TWO former Prime Ministers popped up on the airwaves the other day to pass on their wisdom — but with very different reactions.

One left office a failure, a laughing stock almost, after leading his party to calamitous defeat, to a quiet life of few public statements.

The other departed undefeated, his most party’s most successful leader, and has strode the world stage in post-No.10 retirement, a statesman and multi-millionaire.

Yet it was the first of these ex-PMs — Sir John Major — who is listened to with respect these days, in this case on the challenges of reforming the European Union.

Sadly, the all-too-frequent appearances of the second are greeted with a shudder of embarrassment and deep despair. His name? Tony Blair.

Sedgefield’s former finest certainly merited that reaction last week, penning an extraordinary 3,000-word essay absolving himself of any possible blame for the new Iraq tragedy. Now, I agree it’s too simple to say the 2003 bloodbath was the only cause of the current crisis, but, NO link at all, Mr Blair? Please!

Mr Blair still bangs the drum for war, arguing the world only discovered that Syrian dictator Assad had chemical weapons “when he used them”.

It took his former deputy chief of defence intelligence to point out this was untrue, that he had been given frequent reports that Syria did have chemical weapons.

It was a stark reminder of the way Mr Blair deliberately misled MPs and the public to get the country into the Iraq conflict, something we don’t need the long-delayed Chilcot report to tell us.

Now it’s open season, with former British ambassadors calling for the three times election-winner to be removed from his role as Middle East ‘peace envoy’. Yes, the man who wants Britain to be at war is, laughably, a ‘peace envoy’. You couldn’t make it up.

Meanwhile, Mr Blair is happy to speak up for Egypt’s new brutal leaders, with their record of torture and murder, as well as pursue business deals with dodgy regimes.

And of all this is not even the most embarrassing aspect of his most recent utterances, which also took in the so-called ‘Trojan Horse’ plot in Birmingham schools.

Almost everybody agrees it is wrong when boys and girls are separated, radical speakers are invited and sex education dropped… but that’s not enough for Tony. Oh no, the “warped and abusive” religion in Birmingham schools is as dangerous as Boko Haram, the Nigerian terrorist network.

I can see that scary, staring eye as Mr Blair wrote it, a man apparently determined to destroy his own reputation.

WHEN I asked George Osborne’s aides about his HS3 idea for high-speed cross- Pennine trains, I was told he was “just starting a conversation”.

Okay, what about bringing in powerful mayors, given that voters blew a large raspberry last time? The Chancellor is “just starting a conversation”, they replied.

Now, what was that Elvis Presley song the used to played at Conservative conferences?

Ah, yes….A Little Less Conversation (A Little More Action).