Blair’s legacy = David Cameron

As summed up by the FT’s chief political columnist, Philip Stephens, in today’s Observer:

A Parisian friend asked me: Who's the biggest player in the coming French presidential election? I ummed and aahed about Segolene Royal and Nicolas Sarkozy. Wrong. The answer was Tony Blair. Royal and Sarkozy, the self-declared modernising candidates on the left and right, were casting themselves in the image of Blair. His brand of centre-leftism changed the rules in politics... By detaching ends from means, values from policies, he has liberated (or should have) the left from its old obsessions. Blair has shown the right that it ignores the public realm at its peril. Economic efficiency and social justice remain the most powerful message in contemporary politics. Ask David Cameron.