I prefer this explanation because Blair has always struck me as profoundly ignorant of Labour party history. He refers to his "political heritage" as springing from "Lloyd George, Keynes and Beveridge as well as Attlee, Bevin and Keir Hardie". But this is just waffle. I am sure he has never read the Beveridge Report, or Keynes's General Theory or Tony Crosland's Future of Socialism, to which he also pays ritual tribute. He likewise renders glowing thanks to Roy Jenkins as a mentor, but I doubt if he has ever finished one of Roy's books (he may have begun one or two) and the Jenkins he reveres is the member of the Gang of Four, not the Labour Cabinet minister. When I first met Blair, I was surprised to find he knew nothing of Bevanism, and Nye Bevan does not once appear in his memoir, though Michael Foot gets a brief mention.

People he cannot prevent himself from admiring tend to be Tories, sometimes surprising ones. In his memoir there is a long and touching tribute to Neville Chamberlain and his peace efforts, inspired by his diaries, which Blair dipped into when at a loss for anything to do in the Chequers library. His admiration for Margaret Thatcher was unbounded and had he followed his father and become a Tory MP he would have been her natural successor. Indeed, I possess the original of a Peter Brookes cartoon illustrating this very point. His one reservation about Thatcher is that he thinks she mishandled the Heseltine problem, her equivalent of his own Brown problem. He thinks she should have made Heseltine her successor. I can see why he admired Heseltine, a politician like himself with superb presentational skills and no fundamental convictions. But he fails to grasp that Thatcher saw Heseltine as essentially destructive in his self-seeking ambition, and got rid of him — as Blair himself fatally failed to get rid of the destructively self-seeking Brown. Thatcher's own choice as a successor, John Major, though feeble and unmemorable, at least won an election, which Heseltine would certainly have lost — in which case history, including Blair's own, would have been quite different. 

Blair's instinctual conservatism expresses itself in various ways. One is his good manners. He has the best manners of any political leader I have come across, here or abroad. I happen to believe manners are important, in theological terms an outward sign of inward grace. They spring, certainly in Blair's case, from a profound love of order, which is illustrated, time and again, in his memoir. If there is one thing he hates, it is any kind of criminal behaviour. If there is one additional reason for occupying Iraq and Afghanistan, besides the ones he gives, it is because he saw both as disorderly societies, a menace to their peoples, their immediate neighbours and the world as a whole. He wanted to make them orderly and harmless, and thus took on a task beyond, perhaps, anyone's power.

A further, and related instinct, also a conservative one, was his admiration for the United States, its freedom, dynamism and populist politics. With his ability to appeal to a wide range of people, and his minimal ideological baggage, Blair would have made a first-class American politician, and an admirable President. 

He got on well with both the US leaders with whom he had dealings, and liked and admired them. Bill Clinton, he argues, had an extraordinary rapport with ordinary people. This, he says, is what he strove for himself "but as a political class act I defer to the master". He adds: "He had it all. His superb intellect was often hidden by his manner, but he had incredible analytical ability, was genuinely interested in policy debate...and constantly on the lookout for new ideas." Again: "Clinton's great political strength was an endless capacity to be fascinated even by the most unfascinating people because he was always willing to learn from them."