At noon today in Britain (7:00 a.m. EST) Tony Blair began his long goodbye from the post of prime minister. Having given the date of his resignation to relieved cabinet colleagues, he left for his home constituency (the safe Labor seat of Sedgefield) to make a public announcement to the most loyal of Labor loyalists. Each stage of his positively last appearance is being covered minutely by media still fascinated by Blair and his public-relations “spin,” even as they report the gradual crumbling of the New Labour regime.

Blair is not, however, actually going anywhere yet — except back to Downing Street. His announcement merely sets in train the process of electing a new Labor leader. This is really a formality. Everyone knows that Gordon Brown will succeed Blair, whom he has spent the last ten years resenting and blocking. There may not even be a contested election if neither of Brown’s potential opponents can persuade 46 Labour MPs to sign their nomination papers. But it is a formality that will take about seven weeks. Between now and Brown’s succession, Blair will be making a number of diplomatic visits, notably to Washington and a European Union summit, where he still hopes to make history.

He is indeed desperate to make history and in particular to leave a “legacy” of achievement beyond serving ten years in Downing Street and winning three successive elections. Lady Thatcher performed both feats and in addition transformed a prostrate Britain into the world’s fourth-largest economy, launched a worldwide revolution of privatization, won the Falklands War, helped win the Cold War, and established herself as the most successful peacetime prime minister of the 20th century. Blair is unhappily conscious that his own achievements fall well below that standard — and, worse, that they are outweighed by his failures.

Blair’s central pledge in 1997 was that he would improve public services without raising taxes. Instead he has raised taxes without improving public services. Alongside his picture on the front of today’s Daily Telegraph is a report that cancer patients are more likely to die of the disease in Britain than in other European countries despite a massive infusion of public money into the National Health Service under the Blair government. Originally Blair hoped to avoid such a wasteful outcome by introducing market mechanisms of choice, variety, and flexibility into public services. But the opposition of his party’s left wing, the neutering of his proposals by Brown, and his own administrative lassitude — all these served to ensure that bold announcements rarely became actual reforms. In the last year we have even seen the tragicomedy of Blair’s seeking to reintroduce Thatcherite reforms in health and education that he himself had abolished in the first careless rapture of office.

It was said until recently that at least Blair’s constitutional reforms had made Britain a more modern society. “Modernization” is the nearest thing to an ideology driving New Labor. But its heedless pursuit has led to a series of unforced errors. Blair’s reform of the House of Lords has created an Upper House of “Tony’s cronies,” rooted more firmly in patronage than ever. Everyone agrees it needs further reform, but no one knows how to do it. His creation of a mini-parliament in Scotland, intended to soothe Scottish discontents, has increased support for Scottish independence in both Scotland and England. With the Scottish National party winning a plurality in last week’s elections, the breakup of the United Kingdom is no longer unthinkable. And having pushed through the misnamed Human Rights Act, which grants judges the power to override Parliament, the prime minister has been complaining ever since that judicial interventions are hampering the fight against terrorism.

Americans — or at least American conservatives — are understandably inclined to ignore these failings and to concentrate instead on Blair’s bravery and eloquence on Iraq. He undoubtedly deserves great praise on that score. Attacks on him from left and right as a compliant lapdog of President Bush are both contemptible and false. Blair was a “muscular multilateralist” long before Bush was elected — he urged President Clinton to intervene more boldly in Bosnia and he himself sent British troops into Sierra Leone. He persuaded Bush, probably wrongly, to seek a second resolution at the U.N. to justify intervention in Iraq. He has influenced Bush on a range of issues — Middle East policy, aid to Africa, climate change. In the jargon of multilateralism, Blair has been a policymaker, not a policy-taker.

But courage and eloquence, though vital, are dangerous unless accompanied by judgment and prudence. Blair and Bush failed to ask tough questions about the conduct of coalition policy in Iraq after the toppling of Saddam. Like Bush, Blair must bear his share of blame for the current difficulties there.

Blair’s failings in foreign policy go beyond Iraq, however. He argues that Britain must never choose between Europe and America. Yet he has taken the U.K. so far along the road of political (and military) integration with the EU that a future British prime minister might be simply unable to side with the U.S. against a Euro-consensus. Nor might British public opinion support a pro-American policy in such circumstances. However warm the relationship between president and prime minister, the Anglo-American “special relationship” is weaker today at a popular level than it was when the Cold War ended. Much of that is the result of the unfair attacks on Blair as Bush’s poodle. But the prime minister cannot escape his share of responsibility for this change in British opinion. After all, it occurred on his watch.

Are there then no achievements outside winning elections to Blair’s credit? That would be too harsh a judgment. Northern Ireland is now enjoying a peace that is probably stable — though at the cost of installing unrepentant terrorists in office. Also, the prime minister still has seven weeks of power left. Knowing his current unpopularity, he is likely to seize any opportunity for some final “historic” moment. The EU might present him with the chance to “confirm” Britain’s place in Europe by signing onto a new constitutional treaty, denying the British people a referendum on it, and daring Brown to revoke the decision. That would be an achievement of sorts — in the eyes of the establishment at least.

And there is one achievement in which he has proved himself the equal of Lady Thatcher. Both transformed their opposition party in their own image — Labor accepted the market, the Tories have adopted a strategy of “spin.” If the Tories, under their leader, David Cameron, ride this strategy to victory, well, Blair might not be too distressed. Son of Thatcher would then be replaced by Son of Blair — and not by the ugly stepbrother, Gordon Brown.