Leaders too long in office often look abroad at the far vistas and the blue hills of global policy for comforting distraction from domestic woes.

But wherever Tony Blair looks now, there is only more trouble with no respite.

So, on the third anniversary of the Iraq war, as he lays out his view of the world and where we stand in it, every word he speaks is freighted with trouble.

But he leads with his chin, acknowledging possible errors (smallish ones), absorbing counter-arguments. He lays down a pretty good challenge to his critics: so what would you do?

Give in? Let dictators have their way? Imagine soft-talking after long failed UN sanctions will somehow win the day with no fighting? Let backward, primitive Islamist extremists crush democracy, progress, freedom of thought for religion and for women?

Given a chance at risk of death people in Iraq and Afghanistan flock to vote, defying jihadist bombs in numbers that shame some western election days. This is not about a clash of civilisations but about civilisation and modernity itself.

On the right and left he deftly charactises those who would stay home and do nothing as no more than selfish 'why care so long as we're safe?' or as appeasers who fail to stand up to tyranny. Agree with him or not, as ever, it was a Blair intellectual tour de force.

But it won't persuade anyone. By now deep trenches are drawn along the battle lines, with ever fewer Brits or Americans regarding the Iraq war as a good idea.

His fine idealistic speeches in Chicago and at the party conference of 2001 about the duty to spread freedom and democracy wherever you can, touched a strong chord but belong in another pre-Iraq world.

It doesn't work now - and he dare only briefly touch on the reason why. The answer is George Bush, who is not and never was any ambassador of freedom to anyone anywhere.

However idealistic Blair's own motives - (though sticking close to the US has always been a deeply self-interested UK foreign policy) - whatever he did together with the Bush administration was destined to be sordidly mired in American interests and politics.

He deluded himself into thinking he ever had any influence.

Wicked liar, evil murderer, calculating rogue - as many of my e-mailers believe? No, simply deluded by the power of his own rhetoric, inflated with self-belief in his own righteous impulses, convinced he could divert US power for good purposes.

He is left floundering here, calling his critics crass anti-Americans: not so. Of course US power can be a force for good - but not under the Bush regime.

For some conspiracy theorists, here's a sinister thought: by chance as the Prime Minister was speaking, so was Dan Plesch, Strategic Analyst, warning that there are signs the US 'is poised to destroy 10,000 targets in Iran in a surprise attack using Stealth and BV52 bombers'.

This will alarm many that in this speech Tony Blair is not just begging for support to carry action in Iraq through until democracy wins - but he may be softening up for action ahead in Iran.

It is imaginable that Bush, floundering in the polls, might do it. But it is unimaginable that Blair could now support a US attack on Iran without a rebellion by his cabinet removing him from office at once.

Polly Toynbee @ Coment Is Free