Hollywoodised politics: Tony Blair meets Arnold Schwarzenegger. Photograph: Peter Macdiarmid/Getty
On his very last full day of office, Tony Blair held a meeting with movie-star-turned-Californian-governor Arnold Schwarzenegger. Their subject, not too contentious, was climate change. This was a summit meeting of world-political celebrities, rather than politicians; it was a stunningly appropriate pointer to how Blair's post-Westminster career is going to look: Hollywoodised and bathed in bipartisan glitz, in star power; a shock'n'awe world-theatrical showcase for pure prestige. Blair has already said that the boring old House Of Lords isn't his style. This clearly is. For post-prime ministerial Blair, international politics is showbusiness for pretty people.
But how poignant for Tony to muse on Arnie's great catchphrases: hasta la vista, and I'll be back. Tony won't be back - or at least never in the same way. How he must envy Governor Schwarzenegger. At 54, Blair's real political career is behind him, and he moves into lucrative but nebulous political theatre. At 59, Schwarzenegger is just getting started. He has put his showbiz phase behind him and his political career is blooming - and who knows if it might not be possible to change the rules about needing to be born in the US of A to be President?
So this brush with Hollywoodised politics might have been a bittersweet moment for Blair as he prepares to leave office. But what does Hollywood have to tell us about saying goodbye? Well, basically, it doesn't do goodbyes, or at least not very often. Goodbyes generally happen at the beginning of the story, when the hero leaves his comfort zone for adventures - and there's a happy reunion for an ending. Goodbyes at the end? Too much of a downer, in the main.
There's the ending of Casablanca of course, in which Humphrey Bogart heroically urges Ingrid Bergman to leave for a happier, better life with Paul Henreid. This was the "goodbye" ending playfully pastiched by the Walt Disney cartoon The Jungle Book, in which Bagheera and Baloo take Mowgli to the man village, and he is so entranced by the sight of a singing girl at the riverbank that he falls goofily in love there and then, and follows her, hardly bothering to say goodbye at all to heartbroken Baloo. But Baloo cheers up quick enough, and dances off into the sunset with his pal Bagheera.
For this analogy, Blair has to be the tough Bogart figure, and we, the British people, are collectively the lovely, dewy-eyed Bergman, melting in his arms as he prepares to say farewell to us. Blair knows it's for the best to entrust us to another man: dour, prudent Gordon Brown is Henreid. Less glamorous, but trustworthy. And then Bogart strides off into the distance to console himself with a beautiful friendship with Claude Rains's amoral Captain Renault. Could Blair find that sort of consolatory friendship with Cherie? Perhaps. Or perhaps he can relate more to Baloo's fatherly, yet somehow tragic, relationship with the innocent man-cub.
Talking of Bogart, perhaps Blair could gloomily rent some DVDs of the classic gumshoe pictures, with titles that reference the ultimate farewell of death? Farewell My Lovely? The Big Sleep? The Long Goodbye? (After all, with his delayed resignation, he gave us the most painful and longest goodbye in modern political history.) As the wised-up detective cruises around dirty Los Angeles, he takes on tough guys and shady ladies, but knows he can only rely on himself. Death is waiting for us all, but the sufficiently cynical will at least be spared the exquisite pain of disillusionment. Like Westminster, LA is a hellhole that will suck you down in the end.
But this, too, isn't exactly the movie farewell that Blair's long goodbye really brings to my mind. More appropriate is a classic Bible picture like the King Of Kings or The Greatest Story Ever Told. The prime minister's extraordinary speech to the Labour Party Conference in September 2006, contained the resonant phrase: "Whatever you do, I'm always with you. Head and heart." Later, he is said to have told friends that he was inspired by Steinbeck's The Grapes Of Wrath, in which the hero Joad - played by Henry Fonda in the 1940 film version - is about to face certain death by confronting vigilantes and tells his tearful mother that whatever happens, he will be with her in spirit.
But it is surely more obviously like Christ's phrase: "You can be sure that I am always with you, to the very end." Today, as Blair bids farewell to the faithful and to the faithless alike, he could be mentally starring in his own religious film, one with the most uplifting ending imaginable.
