What, said some, was the point of Tony Blair staying in office now that he's said he's going. On this trip to the Middle East he's tried to come up with one answer. He's presented himself, and seems to be accepted, as an envoy promoting Middle East peace.
To those who say that's impossible given his support for America and for Israel, Tony Blair replies that's precisely why it is possible. He's offering to use his influence to secure American backing, and an Israeli signature, on any future peace deal.
First in the Palestinian territories, then in Lebanon, he was accepted on those terms, despite angry public protests at Britain's role in the war on Lebanon.
Cynics will say they remember the prime minister, soon after 9/11, claiming that the kaleidoscope had been shaken, that the world could be remade, starting, he said, with bringing justice to the people of Gaza. His reply is a simple one: You can only keep trying.
BEIRUT: Tony Blair has just touched down for the last and trickiest leg of his Middle East tour. He has come to Lebanon less than a month after the end of a war which claimed the lives of more than 1,200 people and which some blame him for doing too little to stop. What's more he's flown in from Israel - a journey which, I'm told, has very rarely been made - where he embraced warmly the man who ordered the attacks.
Tony Blair is braced for demonstrations and his staff have decided not to take the risk of trying to visit bomb ravaged southern Beirut. The reception committee which might have awaited Mr Blair would, no doubt, have gone beyond the jostling and jeering which greeted UN Secretary General Kofi Annan.
One who will not be greeting the prime minister is Lebanese parliament speaker Nabih Berri. His explanation that he was "out of town ....on private business" turns out to be a little less than the full story. He is, in fact, in Iran. I suppose it could be worse for Tony Blair. He could be meeting Gordon Brown - just to pass on a gift for the baby, of course.
Do not expect Tony Blair to be repentant at his news conference with the Lebanese PM Fouad Siniora. He is, I'm told, proud of Britain's role in proposing and helping to deliver the framework - an international force as a buffer between Israel and Hizbollah - for the UN resolution which halted the conflict. He still insists that without this, calls for an immediate ceasefire were meaningless "grandstanding". What will be fascinating is to see how Mr Siniora reacts to him.
