Tony Blair's departure next month as Prime Minister of Great Britain will cause no great stir of emotion in the Caribbean. Except, perhaps, that he might be characterised as the PM who uncritically hitched himself to George Bush and followed him to war in Iraq.

For, except for his almost annual holidays in Barbados, Mr. Blair, in his decade in office, never made a deep political or policy connection with the Caribbean. It is not that the U.K., under Mr. Blair's new Labour, downplayed the region. In fact, his government can highlight several areas of cooperation with the Caribbean, particularly in the matter of security. Jamaica has been a significant beneficiary in this regard.

But that is precisely the point. There is this sense that the U.K./Caribbean connection is now based on protecting Britain's borders from drug smugglers, money launderers and trans-Atlantic gang bangers. It all appears, from the perspective of the Caribbean, a rather forensic and sanitised affair.

Receding are the days of a perceived special relationship between the Caribbean and Britain, particularly a Britain of the Labour Party. We will be perhaps advised that gone are the days of the Labour Party that fostered that kind of relationship, having served as a model for most of the political parties in the Commonwealth Caribbean. Part of the explanation for this erosion is that many of the issues of interest to the Caribbean are no longer resolved in London; and neither are they any longer the sole purview of a minister at the Foreign and Commonwealth Office or the Department of International Development. These days, many of these matters have to be settled in Brussels.

All this notwithstanding, a decade ago this region was nonetheless mildly heady about Blair. The Caribbean - including that part of it that resides in the U.K. and overwhelmingly votes Labour - remains largely socialist. After 18 years, the region had had enough of the Tories Thatcherite economic pragmatism and political sleaze. Blair and new Labour were refreshing.

Indeed, the region has admired much of what Labour under Blair has done, not least that he placed Africa and its problems squarely on the international agenda. Indeed, Gordon Brown's debt-relief strategy for the HIPC countries, would not have been possible without Blair's support. This region welcomed, too, the intervention in Sierra Leone at the start of this decade to defeat rebels who do horrific things to rebellion. Unfortunately for Mr. Blair, the huge increase in aid to Africa envisaged by the Blair agenda has not materialised.

On the domestic front, the Blair Government has been able to maintain Britain on a growth pattern, its open economic policies helping to propel the U.K. to being the world's fifth largest economy. Britons have enjoyed advancing prosperity.

In the circumstance, the sleaze that has dogged Labour, such as the cash-for-peerage scandal, might have irked, but was of limited currency; except for Iraq - and the apparent sexing up of intelligence in order to accompany Bush in an unpopular war against Saddam Hussein.

Mr. Blair insists that he acted because he believed. The historian will scrutinise the Blair legacy. Maybe in time the region will be convinced that it gained more from it than is now apparent.