I’m finally blogging again after a long and partly self-imposed absence.

To kick things off, here’s my column from today’s MEN, on Tony Blair:

Why do people who hate Tony Blair hate him with such a ferocious passion?

The answer, I suspect, isn’t just that they believe he took the country to war with Iraq on the basis of dodgy intelligence.

It isn’t just that they believe that the war was fundamentally misguided.

No; it is also that they suspect, somewhere deep in Mr Blair’s soul, he knows this too. They believe he was simply too weak to stand up to a right-wing American administration.

Their fury is fuelled not only by righteous indignation, but by a deep-rooted sense of betrayal.

They are entirely wrong.

In 2005 – during Mr Blair’s last election campaign as Labour leader – I asked him whether he would still have taken part in the invasion of Iraq had he known there were no weapons of mass destruction.

I expected him to pause; to consider; to agonise, even; or, if not that, then to trot out some carefully-prepared and subtly-worded answer to a question he must have known might be asked.

Instead he said simply and without hesitation: “Yes, I would.”

I’ve been thinking about that moment quite a lot while reading Mr Blair’s memoir, A Journey. I must have interviewed the former-PM more than a dozen times during his years in power. Now, more than ever, I believe he remains fundamentally misunderstood.

Critics of Mr Blair paint him as weak and devious. An ‘actor’. A ‘puppet’. Both descriptions do him an injustice. Yes, he had an unrivalled ability to communicate; to ‘sell’ his policies to his audience. And yes; his decision to support America’s unprovoked, incoherent and badly-thought-out invasion of Iraq will forever tarnish his legacy.

But the fact is he believed in the war, as he believed in almost everything he said.

The correct criticism of Mr Blair is not that he was inauthentic. It is that, as a political thinker, he was shallow. And arguably – for most of the time – this wasn’t a handicap at all, but a liberation.

Mr Blair freely admits he had little time for Labour’s ideology or history. He describes his frustration at party activists who would rather sit around on a Friday night discussing the principles of socialism rather than going out to, in his words, ‘party’. Mr Blair preferred action to discussion. And he relied largely on his political instincts – instincts that were profoundly, and proudly, middle-class.

He was not a socialist, but a meritocrat. He was prepared to put his family first – as when he snubbed local comprehensives and sent his children to an independent school – and he assumed everyone else was, too. He was motivated by success, and access to the finer things in life – and assumed everyone else was, too. He literally struggled to understand anyone who thought differently.

It was Mr Blair’s very ’shallowness’, and overriding faith in these instincts, that allowed him to change the country, fundamentally and indelibly, during his time at Number 10. And the country did change: a national minimum wage, devolution, a settlement in Northern Ireland, academy schools, university tuition fees, an expensive welfare-to-work programme, ASBOs, huge investment in public services, independence for the Bank of England.

Compare his record with that of Gordon Brown.

Here was a man of deep principle; a man steeped in Labour history and values. A man who surely had a philosophically-coherent reason for every decision he ever made. A man who had a decade as Chancellor to reflect on what he would do when he finally got his chance as prime minister.

And when the moment came, what happened? Nothing. There was almost complete paralysis at the heart of government. Mr Brown will be remembered for tackling the global financial crisis – no mean achievement, it is true. But in terms of domestic reform, in terms of changing society? I struggle to think of a single initiative. When I recently put the same point to Ed Miliband – a close ally of Mr Brown – he did, too. It is as if Mr Brown was crushed under the weight of his own thoughts.

Memorable prime ministers – great prime ministers, you might say – are defined not by what they think, but by what they do.

Margaret Thatcher was another instinctive leader.

So was Winston Churchill.

Both, like Mr Blair, has an unshakeable belief that their instincts were right – and shared by a majority of British people, regardless of party allegiance.

Was Mr Blair a great prime minister? That is ultimately a matter of taste. That he changed the country, however, is beyond dispute. And don’t think for a second that he spends sleepless nights worrying that he betrayed his own principles over Iraq. He believed then he had done the right thing; he believes it now; he will probably believe it until his dying day.

He’s that kind of man, you see.

After all the discussion of benefits this week, here are some new figures out today.

They show the percentage of working-age adults in each borough of Greater Manchester claiming incapacity benefit or its replacement, ESA.

To summarise: more than one in ten adults in Salford,Rochdale, Manchester, Tameside Wigan and Bolton does not work and instead claims sickness or disability benefit. And the proportion of people doing so is 66 per cent higher in Salford than in Stockport.

David Cameron was in the office yesterday at the end of his visit to Greater Manchester.

I’m always struck by what an impressive communicator he is. It’s no surpise he does so many question-and-answer sessions with the public; he gives straight answers, considered answers, and people almost invariably warm to him when they meet him face to face.

We discussed various things during the visit. I asked him whether he accepted that, in an age of cuts, areas like Greater Manchester needed to be protected because they were more dependent on state support. He pointed out that George Osborne had moved immediately to back the ‘Big Bang’ expansion. Supporting infrastructure projects in the north west, and other areas, would be crucial.

He also talked about the Regional Growth Fund. I said less money would be available than under the (soon-to-be-defunct) NWDA. He said that might be so, but cuts were inevitable, and in any case at least some significant sums would be available.

I asked whether, when he walked round places like Manchester – where the Conservatives had failed to make the impact they did elsewhere – he genuinely felt like the people he saw were ‘his’ people; that he was ‘their’ prime minister. He said he did; he said he expected more progress in the north west for his party in the years to come.

Some people in the Labour party still want to portray Mr Cameron as a closet right-winger; someone who speaks the one-nation language but whose instincts lie elsewhere. I think this is wrong, and I think it is foolish. Labour underestimated the prime minister during the election campaign, and paid the price. They do so again at their peril.

Personally, I believe he genuinely thinks about the country as a whole; he genuinely believes his ‘Big Society’ solutions will be not only cheaper, but better, for people in areas like Greater Manchester. Whether he is right remains to be seen, and the really tough choices remain to be made. But I strongly suspect the success or failure of Mr Cameron will prove a matter of policy, not personality.

David Cameron’s in Greater Manchester today, and the theme is clear: the government overhaul of the welfare system will have a major role for the private-sector and voluntary groups.

First up, benefit fraud. Mr Cameron has told the M.E.N that the £1.5bn ’stolen’ from the taxpayer every year is ‘unacceptable’. Neither, he says, is that fact that three quarters of those who are caught fiddling the system never get prosecuted.

The government’s strategy to tackle this, the prime minister says, will be ‘uncompromising’. In particular it might involve ‘using more information from third parties such as credit-referencing agencies to identify circumstances which are incompatible with the benefit claim’.

Downing Street sources have distanced themselves slightly from some of the precise ‘details’ that have been reported - private-sector ‘bounty hunters’ getting five per cent of recovered, fradulent benefits claims - but have admitted the idea of payment-by-results to credit-reference companies is ‘compatible’ with Mr Cameron’s ideas. So if you are spending huge amounts on a credit card while claiming jobseekers allowance, or booking ski-holidays while claiming incapacity benefit, you can perhaps expect a knock on the door some time in the future.

At the same time, Mr Cameron is promising more support for charitable and voluntary bodies that are helping to get people back into work. The message here, again, is that we can expect the government to do less of this work, directly, in the future. The flip side of the ‘Big Society’ is a smaller state.

So the shape of reform is beginning to emerge. But a larger question about benefits remains unanswered. Will they remain at current levels, or will they be cut or restricted? If so, how and by how much?

This table shows the number of incidents of domestic violence logged by Greater Manchester Police every day since the start of 2008.

You will notice three particular spikes: one on New Year’s Day 2009, one on New Year’s Day 2010, and one on June 27 this year.

If that last date sounds familiar, it’s because it was the day England lost 4-1 to Germany and so went out of the World Cup.

A letter from Hazel Blears today – about the furore over the BBC’s move to MediaCity.

Dear Editor,

Anyone reading the criticism about MediaCity over the last week could be forgiven for thinking the move to Salford will be the end of the BBC. 

Staff were ‘being forced to crawl sobbing up the M1′, lamented the Daily Mail, while unhappy presenters were left wondering how the show could possibly continue outside London. According to one presenter, “It will be practically impossible to get the Prime Minister on set, as we do at the moment.”

I know the ’silly season’ is upon us but this is taking nonsense to a new level.

It’s long been accepted that the BBC needs to relinquish its London-centric grip in order to genuinely represent the whole of the nation. The move to Salford is good news for everyone outside of the M25. But it’s especially good news for local people because it hands them the opportunity to make their mark in changing the BBC’s identity.

The director of BBC North has said he wants the move to Salford to “open up the BBC to people who previously had neither the opportunity nor likelihood of working here”. Casting their talent net into new territory is the best way of ensuring the Beeb is more in touch with real Britain.

In Christopher Eccleston, Paul Abbott, Caroline Aherne and others, we already have a wealth of talent in the north. The BBC’s move to Salford gives us the potential to add many more to this list.

Those who resist moves to devolve the BBC miss the point. There is enough local talent, energy and diversity here to help the BBC power ahead into a new era. The dinosaurs should get on board or get out of the way.

It’s a political truth as old as the hills: if you find yourself in need of a soft target, benefits are the answer.

Successive governments – in search of easy cuts, or extra money – have looked at Britain’s welfare bill and seen their salvation. Why? Well, in part because there is a genuine problem.

We all know that not everyone who is claiming benefits needs to do so. We all know that there are some people who do so entirely out of choice. We all know that there are some people nakedly fiddling the system. A minority, perhaps, but a significant and repugnant minority all the same.

That offends our sense of natural justice. Why – particularly in these difficult times – should we work and pay taxes so that someone else doesn’t have to?

Secondly, because the solution seems quite obvious. Everyone who can do some work, should do some work. Anyone who can’t should be supported. And everyone who lacks the skills to find work should be helped to acquire those skills.

It’s so obvious, in fact, that successive welfare ministers must have turned up for their first day at work, rubbing their hands together and believing that they would be the one to finally sort out the problem, once and for all.

And yet – so far – no one has. Real life has tended to make a mockery of ministerial white papers, and spreadsheets, and good intentions.

But benefit claimants remain a tempting political target – particularly in these cash-strapped times.

The current government knows this well. For them, it began in April, before the election. A giant poster of David Cameron with the words: “Let’s cut benefits for those who refuse work.”

Who could disagree with that? Certainly not New Labour. James Purnell, darling of the Blairites, was the man who pioneered the use of new ‘fitness to work’ tests for the non-working unwell.

It was Greater Manchester – that Labour stronghold – which volunteered to extend the tests, not only to new benefit claimants but to those who had been surviving on welfare for years.

In short: work-related benefits are not so much a left-right issue as a populist issue.

Since then, the coalition has ramped up the talk of a clampdown. When George Osborne delivered his emergency Budget, with its dire warnings of departments being forced to slash up to one-third of their spending, there was a caveat, “… unless we can get the welfare bill down”.

Then, this weekend, the government drew attention to new figures suggesting that 100,000 households were raking in more than the average wage in welfare every year.

No attempt to put this in context; no detailed analysis of how this had happened, or which benefits were involved, or whether, in some cases, the ‘hand-outs’ were justified.

No – instead we had Chris Grayling, the employment minister, declaring himself ‘shocked’.

“Yet again,” he said, “we see more evidence for why reform is so desperately needed.”

So they you have it – a black-and-white picture of great simplicity and power.

Schools and roads facing cuts, jobs being lost, and – in the minds of many angry taxpayers – an idea of an army of workshy, rich benefits cheats lording it over us all.

It is only when you delve a little deeper that the shades of grey begin to emerge.

There is no doubt that the scale of benefit payments in areas like Manchester is shocking. Around 50,000 people claim out-of-work benefits; some 34,000 of those claim benefits because they are considered too sick to work. The entire population of Manchester – including children and pensioners – is only 473,200.

So are these people all just lazy? Are they all just cheating the system? The evidence suggests not. It is no coincidence that one-fifth of Manchester’s population have no qualifications at all. It is no coincidence that they live in areas of high deprivation, high crime and short life expectancy.

Where exactly are the jobs for these people, who lack even the most basic skills? How much would it cost to help them acquire those skills? How long? And can they all really be blamed – and punished – for the wrongdoings of a few?

That’s the problem with cuts. We all know there are some people who deserve to be targeted in any clampdown. But designing a smart weapon that targets only the non-deserving is an almost impossible task.

The collateral damage, on the other hand, can be very high – in human terms, and in political terms.

When the new fitness to work tests were introduced, there were reports of people with advanced Parkinson’s disease and multiple sclerosis being passed as ‘fit’.

Perhaps there can be built-in fail-safes to prevent that; but can there really be a system so sophisticated that it catches out the determined cheat, but is fair to the genuinely ill?

The issue, in a slightly different form, has already caused fractures in the coalition. When Mr Cameron announced plans to end lifetime council tenancies, the left-wing of the Liberal Democrats cried foul. Then – when it emerged that plans were being drawn up to limit free school milk to the poorest schoolchildren – the policy was quickly slapped down.

Talking tough on benefits is popular enough. But when the harsh reality of such ‘crackdowns’ becomes apparent – when real people are affected in entirely predictable ways – the nods can quickly become shaking heads. The coalition should be wary: if the riddle were that easy it would have been solved decades ago.

A newly-declassified letter from Martin Bell, then MP of Tatton, to the MoD in July 2000:

UK National Statistics has put out the results of a large-scale survey on air travel. It throws up a couple of interesting points.

The first is the sheer amount of flying we do – if we can afford it. The following table shows total flights, over 12 months, by income band:

So roughly: if you earn less than £14,000 you don’t fly. If you earn more than £26,000 you fly quite a bit.

The second is that attitudes towards the link between air travel and climate change seem – perhaps surprisingly – to be softening.

 Passengers were asked the question: “Do you believe that air travel harms the environment?”

Here were the responses in 2006:

 And here were the responses in 2010:

The proportion of people who agree or strongly agree has dropped; the proportion who disagree has grown, and – in 2010, unlike in 2006 - some even strongly disagree.

And so, back to Manchester council, where Horsegate continues apace.

Pat Karney has sent a third, taunting, email to Liberal Democrat members about their prospects under the coalition.

Once again, it contains a LOT of CAPITAL LETTERS. Once again, it has a number of inexplicable references to horses.

The email ends with a holiday quiz (or ‘HOLIDAY QUIZ’), which goes like this:

Finish this sentence: “At our conference in Labour Liverpool, Clegg must listen [more] to us than Osborne because………………….”

Fill in the blanks in this sentence: “We are going to lose ……. seats in Manchester.”

At which city council agm did the phrase Brokeback Coalition* first come up? Was it Manchester or Ho Chi Ming [sic] City??

* a tale of men and their horses.