By the time he left 10 Downing Street in 2007, Tony Blair had gone from being Britain’s most popular prime minister when he first took office to being a deeply divisive leader a decade later.
Dan Kitwood/Getty Images
hide caption
convert caption
Dan Kitwood/Getty Images
When Tony Blair first entered 10 Downing Street, he became Britain’s youngest prime minister in the 20th century. He led the Labour Party to a landslide victory in 1997 and left a decade later as the party’s longest-serving prime minister.
And now Blair has written the kind of leadership manual he wished he had when he began his career in government. On Leadership: Lessons for the 21st Century — out September 10 — urges leaders to eschew arrogance and instead embrace maturity and humility. One chapter declares that “it is better to be respected than loved, feared, or ‘trusted.’” And he urges governments to better harness the use of technology, especially artificial intelligence, while he devotes a few choice words to social media, which he says has “spawned the age of the talker.”
“The first thing is, management is hard, right?” he told NPR’s Steve Inskeep in an interview from London. “When you make decisions, you divide, and every decision you make, you’re going to have people who oppose it.”
Blair certainly experienced that division during his time in government. He oversaw the Northern Ireland peace process and public sector reform. He also led his country’s response to the 9/11 attacks in the United States. His pro-American interventionism in Iraq made him increasingly unpopular.
In his interview with Morning Edition Co-host Steve Inskeep, Blair spoke about his vision for leadership in the 21st century.
This interview has been lightly edited for length and clarity.
Interview Highlights
Steve Inskeep: Why don’t we just get started? Did you start this project with the idea that your party might have a new prime minister who needed advice by the time it was announced?
Tony Blair: To be honest, I didn’t. I mean, it started a few years ago and it ended before the election. I was very conscious of the fact that when you’re a new prime minister, the last thing you want is one of the former prime ministers sitting on your shoulder giving you advice all the time. So it’s not really advice to him, although obviously it’s related to the fact that there’s a new Labour government in the UK. But it’s really based not just on my 10 years of experience as a British prime minister, but also on the job. my institute The pressures and things you need to know if you want to try and get through your studies quickly.
Protect: What do you think about the disdain for politicians when you talk about politics almost as a profession or a hobby? And that’s not how a lot of people see it.
Blair: It’s really tough these days. The first thing is, governing is tough, right? When you make decisions, you divide, and every decision you make, you’re going to have people who are going to oppose it. We live in a social media environment today, which in a way has a lot of positive things, but politically it can be a disaster, to be honest, because it creates this very toxic environment where everyone is questioning everyone’s motives, their honesty, their integrity, etc. I think secondly, we live in a world today where if you’re leading a country, you have to have a relationship with the citizens, in a sense, you have to be open with them about issues. We’re not living in a different time anymore, which is a good thing, but it also means that people have to respect the fact that these decisions are difficult and they have to understand that we all have a responsibility to try and come up with the right solutions to the problems of a country. And you can’t just put a bunch of demands on the leader’s desk and say, “Meet all of those demands.”
Former British Prime Minister Tony Blair wrote the leadership guide he wished he had when he first entered 10 Downing Street in 1997: On Leadership: Lessons for the 21st Century.
Penguin Random House LLC
hide caption
convert caption
Penguin Random House LLC
Protect: Let’s talk a little bit about the recent history of your country, where a series of demands were put on the leader’s desk by the voters, the Brexit vote. And I think of that situation because it was something that you personally opposed and spoke out against. There was a referendum. People voted for it. A series of Conservative governments eventually did it. If I’m not mistaken, the polls now show that most people in the UK believe that Brexit was a mistake, but the new government won’t do anything about it, and the old government won’t do anything about it. What do you think of that situation?
Blair: Well, to be fair, I think the new government will try to repair some of the damage and try to repair the relationship with Europe. But you’re right, they’re not suggesting that we reverse the decision. And even if, I think, perhaps a majority of people in the country believe that it was a mistake, there’s a reluctance to reconsider because it’s such a divisive moment. The Brexit decision, the way it was made, is itself an interesting example of why you have to be careful in politics. That’s why you need to have an honest conversation with voters that the idea of holding a referendum and deciding the whole future of the country in a one-day yes-no, in-out referendum on a very complex issue is really driven by a kind of populist sense that the people have to decide. Well, fine. But the consequences of that decision are huge. And that’s not democracy. This may seem strange to say: Real democracy is not about finding out what the people want and just trying to make it happen. Democracy is about coming up with a vision and a plan for the country and getting people to follow it. And if they don’t like it, they can kick you out and elect someone else. But what you can’t do is just be driven by the tide of populist opinion, whether it’s left or right.
Protect: Do you think the wave of populist sentiment has peaked and subsided in the UK?
Blair: Yes, to some extent, because when I finished my term as prime minister, I was the third prime minister in nearly 30 years. And when Keir Starmer became the Labour prime minister in the recent UK election, he was the sixth prime minister in eight years. I am afraid that you cannot run a country like that and be successful. So I think there is a big sense in the UK, and this is in the new government’s interest, that we need a period of stability and we need to think long-term because ultimately if you want to change a country and improve it, you have to make decisions that are not just short-term responses to emergencies but long-term responses to deep-seated problems.
Protect: Since you write about populism, I want to pause on that topic for a moment and look at the rest of Europe. You have a fascist government in Italy, you have right-wing parties in France and Germany that have not taken control of their countries in recent weeks but have made some headway. What do those election results tell you?
Blair: Yes, there is a huge wave of discontent. And what I always say to people about populism is that populists don’t, by and large, invent grievances. They exploit them. They tend to ride on the anger rather than provide answers. But the important thing for those of us who are against that kind of short-term populist politics is that you have to provide answers to the problems. So if there is a problem, there is no point in complaining about the fact that there is a problem. You have to sit down and find a solution to it and a fair solution. In the countries that you mentioned, if you take Italy as an example, the Prime Minister [Giorgia] Meloni, even though he was elected on a far-right platform, actually had a significant moderation in government. And in the recent French election, the far-right party ultimately did not win a majority. So I think that even in countries where there is strong populist sentiment, if you can come up with a strong centrist alternative, most people will usually vote for it.
Protect: If I think about one common issue in every country, it would be immigration. And I want to know as a centrist leader, how would you want a democratic government to think about that issue.
Blair: I have a very clear mantra on this: If you don’t have rules, you have prejudice. And so it’s important that you create an immigration system that people think has integrity, where you decide who comes into the country and who doesn’t. I’ve put forward a series of proposals in the UK that I think will allow us to control immigration appropriately while still getting the benefits of properly controlled immigration.
Protect: Politically, do regulations really not matter as long as people feel they are enforced?
Blair: Yes, I think that is probably important in the end. But you are right that the most important thing is that people want to know that whether or not you come to our country is a decision and not an act of someone who wants to come without any say in the receiving countries.
Protect: This is an incredibly complex issue. But you mentioned that you make recommendations as a matter of principle. Who do you typically want to let in and who do not?
Blair: We want people who will strengthen your economy. You want people who will be comfortable and supportive of your country’s way of life. You want people who will contribute to your country. And you want people to come here through a proper legal process.
Protect: He wrote that Donald Trump has endured so far “against all odds,” which almost shows respect, given that he has maintained his political support for so long.
Blair: Well, that’s a factual statement. One of the things I always say to people in these situations is that I’m not going to get into the right or wrong of the American election. You decide who you elect as president. It’s unwise for even a former prime minister to interfere in your politics, which are complicated enough for you, let alone for an outsider. America, like many other countries — like my own country before Brexit — is deeply divided. And I think the question for all of our democracies is how do you get back to the center of politics, where there’s a lot of unity and working together, and people are willing to understand each other’s points of view and disagree respectfully. And that’s clearly the kind of politics I want to see.
The broadcast version of this story was produced by Lilly Quiroz. The digital version has been edited by Obed Manel.
