Original subtitles

This programme contains strong language.

Some say you were his Lady Macbeth.

If anyone thinks Tony's my puppet,

they just don't understand the nature of the man.

Right.

He could always... As we say at home,

he could always talk an owl out of a tree.

When you think of Tony Blair, what words spring to mind?

I think he's a man in denial, actually.

Tony Blair, a Prime Minister who never lost a general election.

He is, without doubt,

both one of the most successful

and one of the most controversial leaders Britain has ever had.

One way of looking at him is of thinking of him as an explorer.

His whole story, the life story of Tony Blair,

is one of exploration of the world to see how far he can get.

If you're giving an interview,

you've got to be pretty disciplined about it.

I've been pretty frank with you, actually, most of the time.

Oh! I think you should be relatively pleased.

Not all the time.

Well, as much as you...

As much as you deserve.

HE CHUCKLES

Is it a real bore to have to answer questions?

No, it's not, but as I said to you when you

started doing this programme, I don't even know why anyone

would be interested in doing a programme on me,

but since you are, that's fine, and, you know, let's see.

These are Tony Blair's parents,

Hazel and Leo Blair.

Leo's story is remarkable.

He was born the son of travelling performers

and put into the foster care of a Mr and Mrs Blair

in a poor part of Glasgow.

Tony's father joined the Army and then the Conservative Party.

He had dreams of becoming Prime Minister.

My dad was a remarkable man.

He was chairman of the local Conservative Party.

He was a very successful barrister, great speaker.

By the way, I think he could have been a Prime Minister, but anyway...

Tony's father sends his son to this boarding school...

..at the age of 13.

We were inside those railings,

and you were pretty well cut-off.

At Fettes, there was fagging, there was beating,

there was the church.

There was still that feeling you were being prepared

to run an empire, to be sent off to Burma

or to India or somewhere to run a tea plantation.

Tony was very self-confident.

He was very clever, too,

and I think he knew he was clever.

Tony arrived at Fettes on the back of a family tragedy.

His father had a massive stroke,

from which he never fully recovered,

and any dreams his father had of being Prime Minister were over.

I want to take you back to July 1964.

You will remember that that's when your dad had a stroke.

Tell me what happened.

I guess I was ten, 11 years old.

How did it impact you, do you think?

I don't spend a lot of time psychoanalysing myself,

but I think when I look back on it,

it must have had an impact on my thinking about the world and life.

You know, it was such a traumatic event.

I remember the event of that night and that day and the next day

and the days that followed so vividly that...

Of course, it makes an impact on your life,

and I guess it teaches you that life is fragile.

Tony's father's speech never fully recovered,

but at school, Tony kept this to himself.

You never had any sense of

how his father's stroke might have affected him?

No, not really. No, no.

We never really discussed it. It's sort of... It's bizarre, yeah.

What do you think Fettes taught Tony Blair about himself?

The school teaches you to survive.

It knocks a lot of the emotion out of you.

You become very insular.

And he was strong,

and didn't really show much in the way of emotion -

or I never saw it.

It was a bad thing to show emotion when you were at these schools.

After Fettes, Blair goes up to Oxford.

He studies law and sings in a rock band.

Also in Oxford is his childhood friend Anji Hunter,

who would go on to become one of his closest political advisers.

Tony arrived, fresh-faced, fun.

He was good-looking,

he was fun to be with,

articulate.

And he looked like every other guy that came to Oxford in 1972,

which basically was long hair, and he had a big fur coat.

We just became great friends.

I want to touch on something else

that happened while you were at university,

which is a good friend of yours took his own life, Euan.

Yes, erm...

So, Euan... Euan...

..had been my dearest friend at school.

There was a group of us, and he was a great guy.

He was a wonderful, wonderful young man, and...

..unfortunately he got into drugs, I think.

And he became sort of mentally unstable

and then took his own life and it had a big impact on me,

because he... First of all, because obviously

he was a very, very dear friend and secondly, because I...

You know, I... I just...

I felt what a waste it was because he had such talent.

He was such a clever young man with such a strong personality.

He would have done great things

and when my first son was born,

I named him after him.

Euan's suicide had a big impact on Tony,

and he came back, it was at the end of the summer term,

I remember he came back the following term

with his hair cut and he wasn't wearing the fur coat.

He straightened up a lot after that.

Tony makes his way at Oxford,

doing well enough to plan for a career as a lawyer.

In those days, of course, you made a telephone call

from a telephone box, putting the coins in the box,

and therefore, you weren't every day in contact

with your family as you are today.

My mother had been ill. I knew she had cancer,

and the family didn't want to tell me

because I was doing my final exams at Oxford.

They didn't want to tell me how serious it was.

But I remember when I got off the train

and my dad picked me up at the station,

he said to me, "Look, you know, you should

"just prepare yourself for this."

And I said, "But you're not seriously telling me

"she's going to die?"

And he said, "Well, no, I am telling you that. She is.

"She's in hospital and she's going to die soon."

So that was, you know... Yeah, of course.

The thing that experience teaches you,

when you have an experience like this,

and your parent dies when you're very young,

is you just realise, well,

if you've got something to do with your life,

you better get on and do it - because who knows what happens?

# Hey, everybody, take a look at me

# I've got street credibility

# I may not have a job but I have a good time

# With the boys that I meet down on the line

# I said, D-H-S-S

# Man, the rhythm that they're givin' is the very best

# I said, B one, B two

# Make the claims, on your name, all you have to do... #

It's 1982.

Mrs Thatcher is in power...

..and the Falklands War is raging.

The Conservatives have captured the mood of the '80s.

Meanwhile, the Labour Party is in the doldrums...

We've had a very long day.

INDISTINCT CHATTER

OK, you get annoyed if you like,

but I need a credential to get to the conference.

..and this is their leader.

How have you found your day here

at the Beaconsfield by-election?

Well, I think it's been a pretty good day.

First of all, we've got a wonderful candidate.

Everybody agrees that Tony Blair

is one of the very best possible candidates there could be.

Rather a large majority, isn't it, against you, unfortunately? Well...

After leaving Oxford, Blair became a barrister.

But now he has political ambitions...

..running to be a Labour MP in a seat he can't win.

Oh, that's good.

Got a nice smile, ain't he?

Anthony Charles Lynton -

3,886.

BOOING

He's lost his deposit. CHEERING AND APPLAUSE

As expected, Blair loses.

When I first met Tony,

we were co-pupils and rivals.

We then became friends, and we were vaguely flirting with each other.

It was about 18 months after his mother had died,

and I think he was still very much

coming to terms with that.

The first thing we really sort of talked about was religion.

Both of us, in different ways, had religious faith.

Was he romantic in his courtship?

Er... No, not very. Tony's not very romantic.

No. Really? Yes.

He's never bought me flowers, for example.

And now he says, "Well, if I bought you flowers,

"you'd be very suspicious," which is probably true.

SHE LAUGHS So...

Tony is desperate to become a Labour MP,

but first, he has to be chosen as a candidate

by a constituency Labour Party.

He travels up and down the country,

telling them all what they don't want to hear,

that the Labour Party needs radical reform.

He tries ten constituencies.

All say no, and Tony is on the brink of giving up.

I've always been interested in politics.

I was interested in politics when I was 14,

and in class, I'd announced that I was going to be

the first female Prime Minister.

Cherie does get selected to fight a seat for Labour.

So how did he cope with that?

Er, badly. SHE LAUGHS

He felt that he had missed his chance.

I was going to go and fight a hopeless seat,

but at least I was fighting a seat.

There was one seat left in the country.

With just four weeks to go before the general election,

Sedgefield in County Durham

is the only seat not yet to have selected its Labour candidate.

I remember sitting in my house in Hackney

and Cherie saying to me,

"I mean, you might as well go. I mean, why not?

"There's nothing you can lose."

The members of the Sedgefield Labour Party will have to be convinced.

I was very nervous.

But by then, you know,

I'd got quite used to the process of rejection.

I'd been in many constituencies, tried many different things.

You know, usually I'd get a long way,

and the moment I showed my colours, I would be out.

John had said, "Oh, there's a guy from London coming up.

"He wants to be our next MP."

"Yeah, champion, but we're watching the football."

COMMENTATOR ON TV: Of course, there's a long, long way to go yet,

but it is a night where there will be a positive result

because at the end of 90 minutes,

if it's level, we have extra time.

Well, of course, the trouble was

this match went on forever.

Extra time was played - it was a draw -

by which time, we were quite happy and merry, you know?

So, after that, we said,

"Right, we're going to ask you some questions."

We gave him the best grilling that we could.

He spoke with an awfully posh voice.

I mean, we'd always had a miner's union MP

and here we had this public-school boy

who went to Oxford and was a barrister.

But we knew that night.

I said to them, the lads, I said,

"You know, you can never say somebody will be Prime Minister,

"but you can say somebody is Cabinet material."

And I said, "He's Cabinet material."

And Paul agreed. They all agreed.

Well, I saw he was different.

You know, I was young.

I wanted someone younger than your average Labour MP.

I wanted someone with a bit of go about them

and there he was sitting on the settee.

So why not give the young lad a go?

Wow!

Tony jumped up and, er...

..you know, we had a couple more drinks.

HE LAUGHS

Blair successfully charms the Sedgefield Labour Party,

and becomes their MP.

But nationally, Labour suffer a devastating defeat.

Still, by entering Parliament,

Blair fulfils his father's dream.

ARCHIVE: Westminster's best-known watering places were opening up

for some new customers this evening.

At one of them, I met some of the 150 new Commons faces.

The image of the Labour Party's got to be an image

that's more dynamic, more modern, more suited to the 1980s.

I don't actually think it's nearly so much

a matter of right and left as people make it out.

What I do think is, that it's a matter of style.

The truth is, we live in a different world now.

We live in a world where over 50% of the population

in this country are owner-occupiers.

We live in a population where there are

large numbers of people now employed in the service industries

rather than manufacturing industries,

and that means a change in attitude

and a change of attitude that we've got to catch up to.

The party elects a new leader, Neil Kinnock...

OK. Thanks for coming in.

..who spots the potential

of the new backbench MP for Sedgefield.

I asked him if he would fulfil this role on the Treasury team.

He was ecstatically pleased

and made no secret of it.

"Do you really mean it? Do you really mean it?"

I don't think I'd ever encountered,

before or afterwards,

anyone who was so manifestly delighted

at what he saw as a promotion.

Blair befriends Gordon Brown.

They share a room at the House of Commons.

Tony Blair and Gordon Brown. Didn't they do well?

He did even better. He got 50,000 votes more, didn't you, than he got?

But both of you did extremely well indeed.

They become a pair with contrasting personalities.

I want to see a wider membership,

I want to see better attention to the regional organisation,

and I want to give more attention to the policy-making process,

so these are things that we want to see happen.

Did you have to...?

He talked of a platform once he stood,

made it sound like a real election.

Did you have to scheme, organise, assemble votes for this?

No, because it's done in a fairly democratic way with...

A fairly democratic way?

I mean very democratic, I'm just being unusually modest.

Gordon made a huge impression on Tony

because he was a much more experienced political creature.

And I think Gordon got used to the idea

that Tony was there to support him

by bouncing ideas off him,

by discussing ideas, helping him develop.

But at the same time, the fact was

that Tony was also learning from Gordon

and developing HIS ideas,

and they weren't always the same as Gordon's ideas.

APPLAUSE

By 1992, almost everyone expects Labour to win

the upcoming election of that year.

Well, all right.

Well, all right!

I first met Tony Blair in March 1992,

just before the general election of that year.

I got a call from his office saying, "Tony would like to meet you."

It's the only time I think that

a politician's actually asked to see me.

So, I booked a restaurant, and we met.

Of course, like everyone,

I was overwhelmed by his charm.

Blair was a radical, transformative politician.

There's no doubt about that.

The Labour equivalent of Margaret Thatcher

in his determination to pull the Labour Party

into a completely different mode of thinking.

I said, "Well, anyway, looks like you'll be in government

"in a couple of months," because that's what everyone thought,

and he said, "Oh, no, no, no. We're going to lose."

Labour do in fact lose,

and Tony now hopes that Gordon will put his hat into the ring

to be the new leader.

But Gordon throws his support behind his fellow Scot,

John Smith.

I therefore declare that John Smith is elected

the leader of the Labour Party.

APPLAUSE

And Tony's hopes that he and Gordon will transform

the party are derailed.

That was a crucial moment for Blair.

That was the moment when the iron entered his soul.

John Smith looks like a Labour leader who can win power.

He's a popular and skilled political operator,

but he has a heart condition.

In April 1994, Tony and his wife, Cherie,

go for a weekend in Paris.

And it's here that Blair wakes suddenly with a premonition

that John Smith is about to die.

Well...

..it was a rather extraordinary thing.

I actually did wake up in the morning,

and I remember, I woke up and I thought,

"You've got to prepare yourself for this.

"I think it's going to happen."

I remember saying to Cherie,

"I feel it's possible that this heart condition could come back,

"and I've got to think then about what happens if it does."

Erm, and...

..whether...

..whether it really is the moment that I would go for

the leadership if that did happen.

And that was the first time we'd really properly discussed it.

You said to her, "If John dies, I will be leader,

"not Gordon, and somehow, I think this will happen.

"I just think it will."

Yeah, I just, I felt this strong premonition

and I don't quite know, who knows how these things come

into your mind like that, but it came into my mind

with a degree of certainty that both surprised me

and made me think, OK...

Who knows whether it's right or wrong,

but you're going to have to think now

and you're going to have to think about the decision

because you know in your own mind you want to do it,

and you're going to have to think how you handle Gordon

because it's going to be a huge problem for you

and your relationship, and I hadn't really discussed it with him

because I was thinking, "Well, what's the point?"

You know, it may never happen

and therefore there's no point in ending up...

Because I knew it would be a difficult conversation,

because it had always been assumed that he would be the leader.

But I thought, "No, you've got to prepare yourself for this

"and for the conversation that will come."

Good evening. The leader of the Labour Party,

John Smith, died this morning in hospital after suffering

a massive heart attack at his London home.

It was a very extraordinary situation at the funeral

because you've got the absolute grief of his family

and then the grief of the party.

And then, on the other hand,

there was the inevitable thoughts of,

"Well, what's going to happen to the party now?"

It was an incredibly intense day.

Everybody was thinking about the succession.

Everybody's looking around, thinking,

"Is he going to run for it?"

"Who's going to support him?"

"Is it going to be Gordon or is it going to be Tony?"

SINGING

I was determined that he wasn't going to let his decency,

thinking that he should defer to Gordon,

get in the way of what I thought was best for him

and best for the country.

I said to him, "You've got to go for it.

"It's got to be you."

When I met Tony,

I said of course we'd have to think about this very carefully

and work out which of them would gather the most support.

You know, who would be the best modernisers candidate?

He just looked at me.

He said, "Peter, I'm going to do this."

I said, "Well, yes, yes, yes, but we'll consider how..."

You know? "No," he said.

"I'm going to do this."

It really was as if his time had come.

He had a sense of destiny.

Blair and Brown engage in a series of fraught negotiations

over which one of them will run for leader.

They were such close, good, intimate friends.

It was like a married couple deciding whose career

should come first.

I mean, Gordon would have been thinking,

"I've been betrayed by my best friend.

"I was always going to be the leader.

"I thought that was the deal."

I'm only talking about the European elections. Is that OK?

Can I just put one question to you about the leadership?

Not at all. We're talking about the European elections today. OK.

What are you planning to do today, sir? Thanks.

Tony was feeling absolutely 100% determined

"I'm going to persuade him.

"I'm going to persuade him. I'm going to persuade him."

As they try to thrash out a deal,

they have at least ten secret meetings that culminate in a dinner

at a north London restaurant called Granita.

What's your understanding of his agreement with Gordon?

Well, first of all, there was never an agreement

and there were a number of meetings,

some of them were in my sister's house, and, really,

the deed was done before they had that meal in...

..the Granola or whatever it was called. Granita. Granita.

Yes. Granita, that's right.

It became a thing of legend that it was all sorted out there,

but it was much more drawn out than that.

But what was it, in essence?

That Gordon would stand down for Tony,

but Gordon would be Chancellor,

and he would have control over the economic policy.

And that, at some point, when Tony stood down,

he would support Gordon to be his successor.

The details of what was agreed are contested to this day.

Many in Brown's camp claim Blair set a limit on the time

he would serve as leader.

But there was never, to my mind...

In fact, I said to him before he went...

.."Don't promise to set any kind of date."

But Tony, being a very charming person,

I think can often make people think they hear what they want to hear.

So, I think that Gordon may well have spoken of a time limit

and Tony may not have strongly disabused him of that.

Did any part of you feel a little bit sorry for Gordon?

No.

It's...

In politics, there comes a point...

..when you have to make a choice.

I don't love having a confrontation,

it's not my natural way,

contrary to, I think, sometimes the image of sort of,

you know, he's messianic and all of that.

No, I'm not like that.

If I can avoid having a big fight and row, I'll happily avoid it,

but I always know there comes a point when,

you know, if it's something that really, really matters,

you're going to have to...

You've got to confront it.

If I thought he was going to do the things

I thought were necessary for the Labour Party,

I really would have been happy to have been number two.

But I think he found that incredibly difficult,

for understandable reasons,

and we resolved it in the end.

But when something like that happens,

it changes the nature of the relationship and,

you know, to be honest, you never fully resolve it, so...

It had to be done.

This morning, I am announcing my candidature

for the position of leader of the Labour Party.

CHEERING AND APPLAUSE

Well, Tony was always a smoothie.

His weakness was the lack of deep thinking,

knowledge of history.

And I think he wants to be a big thinker,

but that's not what he is.

I mean, maybe we're all the same, you know,

whatever our strength is, we want the other strength.

His strength was certainly the personal charm

and the communications.

I don't think he's a great leader.

Mr Blair, good morning. Good morning.

The other two contenders for the leadership are prepared

to serve as deputy. Why aren't you?

Because I don't wish to be deputy. Why not?

You're the youngest of the three with the least experience.

Because I don't desire to be deputy leader.

It's a very, very good post.

I think that both of my colleagues would make excellent deputy leaders,

but it's not a post I desire for myself.

Have you really thought through the effect of the job

you're about to take on, assuming you get it,

upon yourself and your family?

I've reflected upon it a great deal.

And you've decided that the effect is worth living with,

assuming that you can become Prime Minister?

Yes, I have.

It is not an easy decision,

and I am well aware of what is about to fall upon me.

He was steely, clear,

he had real energy and restlessness,

that was, you, know, politically exciting.

I do remember asking him whether

he thought he was really tough enough

for what was coming.

Do you think you're tough enough to cope

with the sort of media onslaught that Neil Kinnock,

for example, had to endure?

I think it comes with the territory,

and I'm entirely prepared for it and, indeed, expect it.

APPLAUSE

Blair wins and now he's leader of the Labour Party.

CHEERS AND APPLAUSE

The blueprint for New Labour,

he had it in his head right from the start.

The idea that he was just some sort of, you know,

line of least resistance, pretty, front guy

could not be further from the truth.

He assembles a formidable team of political operators

and spin doctors.

They were this curious combination of Tony being Mr Good Guy

and then around him, you had these absolutely ruthless bastards.

Sorry... Richard, if you want anything, tomorrow, any other day,

get out. Get out.

I was being quite robust.

And I remember Tony looking, ooh...

And I think part of him thinking, "Am I going over the top?"

But part of him thinking,

"That's what we need to do from time to time."

Tony was quite smart in leaving the brutality to others.

Together, they set about rebranding the party.

Tony Blair.

APPLAUSE

And in the face of staunch resistance,

they rip up decades of Labour Party convention.

The historic goal of another Labour government.

Our party, New Labour.

Our mission, new Britain.

New Labour, new Britain.

APPLAUSE

Blair was the revolution - in his own person.

It was like he was laying the party at his father's feet.

He'd changed it so much that his father would now vote for it.

It's July 1995, and Blair's just flown 10,000 miles

to a tropical island in Australia to meet the most powerful man

in the British media, Rupert Murdoch.

We knew there would be terrible controversy.

We were accused of supping with the devil.

Take a long spoon with you -

that was the sort of general gist from our colleagues.

..from ABC television. How're you going? Nice to see you.

You've come halfway around the world to talk to Rupert Murdoch

and his men, why is that?

You're impersonating Dame Edna, aren't you?

THEY LAUGH

Do you expect Mr Rupert Murdoch's papers to support you

in the upcoming election?

No, I mean, I've made it clear right from the very start,

I'm not here to trade policy for editorial support.

What Mr Murdoch's papers do is up to him,

what the Labour Party does is up to us.

Great. Thank you. OK? Thank you very much.

Thank you very much. Thanks. Thank you. Nice to meet you.

See you. Bye-bye.

Quite a lot of people, Jeremy Corbyn, in the Labour Party,

I mean, people like Roy Hattersley, would say this is the move

of a shrewd political operator.

I think this smacks too much to me of an endorsement,

and almost a craven endorsement, of the Murdoch empire.

I think it's a great mistake.

My point was that he was therefore accepting

the way in which Murdoch ran his papers.

There was no sense of standing up to what Murdoch was doing to our media.

Blair had this ability to separate himself

from the political, philosophical debate

around an issue and go into it in a totally transactional way.

Tony Blair said to me,

how we treat Rupert Murdoch

in power will depend on how he treats Labour

in the run up to the election.

It's pretty simple, you know, you scratch my back,

I'll scratch yours.

That's what it came down to.

Having charmed the media mogul,

Blair seems equally at ease

getting gushing endorsements from rockstars.

There are seven people in this room tonight

who are giving a little bit of hope

to young people in this country.

That is me, our kid,

Bonehead, Guigsy,

Alan White, Alan McGee,

and Tony Blair.

And if you've all got anything about you,

you get up there and you shake Tony Blair's hand, man.

He's the man.

Power to the people!

I like you, Tony,

and I like you for a very specific reason,

which is that you seem to me to be like a real person.

But if it's not an overly pretentious question,

I mean, are you as real as you appear?

Because it seems to me that people worry,

they see you surrounded by what they call spin doctors,

and they think that perhaps this realness is kind of manufactured.

What do you think?

Well, you can't manufacture the realness in the end.

I mean, people have got to make a judgment on it.

But we run a professional show in the Labour Party today.

Yeah. We do things in a professional way, but it doesn't mean to say

you're not real or you can't be a human being at the same time.

Dad... Dad!

Dad! Dad!

If you don't make the time for your family,

then I think your politics actually becomes much less effective

because they keep your feet on the ground,

they may drive you mad, but they keep you sane.

The first time I went to see Tony Blair at his home,

it was almost like arriving on a film set.

You felt that everybody, whether it was Cherie Blair

and the children and the coffee maker and all the rest of it,

you felt you were seeing a brilliantly orchestrated

performance of what they thought that a new Labour leader,

how he ought to live and what his children ought to look like

and what his wife ought to look like.

PIANO PLAYS

Tony and the family, they did a brilliant imposture

of being normal human beings.

Now, actually anybody who is on his way to becoming

Prime Minister is not a normal human being,

but they played the game brilliantly.

You have obviously also had to think through the possibility

of being in Number Ten Downing Street, both of you.

You take it stage by stage, actually.

I'm a great believer in the old Mrs Beeton recipe

for rabbit stew - first, catch your rabbit.

THEY CHUCKLE

Cherie, do you have sort of daunting feelings about it?

I've never even been near Downing Street, so I've got no idea.

I've never even stood outside the door.

Well, it's got to cross your mind that it might end that way.

Well, I'm sure that there will be space somewhere

for the children and me.

The thing you have to understand about Cherie

is that she had strong political views,

a strong sense of ambition.

If not, Tony, it could have been Cherie.

It was Cherie who was sort of, in a sense,

the Labour Party animal, the person, you know,

who wanted to run as a candidate

and to join the leadership of the Labour Party.

And she took a very profound,

and it must have been quite a difficult personal decision,

in a sense, to step back and to be his support.

There was about a six-month period, no more... Yeah.

..when I was the candidate and Tony was still looking for a seat,

and so he had to trail behind me. TONY CHUCKLES

Probably didn't do any harm, did it? No...

Probably didn't do any harm but I certainly at the time felt

it didn't do me any good! THEY LAUGH

The marriage was so strong, not smooth,

not easy, lots of gyrations,

lots of, sort of, shouting in the background,

but, my word, it was the rock.

That marriage was the rock on which Tony's political career was made.

CHEERING AND APPLAUSE

There was an idea that I would write one of those sort of

campaign diaries or the story of an election campaign,

and Tony Blair was keen

that I did it and I really got an astonishing first-hand insight

into that whole election.

And really witnessed a politician at the top of their game.

BABY GRIZZLES

He loved campaigning.

I can change a note. There you go.

On the battle bus, he'd go and sit at the front next to the driver,

so that he could see cars coming towards him

or people on the street.

He sought a connection.

Hello, Northampton.

CHEERING AND APPLAUSE

I think that he just grew in confidence as the campaign went on.

And the crowds became much bigger and the enthusiasm

for him was much greater.

And it was like watching a flower blossom in the sunlight.

Can we have a kiss again? Will you give him a kiss, again?

I'm coming back to Basildon. Definitely, definitely.

It was very interesting to me during the '97 election

that he wore a lot of make-up.

There were not one, but two make-up people travelling with him,

and he liked that.

It was like he was putting on the war paint every day

before he went out.

I got the impression, talking to people who knew him,

like his old housemaster at school,

that he was quite a difficult, rebellious,

long-haired, tricky boy to have in the house.

And that this all changed when the house put on

a production of Julius Caesar, and he played Mark Antony.

And he said to me, "I saw him visibly swell

"when he went onstage for the first time,

"as if he had found his calling."

CHEERING AND APPLAUSE

It's a clue to Tony's character

that he saw being a party leader

as a 24-hour a day performance.

He always needed to perform.

Please welcome the Leader of the Opposition,

the right honourable Tony Blair.

CHEERING AND APPLAUSE

It was on television, really,

that politicians meet their electorate,

and he has this ability to separate his inner self

from the public persona.

Sitting on that couch last week were the Spice Girls.

CHUCKLING

Right. Right.

Mrs Thatcher, they thought, was the first Spice Girl.

They did! They said that, didn't they, Tony?

Well, I've actually, I did meet the Spice Girls.

They had sort of bare midriffs, short skirts... Mm-hm.

..sort of earrings through various parts. Pins and things.

Pins and things and tattoos.

I can't really see Margaret Thatcher like that.

LAUGHTER

You did go on Chris Evans' show, apparently, and said that Bowie -

this is David Bowie - his wife, Iman, was your dream girl.

Did you actually say that?

I did. Well, he asked me the question,

and I broke the first rule of politics

and lapsed into total honesty.

There's nothing wrong with that in politics!

We don't get enough, do we? APPLAUSE

Tony Blair!

Well done. Tony Blair!

On the 1st of May 1997,

after 18 years of Tory rule,

Britain goes to the polls.

My parents were very superstitious.

We could not say, "Dad's going to win the election"

because it might not happen.

And I was only nine, so I didn't know what an election meant,

I didn't know what him being Prime Minister meant

and so, I did not know... And we hadn't packed anything.

BUSY CHATTER CAMERA SHUTTERS CLICKING

REPORTERS SHOUTING QUESTIONS Mr Blair, look this way, please.

Tony, this way, please. Thank you.

It was exciting and a little bit scary.

Press are not very child-friendly.

This way. Everybody this way. All right?

OVERLAPPING QUESTIONS

This way, please. That's it.

There were just so many press there, 100 cameras in your face,

shouting your name, wanting you to look at them and, smile,

smile, do this, and you're just like, what is going on?

I remember it being very terrifying.

And I was just holding my dad's hand thinking, "What are we doing?

"Why are all these people here?!"

REPORTERS SHOUTING

Mr Blair, this way, please.

To the middle. This way, please. Thank you.

This way, Mrs Blair.

BELL STRIKES THE HOUR There it is. Ten o'clock and we say,

Tony Blair is to be Prime Minister

and a landslide is likely.

CHEERING

On election night, I arrived at his house and the first thing I noticed,

of course, was there were now men with machineguns

standing around in the garden.

He was about to become Prime Minister, clearly.

OVERLAPPING SPEECH

Anthony Charles Linton Blair,

the Labour Party candidate, 33,000...

CHEERING AND APPLAUSE

At the count,

I was a few miles from where I'd been brought up.

My dad was there.

My mum wasn't.

My dad had really...

All his ambitions in the end had failed

because of his illness, but here was his son,

about to become the British Prime Minister

and he was so proud and happy,

and I was happy for him and, yeah, it was...

And I also... I missed my mum.

So, off goes Tony Blair.

The engines of his jet will soon be starting,

the door will close,

and he will be down amongst even more admirers.

Got my notes, sir? Got the notes.

OK, Tom? Could get used to this.

TONY CHUCKLES

We went on the plane, and everyone was very excited,

and Alastair was constantly saying, you know,

"We've just won this", and "we've just won that".

And Tony was just very still and very quiet

and we were sat up at the front.

And I was just holding his hand.

And, you know, he did say...

"What have we done?"

And I think it was more about...

..the weight of it.

There's Tony Blair smiling again, greeting,

shaking hands with party workers they all want to shake his hand.

He'll take one or two of them...

Everyone was sort of cheering and shouting.

You know, people were saying to me,

well, it's all fantastic,

and I was just sitting there thinking,

"Yeah, well, we're now going to be running the country,"

so, you know, no more words.

They're not going to do it any more.

What about fear?

Yeah, some fear, yeah, some fear, I think.

Because are you going to be up to it? Can you, do it?

What's going to happen?

Did you enjoy it a bit, those first 24 hours?

You know, if I'm really honest about it,

I'm not sure I did enjoy it that much,

just because I was just thinking, you know,

"Here you are - you're in your early 40s, you're Prime Minister."

And rather than thinking, "You're Prime Minister, wow!",

I was like, "You're Prime Minister, so...

"..you better do a good job because now what happens

"to this country and its people depends on you."

CHEERING AND APPLAUSE

MUSIC: Movin' On Up by Primal Scream

# I was blind

# Now I can see

# You made a believer

# Out of me... #

I remember being stunned at the amount of people there were,

there were all these flags everywhere.

Everyone seemed really happy.

# I'm movin' on up now... #

Even as a 13-year-old, and right in the middle of it,

there was a genuine sense of excitement.

It was kind of nice to think,

"Wow, people really like Dad."

Of course, then. As it developed and you'd read the papers

and everything else, you'd realise that not everyone liked him.

# I was lost

# Now I'm found

# I believe in you

# I've got no bounds... #

Blair comes to power with uncharted levels of popularity.

He pushes through a blizzard of bold new policies

that change the way Britain works.

This is a government in a hurry.

The Bank of England is to be made independent.

Scotland and Wales are to have their own parliaments.

For the first time, there'll be a minimum wage.

Oh, yes!

And to improve education, class sizes will be reduced.

One of the things I think he was drawn to,

as it were, almost irresistibly,

was his belief to solve problems which had defeated everybody else.

He was drawn to making Labour electable by inventing

New Labour and then delivering it.

And I think he was drawn to Northern Ireland,

it had defeated everyone else - he could do it.

Northern Ireland's Catholic and Protestant communities

have been deeply divided for decades and are caught in

a seemingly never-ending cycle of sectarian violence.

Tony came back from Chequers,

and he came in Monday morning, sort of, you know,

all bouncy and what have you, and he said,

"I've worked out how to do Northern Ireland.

"I've worked it out." "Oh, OK. You've worked it out?

"How have you done that?"

And he did become pretty obsessed with it.

Blair sets the goal of getting a peace agreement within a year.

The stakes were enormous on Northern Ireland,

and I was alarmed that he would be out of his depth.

And I said to him,

"Prime Minister, I've got to say to you, I am worried.

"You are going to be moving in with people who have huge,

"sensitive issues, a lot of history, a lot of anger.

"Are you going to be ready for it?"

And he said, "Look, Richard,

"I don't need to know about the history.

"I'm better off if I don't know the history.

"I'm going to focus on the people.

"You watch, it'll work."

SHOUTING

He takes the highly controversial step of inviting

the Irish Republican leaders of Sinn Fein to Downing Street.

Tony invested a huge amount of time in meeting Gerry Adams

and Martin McGuinness, and Ian Paisley

and other Northern Irish politicians.

And we'd bring them into Downing Street and,

particularly when we had the DUP, Ian Paisley's party, involved,

they would not meet Sinn Fein.

They would not be in the same building as Sinn Fein.

But when I was with Paisley in the Cabinet Office,

I noticed looking out of the window, to my horror,

that Adams and McGuinness had escaped from Number Ten

and into the Rose Garden

and were playing with the Blair children with their skateboard.

They go out for a break, right,

from these very intense sessions,

and they see me and my brother skateboarding in the garden.

And we sort of said to them, "Hey, do you want to try?"

Cos they were sort of watching us.

And so you're in the farcical situation of kind of

trying to teach Gerry Adams and Martin McGuinness

how to skateboard against the backdrop of something

incredibly serious and solemn and historic.

And I remember telling Dad afterwards, and he was just...

"Thank God they didn't injure themselves."

CAMERA SHUTTER CLICKS

It's 7th April 1998.

Blair arrives in Belfast

with most of the key players around the negotiating table.

But the talks are on the brink of collapse

and there's a deadline looming just days away.

Morning.

We're here to do a job, work, and we've got to get it done.

And we've got complete determination to do it.

We were in this awful building,

and he could get incredibly frustrated.

He was saying, like, you know, "If this...

"If we could just sort this out without all the other people,

"we could do it right now, right?

"But we're having to deal with all this

"fucking this and fucking that."

He's not a table slammer,

but I saw him at one point slamming the table

and he just went, "Fuck, fuck, fuck," like that.

Tony Blair was one of the most successful

and most skilful negotiators I ever came across.

He can play with a whole range of emotions,

but he's always in control.

And I do remember one negotiation we had, and he said to me,

"Never lose your temper except on purpose."

And it came home to me quite how he managed negotiations.

The problem is, now you're into this day,

is not that you can't reach it,

it's just making sure that you drive the thing forward

as quickly as possible.

Machiavelli talks about needing the skill of the fox,

but also the courage of the lion,

and Tony had both - he had the ability on issues of principle

to be really brave, really firm,

but he also had a very sinuous way

to charm people into things.

Roy Jenkins said that Tony Blair had a second-class intellect,

but a first-class temperament,

and actually there's something in that that's really a compliment,

which is that he had the most remarkable EQ.

His ability to understand people, to relate to people,

to empathise was his superpower.

Well, ladies and gentlemen, you will have heard that

the Senator Mitchell's announcement has been made that

an agreement has been reached.

Mrs Thatcher didn't believe Northern Ireland could be solved.

John Major believed Northern Ireland could be solved,

but he couldn't do it.

Tony Blair believed both -

that it could be done, and he could do it,

and he really drove it through.

Today, we have just a sense of the prize that is before us.

He believed it was kind of his destiny to fulfil this.

Somewhere written in the stars was for him

to achieve this great thing for the country.

The work to win that prize goes on.

We cannot, we must not let it slip from our grasp. Thank you.

But Mo Mowlam said to me that, "Tony succeeded

"because he thought he was fucking Jesus."

Less than two years into Blair's time as Prime Minister,

a war is escalating on the edge of Europe.

You're not looking bad for a man who doesn't sleep.

Yes, God almighty.

It's hell the last few days...

CHATTER CONTINUES

Right.

Serbian forces led by Slobodan Milosevic have driven

800,000 people from their homes in Kosovo.

Ethnic cleansing is taking place.

Blair is under pressure to act.

I went in to see Tony and I said it looks like war in Kosovo

because the diplomatic process has completely failed,

and we've got this commitment to intervene.

And I was surprised at how calmly he took it.

Because I could see this was going to be

the dominant issue over the next few months.

When a Prime Minister sends his forces into military action,

nothing else competes with it for attention.

It was obvious to me that what was happening

in Kosovo was effectively ethnic cleansing.

You know, there was murder, there was rape,

there was a displacement of the civilian population,

and I felt this was happening right on the doorstep of Europe.

We should act and we can act,

and therefore we're going to.

On the 24th of March 1999,

Blair takes a leading role as NATO planes are scrambled

to bomb targets in Serbia.

You are fighting a just war and a just cause,

and I believe we are fighting for the values of civilisation here.

Blair becomes convinced that the only way

to beat Milosevic is to threaten boots on the ground.

But other world leaders are set against it,

and Blair is isolated.

This was the one situation I remember Tony saying,

"If this is the last thing I do as Prime Minister,

"if I'm hounded out as a result of this,

"if it somehow goes belly up,

"so be it - I'm going for it."

Blair starts a campaign to persuade

a reluctant US President Bill Clinton to back his plans.

First of all, it was the only real policy disagreement

I think we had of any magnitude the whole time we worked together.

I argued that we would have fewer casualties.

And that...

..we might be able to win with air power.

I said, "I think we are morally obliged to win

"and to win it by killing the fewest number of people."

The New York Times splashed a headline saying

that Tony Blair was trying to toughen up Clinton

and make him agree to ground troops.

And Clinton went absolutely ape.

He called Tony from Air Force One.

And I remember being on the call, and he was so angry.

He really lost it.

He really shouted and yelled.

"I know what you're doing! You're trying to make me look weak

"and you're trying to make yourself look strong."

And Tony was saying, "No, no, no. Honestly, that wasn't us.

"We didn't do that. It's not in our interest to do that."

I believe there was a phone call between the two of you

and it got a little bit heated.

It did.

I was mad because his guys were trying to make him look good

in the New York Times at my expense

when we should have been united in fighting this war.

I was always totally honest with him.

I didn't ever pull any punches.

How did the Prime Minister bring the President down from that anger?

The method was to stay calm,

not to sort of panic as people sometimes do

when you face anger like that,

but to calmly say, "No, it honestly wasn't us,

"we don't want to do that, it's not in our interest to do that."

And gradually talked him down till they were able to end the call.

He could always, as we say at home,

he could always talk an owl out of a tree.

Ha.

Under pressure from Blair,

Clinton softens his stance on ground troops,

and in the face of a united front, Milosevic backs down.

The logic of the campaign came through to Tony

much quicker than it did to other leaders,

and I don't think we would have got anything like

the outcome had it not been for that personal commitment

that he made.

Blair's standing up to Milosevic helped end

the conflict in Kosovo,

saving thousands of lives.

CHANTING: Tony, Tony, Tony...

Whenever something in politics looks at its zenith,

the termites are at work on the base.

That is a sort of, cyclical, almost natural rule of politics.

And people that I've spoken to who know him very well,

they all point to Kosovo.

At that point, for the first time,

maybe a slight parting from reality began to take place.

CHANTING: Tony, Tony, Tony...

The moment that he appeared rather like, you know,

Christ walking through the Holy Land

with people hailing him as if he had worked a miracle,

a friend of mine, a friend of Tony's,

said to me he thought he could walk on water.

And in that triumph, the seeds of tragedy were sown.

WHISTLING

This is not a battle for NATO. CHANTING CONTINUES

This is not a battle for territory.

This is a battle for humanity.

It is a just cause.

It is a rightful cause.

And we will make sure that these people here are returned

to their homes.

That is our commitment to them - practical help,

practical commitment.

And, above all else,

a determination that all this suffering

and all this misery

and everything that has been created by the brutality

of Milosevic shall not last, but shall be reversed,

shall be defeated so these people can once again

become symbols of hope, humanity and peace.

Thank you.

APPLAUSE

He was at his best.

He really felt deeply it had to be done.

We had a moral responsibility to act.

The international politics were difficult,

but he showed genuine leadership

in moving the dial on it.

My concerns were the alacrity with which he wanted

to take military action.

His very quick decision -

we'll go in, we're going to get involved,

we're going to do this militarily.

It had been, in those terms, successful.

But I think he then realised that he had the power to do this.

And we then descended, in my view,

into the horrors of the post-2001 situation.

CHANTING: Tony, Tony, Tony...

Well, one of the things you learn in politics

is they can be chanting your name one day in praise

and they could be chanting it the next day in condemnation.

You've got to be strong enough

both to withstand the praise and the condemnation.

Once you come to the view that what you should do

is what you think is right, then you've got to stand by that.

Some people will hate it, some people will love it,

and that, you shouldn't...

It shouldn't propel you one way or the other.

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