NEW YORK (Bloomberg) — Tony Blair's political tombstone is almost ready for engraving: "UK Prime Minister, May 1997 to June 2007. Biggest Botch: Iraq".

Or, as his critics more acidly put it, playing "poodle" to George Bush's Doberman. That accusation is made in "The Blair Decade", a two-hour retrospective airing tomorrow on PBS at 9 p.m. Bermuda time.

According to the show, Blair's three election victories made him the Labour Party's most successful leader, and his willingness to take chances helped end hostilities in the Balkans, Northern Ireland and Africa. He also made improvements to his nation's economy, education system and health care.

Yet his support of the Iraq invasion would grievously wound and weaken Blair, eventually to the advantage of his rival and successor, Chancellor of the Exchequer Gordon Brown.

The film touches the biographical basics: Blair was born in 1953 in Scotland, educated in the law and a guitarist in the short-lived rock band Ugly Rumors. He is deeply religious and married to Cherie Booth, herself a lawyer with keen political ambitions.

At 43 he was the youngest prime minister since Lord Liverpool in 1812. Like Bill Clinton — to whom his socially liberal, fiscally conservative policies were compared — he was quite good at feeling others' pain.

Four months after Blair assumed office, Princess Diana died in a Paris auto accident and a "tidal wave" of emotion engulfed Britain. Archived footage shows him speaking before a graveyard, with ancient tombstones peeking over the wall. He hailed the "people's princess", causing the stiff-lipped to gag and the masses to swoon. William Hague, former head of the British Conservative Party, says Blair was a master of the empathetic pose.

The programme includes interviews with friends, journalists, Cabinet members, and an impressive list of political heavy hitters, including former Labour leader Neil Kinnock, British Foreign Secretary Jack Straw, former US Senate Majority Leader George Mitchell, former White House Chief of Staff Andrew Card and current Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice.

While Blair would be ridiculed as Bush's lapdog, the programme makes it clear he was hardly dragged to Iraq. He had ordered bombing strikes several years before the invasion and considered Saddam Hussein scum.

Blair ignored the advice of many Europeans, including French President Jacques Chirac, who warned that invading forces would not be welcomed, a civil war would break out and that a Shi'ite government shouldn't be mistaken for a democracy.

An observer recalls Blair rolling his eyes at Chirac's analysis, a memory that might make him cringe today.

Even Bush gave him an out. Rice recalls a phone conversation during which the president warned of severe political repercussions, to which Blair responded: "No, I told you that I'm with you and I'm going to be with you."

His fellow citizens had other ideas and launched the largest anti-war march in British history in February 2003. Fifteen months after the invasion, Blair was forced to tell Parliament there were no weapons of mass destruction, a revelation that, the show says, had a "shattering" effect on the prime minister.

Blair comes across as something of a double personality, capable of the "watery eye" but also of cutting ties with close friends, as one critic notes, "like turning off a light".

His relationship with Brown is also analysed. As a young politician Blair walked in Brown's shadow and gave his elder extraordinary powers after becoming prime minister. Brown is presented as a sometimes raging, extremely headstrong politico who likely drummed up crucial opposition to Blair, who will leave office on June 27.

One senses a bulldog in ascendancy.