Obama's presidency can unify the world, says Blair

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The former premier urged the president-elect, who takes office on 20 January, to show he was listening to international opinion as well as leading it.

"What he can do - and I believe that he will - is find an agenda that is capable of unifying the world," said Mr Blair. "An agenda that is about America leading and America listening simultaneously. That's the key."

Mr Blair, now a peace envoy to the Middle East, said the swearing-in of the first black US president was a chance to transform international relations.

"I've never known an election to create so much interest and transform people's view of America again in a positive way," he told The New Yorker magazine, saying he stayed up to watch the results while in Barbados. "Young people out in the middle of nowhere in Palestine have said to me, 'They wouldn't really elect a black man to the presidency,' and I've said, 'Well, I think they would.'

"But they've been taught for so long that America is what it actually isn't. And that's why this is an enormous moment. It thrills America's friends and sort of confuses its enemies." Mr Blair told how he still admired George W Bush and regarded him as a friend: "Yeah, of course I keep in touch with him.

"I'm not a fair-weather friend. I say this to people all the time, even liberal people who cannot believe I can possibly like George W Bush." He said President Bush deserved respect for leading the world against terrorism: "He had very difficult decisions to take after September the 11th, and I think he took the right decisions, actually. I'm afraid that if there was any collective mistake that was made, it was not understanding how deep the struggle is and how long it's going to have to be fought."

Meanwhile, in a lecture to Yale University students, Mr Blair risked infuriating Gordon Brown by saying the economic boom of Labour's first decade was down to good fortune. "We had 10 years of record growth when I was PM. I have, unfortunately, come to the conclusion it was luck." The joke is bound to be quoted endlessly at ex-chancellor Mr Brown.