Thing is, warpig, we'll never know. And you could say the same for every political development and every politician.
We slag off Blair for leading us into Iraq and rightly so. We don't lay off him and give him an easier ride on the grounds that Thatcher would probably have done the same, has she been in power at the time.
As a politician, you're judged on the circumstances of your time and the way that you react to them. That's just the way it is, until we can electronically profile each PM's attributes and feed the data into some SimulataCrisis machine.
For what it's worth, Paisley said that Blair devoted more time to Northern Ireland than his predeccessors. He also said, "There is no doubt, however, that the Prime Minister's concerted efforts helped in ultimately securing devolution in Northern Ireland."
Gerry Adams said Blair "made a significant and crucial contribution to the Irish peace process. The Good Friday Agreement and the restoration of the political institutions would not have been possible without him."
And no-one is suggesting that Blair single-handedly sorted the NI problem. But he deserves credit for it, in the same way he'd deserve to be judged harshly if Mowlam had f*cked it all up.
But let's let the annoying smile get in the way of all that.