The day Bambi thought he'd made the dinosaurs extinct

And yes, those descriptions do sum up how many Labour members view the man who was once improbably nicknamed Bambi.

Twenty years ago Tony Blair convinced the nation that things could only get better, and was elected by a historic general election landslide amid hope and optimism.

Backed by a slick and professional team, he buried forever - or so everybody thought - the spectre of a Labour party hijacked by the Left which had scared off the voters in their droves.

Blair built on the hard yards put in by Neil Kinnock in facing down Militant Tendency in the 1980s.

Tony was young. He was fresh. He was not a Tory.

This last point had a particular advantage in that the Tories had been in office for so many unbroken years that by 1997 they were looking tired at best, sleazy at worst.

They were a party seeking power but sorely in need of a rest. They had fought among themselves, particularly over Europe.

And although Tony Blair was not a Tory, he was at last a Labour leader that mainstream Tory voters could give their vote in the belief that he stood for the same things they stood for.

Rupert Murdoch declared for Tony, the triumphant vindication of a long period of clever wooing by the Labour top brass.

May 1, 1997, was election day, and it was a Mayday massacre. The Conservative Party was not just beaten, it was humiliated. Senior figure after senior figure was culled by the voters in the full glare of the television lights.

In Shropshire, there was a sensation as the Tory stronghold of Shrewsbury fell. Three of the county's five seats - Shrewsbury, The Wrekin, and Telford - went Labour's way. In impregnable North Shropshire, the Tory majority was down to 2,195, which was wafer thin in the context of the electoral history of the seat.

If time travel were possible (and please don't write in), and we could take a trip back to Labour's 1997 victory celebrations and tell all and sundry that 20 years on Labour would be led by Jeremy Corbyn, they simply would not believe you and would tell you to get back in your time machine and stop stirring up mischief.

What has gone wrong?

The answer is hidden in the question. Because it makes the assumption that for Labour, it all has gone wrong - not unreasonable given the party's miserable poll ratings, the demonstrable lack of confidence in their leader of the vast majority of Labour MPs, and widespread predictions of electoral disaster on June 8.

The alternative way of looking at it is that Labour has rediscovered its soul, and that Tony Blair and the smart suits around him were an anomaly, a coup by an elite which wrested away the party from its working class roots and went instead on the hunt for middle class votes and respectability among the business community.

The problem for a party which never achieves power is that all its policies are mere daydreaming. Without power, none can be implemented. And without respectability among the voters, there will be no power.

So with Tony Blair a new sort of Labour MP emerged. Smart, disciplined, and thanks to that communications machine, on-message. There was still room on the margins for the Jeremys of this world, pet dinosaurs kept on by the voters for sentimental reasons, or so it seemed.

Blair himself was a great showman with a natural flair. He did not need to be scripted. He instinctively knew the right thing to say and the right time to say it, in a moment of national mourning famously dubbing Princess Diana "the People's Princess."

In the House of Commons, he was untouchable. Quick-witted, with a lawyer's brain, his most devastating weapon was humour, destroying opponents and critics with mockery.

In Northern Ireland, he took risks for peace. On his watch, The Troubles were brought to an end.

So we return to that what-went-wrong question. There is also that associated what-if question. How would Tony Blair be perceived today had it not been for the Iraq War?

Tony Blair nailed his colours to the American mast. Immediately after the terrorist attacks on America of September 11, 2001, he declared Britain would stand shoulder-to-shoulder with America, and was as good as his word.

Britain had stood shoulder-to-shoulder with America after Iraq invaded Kuwait in 1990. Under Prime Minister John Major, Britain took part in the first Gulf War, and nobody held that against him.

In 2003, on the basis of Blair's advocacy, Britain joined America in invading Iraq to destroy Saddam Hussein's weapons of mass destruction. There weren't any. Hundreds of British service personnel, and tens of thousands of Iraqis then and since, died on the basis of something that was not true.

Collectively the nation has delivered its verdict. The people's jury has ruled that Tony Blair committed Britain to unconditional support of the United States, and misled the British people about the true nature of what was going on, which was regime change.

The only people who lost their jobs as a result of this invasion launched on a false pretext were not the politicians or the generals, but members of the media who were trying to report the truth - and were castigated by the Blair regime for doing so.

For the British public, the feeling which took hold was that they had been taken for fools by a leader who had claimed to be a pretty straight kinda guy.

Although the Iraq conflict had been approved by Parliament, and MPs could have asked some harder questions, British public opinion has placed the blame almost solely on Tony Blair's shoulders. He is one of the most reviled, if not the most reviled, politician in Britain today, frequently branded a liar and a murderer.

Iraq has overshadowed other aspects of his legacy. He is the only Labour leader to have won three consecutive general elections. For a time he made Labour the natural party of government.

For the Tories, his secret pin-up status was revealed through their choice of a copycat leader, David Cameron, forged from a similar mould.

For Labour in 2017, Jeremy Corbyn is about as far removed from Blairism as you can get.

As he has been elected by party members, you could argue that it is the Blair Project, and the Blair/Brown/Miliband generation of Labour MPs, who have been the real rebels, divorced from the party rank and file.

And if you accept that strand of thinking, there is a conclusion that may be drawn.

Blair led New Labour. Corbyn leads Real Labour.