One despairs at the thought that the owners of Trimdon Constituency Labour Club, the Sedgefield working men's bar made famous by Tony Blair, are looking for an "entrepreneurial tenant" to cut its political connection and take it forward. Which means comedy nights and themed evenings, I suppose: "So I was pulling a pint for the prime minister and . . ."

The club closed on 21 July, citing the smoking ban, the spread of satellite television and cheap supermarket alcohol as reasons for the decline in customers. The VAT hike in the Budget was the final straw, according to the secretary of the club, Paul Trippett.

“Ten pounds gets you four pints of lager in the club and 24 cans in the supermarket. People say they'd love to come out, but they can't ­afford it." Now the club, which opened in 1919 with a barrel of beer in a farm worker's cottage, faces a future as a "facility", as it was described by the operations manager of its owners, Calco: "We are seeking either a manager or an entrepreneurial tenant to take it forward. It is a ­superb facility. I haven't decided yet what to call it, but it will not have any connection with a political party."

From politics to facility: the fortunes of the club mirror the Blair years in more ways than one. The Trimdon Constituency Labour Club is the place where Blair declared that he would stand for party leader in 1994 and then announced his resignation as prime minister in 2007. During the years in between, it became a familiar sight on television, with the former prime minister popping in for a pint and a photo opportunity. It is probably apocryphal that someone in the bar once picked up a ringing phone and shouted, "Where's Tony Blair? Bloke called Clinton says he wants a word with you" - but it fitted the myth of the place nicely.

Rich pickings

Its closure says more about the years of New Labour than those photo ops ever did. Alastair Campbell records in his diaries that Blair made a speech to the people at the Trimdon club on the 1997 election night, "saying how import-ant they were to his politics and his political journey". Yet New Labour didn't do much for "working men". It helped single mothers, it supported children, it embraced the very rich. The government talked about needing to develop new skills and being internationally competitive, all of it undeniably necessary but not much help to the working men of Trimdon and beyond.

Look at the figures: the percentage of economically active males in Sedgefield fell from 85 per cent to 81 per cent between 1999 and 2009. Some data for the registered unemployed is missing but, from October 2004 to September 2005, there were 1,400 men counted as economically active but unemployed in Sedgefield, and from October 2008 to September 2009, there were 3,400; a rise from 6.7 per cent to 14.9 per cent (source: Office for National Statistics). Whatever Blair was doing with his pint in Trimdon Labour Club, it wasn't helping working men.

Here is a snapshot of the economic forces shaping Britain and of Labour's failure to meet them. From 1997 to 2008, the proportion of Sedgefield jobs that were in manufacturing fell from 49 per cent to 28 per cent, while service jobs rose from 46 per cent to 65 per cent. Full-time jobs fell by 6,500; part-time jobs rose by 1,000. The new skills to match the new economy never appeared: the numbers of working people with no qualifications in Sedgefield fell by less than 2 per cent, while the numbers with NVQ1 and above actually declined.

Now the (non-)working men of Trimdon and beyond cannot afford to buy a pint and they stay at home watching satellite television instead. The parallel between the rise of television and the decline of public spaces to meet in was first identified by Michael Young and Peter Willmott half a century ago. Studying the movement of working-class families from the East End to the suburbs, they noted the soaring rise in TV ownership in the suburbs. There was nothing else for the newly suburban families to do: Bethnal Green had a pub for every 400 ­people; the new suburb a pub for every 5,000. Families became isolated.

“The family sits night by night around the magic screen in its place of honour in the parlour," wrote Young and Wilmott. "In one household, the parents and five children of all ages were paraded around it in a half circle at 9pm when one of us called; the two-month-old baby was stationed in its pram in front of the set." The father proudly told the researchers: "The telly keeps the family together. None of us ever have to go out now."
Lost leisure

Fifty years later, not only do they not have to go out, they cannot afford to, either. Leisure outside the home - whether it is football, restaurants, bars or even cinemas - is a middle-class luxury. This was what made Blair's visits to the Trimdon club turn the stomach - or this stomach, anyway. Blair would pose amid the working men of Trimdon before returning to London to hang out with his friends in the River Café or join them on yachts in the Caribbean. His appearances in Trimdon were just that - appearances, more to do with celebrity than politics. Trimdon Labour Club was a stage upon which he chose to shake a bit of stardust from time to time.

Now he has shaken the dust of Trimdon from his feet. Last December, the Blairs sold their house in Trimdon - bought in 1983 for £30,000 - for £275,000. Depending on how you calculate it, that is a real profit of between £164,000 and £200,000, the effortless profit of the propertied middle classes over the past few decades. The contrasting fortunes of Blair and his old club say an awful lot about the New Labour years