It is a familiar pattern in democracies. A leader is elected because the preceding president or prime minister loses the trust of the public. The new man or woman sets out to change things utterly, changes them only a little, and eventually wears out his or her aura as a saviour. This recurring pattern is called in some quarters the attrition of power. British PM Tony Blair, who announced his resignation on Thursday, exemplifies the syndrome. The received idea about Blair is that he lost the confidence of Britons because he foolishly followed President Bush into Iraq. But when it comes to the attrition of power, there is always some egregious failing that fills the foreground.

Blair deserves the praise he has received for achieving peace in Northern Ireland, for the creation of separate legislatures in Scotland and Wales, and for overcoming his Tory predecessors’ knee-jerk hostility to the EU.

Blair sagely dispensed with British insularity when he backed the EU expansion that brought in Central European countries. And he rightly preached a policy of building a strong Europe. Blair’s detractors would do well to recognise that the attrition of power will always be a prime virtue of democracies, and that Blair is not the only figure to be tainted by a connection to Bush’s failed presidency.