Blair’s back: TB to advise Labour on “Olympic Legacy” – but how big a role is this?

Tonight at Labour’s (expensive) sports fundraising dinner, it was announced that Tony Blair will be returning as an advisor on the “Olympic Legacy”. As the Guardian reports:

Tony Blair is to be given his first formal role in the Labour party since retiring from frontline politics, when he stepped down as prime minister five years ago, as an adviser to Ed Miliband’s policy review.

The former prime minister will be giving specific advice on the Olympic legacy and in particular how to “maximise both its economic and its sporting legacies”, Miliband said on Wednesday.

The role reflects Blair’s part in the successful 2005 bid to host the Games and his sporting foundation, one of his key charitable causes in his retirement.

But for all of the recent talk – much of it provoked by Blair himself – about making a return to domestic politics, is this really what he had in mind? It doesn’t sound like a particularly large role, and will leave very little scope for Blair to influence domestic policy.

Or perhaps that’s exactly what Ed Miliband had in mind after all?

Update: Seemingly some in the party are already rowing about Blair’s role. If the party is going to fall out over what Tony Blair thinks we should do with a velodrome, we’re in real trouble…