"And That is That."

Tony Blair steps down. His last words in the House of Commons, spoken with a catch in his throat:

I wish everyone — friend or foe — well. And that is that. The end.

I'm a fan and had a catch in my throat as he uttered that line. I think history will prove him to have been one of the great statesmen. (Yes, libertarian geeks, I know, a bunch of surveillance cameras got installed on his watch. Get a grip, would you all?)
Andrew Sullivan has a sensible take on Blair's supposed status as Bush's lapdog:

Poodle owners are often passionate about their pets, catering to their
every whim, manipulated by their guile and tolerating their sometimes snippy
relationships with other dogs. In many cases – and this is not restricted to
poodles, of course – it’s hard to tell, after a while, who controls whom. The
master routinely finds his days wrapped around catering for the poodle: walking
it, grooming it, pandering to it. If the tail often wags the dog, the dog can
also wag the human. And often does.
I’ve never understood, in this respect,
why calling a British prime minister a poodle of the president of the United
States is therefore always to the detriment of the Brit. Most postwar British
prime ministers have intuitively understood this, however strongly their publics
have sometimes balked. The global power of a British premier is nowhere near
that of an American president, but the Brits’ leverage over such power is
arguably greater than any other country’s – precisely because of their
treasured, special, pampered poodle status.
Any number of Europeans would
have loved to have had Margaret Thatcher’s direct line to the White House in the
Reagan years, or Macmillan’s in the Kennedy years. De Gaulle, of course, was
insanely jealous.

Gordon Brown takes over. Thanks to my having seen the glorious movie, The Queen, I now know, more or less, what happens when the new leader in Britain visits Liz.