failed at the G8 to fulfil the expectations he and Chancellor Gordon Brown had raised.
Such partisanship reflects something of the ongoing state of a ruling Labour party still divided over the Iraq war, with many impatient for the leadership change promised before the end of this parliament.
The relief in 10 Downing Street will be that most of those inspired by last Saturday's global Live 8 event will be rather more interested in the verdict of Bob Geldof and Bono. And that verdict never really seemed in much doubt.
Questioned by the BBC on Wednesday, Bono had cautioned the media against presuming what the deal which finally emerged yesterday on aid and debt relief would be. This was the moment, he said, when promises would prove to be fact or fiction. And while some NGOs and anti-poverty campaigners yesterday expressed their disappointment, the Irish rock star adapted the words of Winston Churchill to declare this "not the end... but the beginning of the end of extreme poverty." Geldof, likewise, hailed "a great day" with the potential to save ten million lives and declared: "Never before have so many people forced a change of policy on to a global agenda."
Mr Blair, by contrast, had seemed close at one point to actually under-stating his own achievement. A "rationalist" in politics, he recognised this was not everything he had hoped for. On trade, for example, he admitted he would have liked a firm date set for the ending of farm subsidies. Yet as he spoke the passion returned, and by the end of his press conference he was raising expectations for the World Trade Organisation talks in Hong Kong in December.
From there being "every chance" Mr Blair moved to offer his own judgment that a date for the end of subsidies would be set in December. "Not enough" he said was invariably the response of those who never managed to get their hands dirty or achieve anything much.
"Politics is about getting things done. This is big progress and we should be proud of it," he declared: "On any basis this is a huge uplift in aid. Let's go out and celebrate that."
The devil, as ever, will be found in the detail. Much will turn on the partnership between the G8 and the Africa Union in terms of delivering good governance, transparency and the assault on corruption. Trade justice remains key. As Blair himself observes, Africa requires partnership rather than dependency. But resources targeted at universal access to Aids drugs? Millions of African girls in school? Relief from suffering and the chance of life for those seemingly condemned to death? In a world again darkened by terror and the wanton destruction of life, Blair surely did offer cause for some celebration. In the process he demonstrated that, if his time is running out, it is not yet over.