It was the killing of a black youth that led to McPherson, and it was the murder of Damilola Taylor in Peckham that resulted in an intensification of navel gazing by the British establishment when it came to questions of race and violent crime.

I'm not alone among London-based journalists, who, having written critical or insinuating remarks about Blair, were then summoned to Blair's top floor office at New Scotland Yard. Disarmingly like a self-publicising sociology lecturer from a minor provincial university, during our face time the commissioner did a good job of convincing me of what a hellishly difficult job it was policing London, and that he'd be much obliged if I put my shoulder to the common weal.

I took this thinly veiled self-exculpation over Stockwell with a whole packet of Maldon sea salt, but I remained then - and still am - impressed by Blair's commitment to a society genuinely free of the racist taint: no one but a genuine anti-racist would dare to make such unguarded remarks about institutional racism - especially when discussing an institution as dangerously vituperative as the press.

The irony that it was then Blair himself who became the accused - when it was alleged by Tarique Ghaffur that he sidelined them from promotion - was almost too delicious to suck on.

However,

much as it pains people to do so it seems to me that the only way to explain what has happened at the Met is to hold two apparently - but by no means in reality - contradictory propositions in our minds at once: yes, Blair did do all he could to stamp out institutional racism at the Met; but concurrently he fostered a poisonously political culture.

It was this culture, plus a hypersensitivity to race - rather than a genuine colourblindness - that gave the very ethnic minority officers Blair was supposedly championing an equality of opportunity; not to advance by the usual career progression - but along with the likes of Paddick, plunge the knife between the Commissioner's shoulderblades.

No, I see no reason to especially mourn Blair's passing - and those who live by the spin die hopelessly dizzy. However, I doubt London will get a permanent commissioner who's any less in thrall to sectional political interests, and while he or she may be less prone to gaffes, I wonder if she'll also have the courage to call the wider society out on its revolting - and ongoing - prejudices.