A once admired prime minister is hugely distrusted as out-of-touch, over-mighty, uncaring. They can see why they might have fallen from grace: but why so precipitately? And yet there is no mystery, only this simple principle: the greater the illusion, the greater the disillusion.
Once upon a time there was a beautiful and adored princess who met with a sudden, tragic and possibly sinister end. In life she had won the hearts of the nation by her openness, grace and compassion for the afflicted. She brought comfort to dying children and moved easily, even lovingly, among victims of Aids, whom many then thought untouchable.
Her death left the nation distraught. A field of flowers, each bunch with its tear-stained tribute, was assembled to honour her. People camped on the streets in their thousands to mark her funeral. Some found all this unreal, hysterical even, but they were merely a grudging minority.
The royal family into which she had married, who never knew what to make of her, who increasingly had come to regard her as a danger and a disturbance, dissimulated and prevaricated. But Britain's new young prime minister put into faultless words the tribute which the nation wanted to hear. Diana, said Tony Blair, had been "the people's princess".
And he was the people's prime minister, swept into office by a landslide so staggering that it even astonished him. Wimbledon had turned Labour, and Harrow, and Hove. And the victory was his victory: even his enemies in his own party could not deny it. True, the great triumph was never quite what it seemed. Fewer than one in three of the British electorate had voted for the new party he had designed and created. He had fewer votes behind him than John Major five years before.
But if there were reservations they attached themselves to Labour rather than to its leader. Soon his popularity was breaking all records: his approval ratings at one point topped 90%. What people thought about Labour no longer mattered, for Tony Blair transcended all that. Here was man who was set to take the politics out of politics.
The views of the party he led did not seem to concern him greatly. He would listen to the people - all the people - discern what they wanted, and see that they got it, regardless of party doctrine. Some found all this unreal, hysterical even, but they were merely a grudging minority.
But the princess herself was not what she seemed. Or more precisely, she was what she seemed, but was other things as well. One day her suffering private secretary would write what he had learned to his cost: that twinned with the generosity and the compassion there was fickleness and mean-spiritedness and malevolence. Persecuted herself, she increasingly turned to the persecution of others.
Much of that sprang from an overwhelming sense of rejection. But it made her impossible. A little of that was perceived at the time, but it never became the people's sense of her. Had she lived, had she grown more bitter with time, it could not have been disguised. Then there would have been disillusion.
But the people's prime minister too was not what he seemed; or to be more precise, events and the nature of politics made that impossible. To govern, said Pierre Mendès-France, another political icon who fell from grace, is to choose; and that sometimes means choosing hard and unpopular options.
The people wanted Ken Livingstone and Rhodri Morgan; Blair feared them and tried to stop them. The people wanted Mo Mowlam; Blair exiled her to the margins. The people wanted generous treatment for pensioners; Blair's chancellor gave them less than a pound. The people told themselves they had never wanted the Millennium Dome, but Blair had insisted.
The people wanted much more spent on public services, and Labour's popularity rose when that was pledged. But they also wanted taxes brought down. The people's prime minister could see their demands were incompatible, but the people did not. When the hauliers and farmers rose in revolt, the people overwhelmingly backed them. They made it the people's protest. Some found all this unreal, hysterical even, but they were the grudging minority.
This prime minister still believed in unifying, in building consensus. But to govern being to choose, he had to draw a distinction between listening, which was asked of him, and swift obedient compliance. That was not what the people expected. They had not, for some while, been schooled to it. Had they never expected so much of him, the letdown for them - and for him - would never have been so precipitate. That was why he would come to Brighton so contrite and so disparaged. The greater the illusion, the greater the disillusion.