That letter

In The Guardian CIF, Lord Hattersley wonders about the youth of Mr Blair:

"What will soon become "the notorious letter" which Tony Blair sent to Michael Foot in 1982 is, in fact, far more to the Prime Minister's credit than his stop-at-nothing critics will make out. In fact, in a slightly jejune way, it is a reflection of what was once called "revisionism" - impatience with the old "far right" of the Labour Party balanced by contempt for the "new left". Once upon a time, Tony Blair was a Croslandite. That will be some consolation to those of us who once supported him in the belief that he would become a Croslandite Prime Minister.
For the next week or two, the Labour Party will echo with bitter jokes about Tony Blair's ancient belief in the need for "radical socialist policies", his contempt for the United States' commitment to "economic madness". And there will be a genuine astonishment - which I share - at the claim that he "came to socialism through Marxism". But the politically important part of the letter is its uninhibited attack on pragmatism.
The Prime Minister, who is openly contemptuous of all ideology and believes only in "doing what works", wrote (as part of a paean of praise for Tony Benn) that a Labour Government would not "appeal to the better minds of the people" if it was "tainted overmuch with a pragmatic period in power". There were, he added, immense dangers in being "too closely intertwined with the establishment". The strength of the letter is that most of what it contains is true. The tragedy is that its high ideals have been abandoned. The historical question is why and how did Tony Blair's views change?"

I take a different view. The encouraging thing is that the 29-year-old Blair felt strongly enough about something (anything) to submit his views to the then party leader; does he feel strongly about anything nowadays, other than staying in power? The less encouraging aspect is that the letter was 22 pages long; what normal person writes a letter of 22 pages? I fear that, even in those days, Mr Blair was a member of the green ink brigade...