David Cameron was good at politics once – he got under Tony Blair’s skin

The new foreign secretary was the only rival who succeeded in needling Blair, writes John Rentoul

Cameron set out deliberately to learn from Blair in order to beat him (PA)

Tony Blair was effortlessly dismissive of the five Conservative leaders he faced across the House of Commons. “I defined Major as weak; Hague as better at jokes than judgement; Howard as an opportunist; Cameron as a flip-flop, not knowing where he wanted to go.”

He said he didn’t bother with Iain Duncan Smith, because “the Tories did my work for me” in undermining him. These observations open one of the finest passages of Blair’s memoir, A Journey, in which he reflects on the effectiveness of different styles of debate.

His attacks on Tory leaders, he admitted, seem “flat” and “mundane”, but they were more effective than “calling your opponent a liar, or a fraud, or a villain or a hypocrite”. Those insults are too heavy for the “middle-ground floating voter”, whereas the lesser charge, “because it’s more accurate and precisely because it’s more low-key, can stick”.