Fond farewells | 9 June 2007

I caught the end of the Darcey Bussell farewell after an evening at the birthday party of Blair’s departing head of communications, Ben Wegg-Prosser, an event attended by many of the ur-Blairites who were there from the very start in 1994. Watching the tearful ballerina dodging flowers thrown by the adoring fans, the curtain calls, and the onstage tributes, it was clear that this was what the Prime Minister had in mind when he planned his own farewell tour. No such luck: I turned over to Newsnight, and there was Bob Geldof declaring the G8 Summit to have been “bollocks”. In the end, even in the hands of a master choreographer like Blair, politics is not ballet.