In with a fanfare - out with a whisper

IN the end, he just petered out and came to an end. He looked down, almost bashfully, a big grin - with white teeth - on his face. Silence.

Even though everyone had known for months that the end was nigh, when it finally arrived, it caught everyone out. There was no tub-thumping finale, no big build-up with drums rolling and cymbals crashing. Just "good luck" and then a second or so of awkward nothingness.

In that second there was time enough to scan around the function room of the Trimdon Labour Club. It is a humble room, with a sticky floor, torn plastic bench seats with the foam filling falling out, and polystyrene rooftiles on which pieces of old celebrations remain stuck long after the causes have faded into history.

It is a room - crowded to the gills by 250 placard-waving activists and enthusiasts watched by the world's media - in which so many of the landmarks in the life of Labour's most successful Prime Minister have been acted out.

It was here late on the night of May 1, 1997, that he learnt that he would become Prime Minister, a tumultuous night, beyond all expectations, that carried on until a new dawn broke over the country.

It was here on June 7, 2001, that he learnt he'd won a second landslide amid a more workmanlike, sleeves-rolled-up atmosphere. And it was here on May 5, 2005, that he must have realised that the end had begun. That night he won a historic third victory, but the strangely subdued response must have told him that the first questions about his longevity were being asked.

Yesterday - May 10, 2007 - it came to an end here. The national newspaper sketch-writers were corralled into a corner of the balcony with broken brickwork. They sharpened their invective as they learnt that next door the food was being laid out for a funeral. A wake in the bar and a wake in the function room...

But waiting for Tony Blair, the atmosphere was more like an end-of-term disco. People bounced to upbeat hits by Kylie, the Lighthouse Family, U2 and, of course, D:Ream's signature tune (the song by the B52s was probably a mistake as everyone was trying to forget that bombs are a big part of Mr Blair's legacy). They took photos of one another in their Blair caps and Blair badges, and then looked at themselves on their camera screens - he became Prime Minister in the manual wind-on film era and he bowed out in the days of digital. Things have only got better.

Mr Blair's wife, Cherie, and daughter Kathryn preceded him into the room to long applause, and then in he cheerily breezed, looking almost relieved. It was as if a burden had been lifted from his shoulders - the weight of being Prime Minister or the delight of finishing preparing a difficult speech moments before it was delivered.

It was a historic speech. A spine-tingling speech, a defiant speech, an apologetic speech, an honest speech. At times, it was a speech by the master of the staged soundbite - "the vision is painted in the colours of the rainbow; and the reality is sketched in the duller tones of black, white and grey"; at other times, it was a speech by a lonely man who had battled with his conscience and as it was battered by events.

"Doubt, hesitation, reflection, consideration and re-consideration - these are all the good companions of proper decision-making," he said. "Sometimes ... you are alone with your own instinct."

It was a speech of hope - "politics may be the art of the possible; but at least in life, give the impossible a go", and yet it was the speech of a man who fears all hope has gone. Of Iraq, he said: "For many, it simply isn't and can't be worth it."

It would be easy to dismiss it as the speech of the ultimate performance politician theatrically pleading for his place in history. "I ask you to accept one thing," he said. "Hand on heart, I did what I thought was right."

But that phrase earned an unexpected round of applause, and it bought him time to nibble on his bottom lip which had begun to quiver out of control. In that second, he realised the enormity of what he had done and of what he was ending.

"I give my thanks to you, the British people, for the times I have succeeded, and my apologies to you for the times I have fallen short. Good luck."

Silence.

He looked down and then raised his arms so that the white cuffs of his neatly laundered shirt poked out of the sleeves of his dark suit. A warmth of applause enveloped him; people on their feet, some not just with moist eyes but with floods of tears down their cheeks.

"He did what he always does," said one of the tearful. "He grabbed the mood."

He turned at the doorway for a final time, and raised his left hand, not this time in statesmanlike salute, but in bloke-ish thumbs up.

It was all over. An astonishing journey had ended where it had begun: in the club at Trimdon. Ten years ago, he left Front Street for Downing Street as the new era dawned; yesterday, he went back to London as the sun set on the Blair reign.