Original subtitles

This programme contains distressing images of war

I remember there was one time when I went up to the flat

just before I was going home about 11pm at night and said,

"Right, I'm off now", which I'd done dozens of times before.

And I've got no idea why, but I walked to the door over here

and I got to the door, which was open, and I stood at the door...

...and I turned around and I looked at him

and I think he thought I'd gone.

And I can just remember thinking

it was an absolute picture of isolation.

And he just...

He had a sense of burden and weight.

And because at that stage so many people saw him

in the way that they did, Tony B. Liar and all that stuff...

...actually, it was one of those moments when I wished I could paint.

It was an absolute portrait in the kind of isolation of power.

Did you feel any urge to either say something or put an arm around him?

No, I didn't. I just walked out.

Mmm.

After the fall of Saddam...

...we got a message from the Russians

saying Putin would like Tony to go out.

One on one. Oh, interesting. Almost out of the blue.

We get on the plane, we get picked up by a helicopter,

we get taken to this place, God knows where.

Amazing sort of luxury that he's living in by now.

And we had a dinner...

...where Putin absolutely laid into him.

"OK, where are the Americans going next?

"Where are they going to war next? Oh, they haven't told you yet.

"They'll tell you and then you'll do it."

And it was... It was nasty. It was cynical.

He didn't use the phrase 'Bush's poodle', but that was kind of what he was saying.

It was really quite vicious.

How did Tony respond?

He sort of sat there, took it...

...then just explained to him why I thought he was wrong.

No doubt there will be discussions ahead of us

in order to make sure that we can resolve any remaining difficulties

or issues that there are in the international community.

But I would like to thank the president once again

for the constructive and immensely friendly atmosphere

in which these talks were conducted.

Gentlemen, thank you. The conference is over.

APPLAUSE

Back home, Tony Blair has a problem.

He wants to move on from the Iraq War,

continue his reforms to the United Kingdom

and win another general election.

I want us to win a third term.

Not so that we can go in the history books,

but so that we can consign Britain's failings to the history books.

That's why we want it.

APPLAUSE

But moving on from the war is proving to be difficult.

You have blood on your hands!

That's fine, sir, you can make your protest.

Just thank goodness we live in a democracy and you can.

APPLAUSE

The Iraq war shattered the Blair coalition,

so it was "Never glad confident morning again."

We'd gone through a long period

where Tony Blair was a very trusted individual.

And once that trust was lost,

a lot of people lost faith in what government was telling them.

As the war on terror continues

and stories keep on emerging from Iraq,

it proves impossible to draw a line under it.

NEWS REPORT: An American television network

has shown disturbing photographs taken by one US soldier,

which appear to show others abusing Iraqi prisoners.

Just tell me what you felt

when you saw those images of hooded prisoners in Abu Ghraib.

No, of course I was appalled. Whenever you see a...

Appalled by the fact of it and appalled by the stupidity of it.

In war, bad things are going to happen.

But our...

...attempt there to stabilise the country,

I mean, that's an ambition that was a perfectly good one.

What about the fact that it was official US policy

to have a form of torture?

Well, I never agreed with torture.

And at any point in time when it was ever raised with me,

I always said, "I'm opposed to this. I'm opposed to it on moral grounds.

"I'm opposed to it on grounds of effectiveness."

I have never been in favour of it and I never was at the time.

And I made it clear that we should say to the Americans

we were not in favour of it.

APPLAUSE

Blair's also having problems with Gordon Brown,

a decade after Brown agreed to support Blair's bid

to become Labour leader.

Tony was increasingly exasperated with the impatience

that Gordon Brown had to be Prime Minister.

Obviously wanting to take over when Tony stood down,

but when was Tony going to stand down?

And a lot of those people who were supporting Gordon Brown

were getting increasingly impatient.

Ten years is a very long time in any job.

Has there been any point when you've thought about moving on?

No.

So there you are!

Did you ever see him sort of crack or crumble a little bit

in the privacy of, as it were, your bedroom or the flat?

There were plenty of times, I think, when he would,

he would feel, have I done the right thing?

You wouldn't be human if you didn't find that difficult.

And the constant...

...drip, drip, drip of Gordon's pressure.

There was a point when he thought, you know, maybe I should stand down.

What did you say? No.

I was absolutely against that.

I said to him,

"Of course, if you want to stand down, you must stand down.

"But do you really think that Gordon is the right person to...

..."take over from you?

"Because I don't think you do and therefore don't do it."

People say there's always tension between Number 10

and the Chancellor, but there was this extra dimension in this case.

The deal was supposed to be that they wouldn't fight each other

and that Tony would hand over to Gordon.

And that became a sort of despoiling element in the government,

as Tony went on and on and on.

CROWD: Boo!

Down with Blair!

It was not an easy campaign.

The days of sort of standing on a soapbox

and just talking to an adoring gathering had gone.

We've had Mr Kennedy in that chair, we've had Mr Howard in that chair.

Why wouldn't you debate directly, face-to-face with them in the...

CHEERING AND APPLAUSE

I debate every week in the House of Commons with Michael Howard.

I'm here to answer questions tonight and...

AUDIENCE SHOUT

I probably do more discussions, not just with audiences like this,

but with people when we talk about the issues

than any politician before me.

AUDIENCE MEMBER: Coward! All right. Mr Blair, thank you.

What got to Tony, however,

was when people who were really close to him...

...started saying to him, you know, trust is draining away.

People don't believe you in the way that they did.

All this being...

...fostered, generated...

...by people who wanted him to go.

I told him, "Just get up off your knees.

"Don't be apologetic. Stop being a supplicant.

"Be a leader. Go out there and be confident and fight.

NEWS REPORT: After years of bad blood and distrust,

Tony Blair since last week has rarely ventured a few yards

from the Chancellor's side.

Despite the ongoing tensions between the two men,

Blair and Brown put on a united front during the campaign.

You must have seen more of him in the last five days

than in the last five years!

I think that's a bit of an exaggeration, Michael.

Your wives must be beginning to wonder if something's going on!

When we are together, it emphasises the importance,

not just of the unity of the government,

but also the importance of the unity of that message.

Got my fists, did you?!

Tony Blair is a trusted leader

and internationally respected around the world.

And he has led the major reforms

that have been brought about in this country,

including the reforms in economic policy

that we're talking about today.

Britain has decided.

And we are predicting that Tony Blair has won a third term,

but with a sharply reduced majority of 66,

making the Prime Minister the first-ever Labour leader

to win three elections in a row.

It felt a much more tense night.

It wasn't joyous in the same way.

Did he feel vulnerable?

I mean, he's still Prime Minister, he wins, but...

No, he felt vulnerable. He felt vulnerable.

I think he felt that things were turning. I think he felt, you know... And they were.

On these results, I would have thought, not Gordon Brown himself,

but the Brown supporters will be wondering how quickly

they can move Tony Blair out of Downing Street.

He is clearly a liability and I fear for the future

unless he ceases to be the leader of the party.

After the 2005 election,

there was a kind of sourness amongst Labour MPs,

as if to say, well, Tony's won, that's what we expect of Tony.

Whereas in fact it was... This guy's a genius.

Maybe other things as well, but an absolute genius.

Brilliant at winning elections.

I think hubris kicked in.

Ego is the disease of politics.

I mean, people are...

That's why you have to change, you know, presidents and leaders

and not hang on forever.

You know, if you have absolute power,

it goes to your head and you think you're the fount of all wisdom.

They all say you're brilliant and you start thinking you're brilliant.

After Iraq, because it was such a difficult decision

and the aftermath was so traumatic in many ways...

...you know, there was bound to be a reduction

in my capacity to persuade people.

What there wasn't was a reduction in my ability

to do the things I really wanted to do.

You know, the irony is you start as a politician at your...

...most popular but least capable,

and then you end at your most capable but least popular.

So, yes, I was conscious of the fact

I was much less able to persuade people,

but I was also much more confident

about the direction I was taking the country in.

With power slipping away, Blair wants to use what time he has

to make as much difference as possible.

And when the G8 comes to the UK,

he gets to choose the agenda for the leaders of the world to discuss.

Blair chooses cancelling the debt of the world's poorest countries

and for them all to admit the truth of climate change.

It was probably the most extraordinary 48 hours

I had in politics.

We tried to do something completely different with what was then the G8

and I really used every bit of last credibility

and influence with the Americans in order to do it.

It was very tense because...

...first of all, I don't think the Americans really wanted that agenda,

and secondly, because Russia was there

and already things were becoming somewhat fractured

with the Russian leadership.

So it was going to be a very, very tall ask.

If we cancel debt, we will save thousands of lives every day

and millions of lives in the future.

With the summit under way, Blair is hoping for another boost.

Right. Good morning, everyone.

You know the issues that are there - Africa and climate change.

Thank you for your leadership.

This is going to be a successful summit.

Thousands of people have gathered in central London

to hear the result of the 2012 Olympic bid.

The Games of the 30th Olympiad in 2012

are awarded to the City of London.

CHEERING

Prime Minister, Trafalgar Square is listening right now.

Is there anything you have to say to the people of London at this moment?

Well done.

Let's make 2012 the greatest Games the world has ever seen.

Blair arrives to put the finishing touches

to a deal that writes off the debt of the world's poorest countries

and properly recognises climate change.

SIRENS WAIL

Move away from this road, please!

Thank you.

Four Islamist terrorists have detonated suicide bombs in London,

killing 52 people.

I always remember he took a moment...

...to go outside by himself...

...and stand and reflect.

There seems to be a link between the invasion of Iraq

and a greater risk of terrorist activity in Britain.

The fact is, what they're doing is utterly evil,

and you can't compromise with it.

You've got to pull it up by its roots.

You could see that there were moments of extreme pressure,

especially when he was making momentous decisions,

especially ones involving human lives.

Dad's always had this habit of, you'd be talking

to him about something, and he'll zone out and think

about something completely different,

and you would see the kind of zone out moments

ratchet up as more was on his shoulders.

You know, he really cared if he saw it affecting us as well.

So I think we were quite careful to make sure it didn't affect us.

Or at least not show it. Right, right.

There was almost this shared mutual understanding

that we would never let him see it affect us too much,

and he would never let us see it affect him too much.

Blair knows that there are Labour MPs who want him to stand down,

but there's still fight left in him

as he takes on a little-known Ukip MEP.

I thought, "Crikey. Perhaps Blair's going to do it.

"Perhaps he really is going to reform and change."

But no. Under your presidency,

there have been 3,350 new legislative acts.

Total failure on economic reform.

Let me just tell you, sir, and your colleagues.

You sit with our country's flag.

You do not represent our country's interests.

APPLAUSE

This...

This is the year 2005, not 1945.

We're not fighting each other any more.

These are our partners, they're our colleagues.

And our future lies in Europe.

APPLAUSE

But Blair is finally about to lose power.

And it's not the British electorate who force him out.

It's his own party.

The polling was saying that with Tony Blair as prime minister,

we were in trouble.

Gordon was the most popular politician

in Britain for about a decade.

People really respected him,

and he had almost single-handedly turned around Labour's

long-standing reputation for screwing up the economy.

Many of those plotting Blair's downfall

are allies of the Chancellor.

I was saying to him, you need to make space

for others than Gordon to come forward.

And he would always say to me, "I cannot choose my successor."

And I would say, "By not doing that,

"you are effectively choosing Gordon."

Do you think he made a mistake?

I do.

What did you make of the accusation

that you were a sort of Lady Macbeth figure?

I think... Really?

I thought that was a joke.

I thought it was Gordon who described me as Lady Macbeth.

If anyone thinks Tony's my puppet,

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

He's on a visit to York when an adviser pulls him aside.

They tell him that MPs are coming forward

with letters calling for him to resign.

Prime Minister, some of your most...

The people who owe you their career want you to resign.

What's your response to them?

He brought his closest people together

and worked out what he needed to do to respond.

Who were his allies? Where were the people

that he could activate on his behalf?

Who was going to do that?

So it became a sort of a mini war plan.

There were people saying "Ride it out,"

but in the end, there was a realisation

that he couldn't fight it any more.

His head recognised

that he had run out of road.

I'm not sure his heart ever accepted that.

As for my... timing and date of departure,

I would have preferred to do this in my own way,

but, as has been pretty obvious from

what many of my cabinet colleagues have said earlier in the week,

the next party conference in a couple of weeks will be

my last party conference as party leader.

Tell me a bit about you and Gordon Brown.

You know, we were much more than just friends, right?

We were deep political partners.

And for the best part of ten years - it was quite a long time -

we would be talking several times a day.

And then you put all the stresses and strains of government.

I mean, if you think about it, it was a miracle

we lasted ten years, but we did.

And I always say to people,

because people often say to me, you know,

"Would it not have been better to have got rid of Gordon,"

and so on? And, you know, you can make an argument for that. But...

...I think those three election victories,

which were the only time Labour ever won

three consecutive election victories with a full functioning majority,

I think they were because we were New Labour,

but I also think in part they were

because that partnership was there with him.

Blair has overseen ten years of economic prosperity,

while at the same time transforming many aspects of British society.

There's a huge legacy and it covers many,

many, many different areas -

Bank of England independence, New Deal schools and hospitals,

investment, gay rights, Scottish Parliament, minimum wage.

Now, just as he leaves office,

he is confronting the reality of life without power.

By the time he was leaving Number 10,

he really finally understood how to make the whole thing work.

And at that point, when perhaps he felt he could do even more,

he had to stand back.

Prime Minister's private staff had organised a sort of do,

which was meant as a sort of thank you/celebration.

With Blair's leaving drinks under way upstairs,

Blair and Brown meet downstairs in the corridor.

It's finally time for Blair to hand over

the role of Prime Minister,

and he can't help but give Gordon's speech the once-over.

It's been an honour to serve,

a privilege to work in this building.

Thank you very much indeed.

APPLAUSE

It didn't really work.

He suddenly realised... it's over.

And that hurt.

APPLAUSE

Your party.

And then we made our way downstairs and we gathered our stuff

as Gordon Brown's people came in that way, passing us.

OK, I'll see you later. Thank you.

Matthew, come down.

Ten years in power, your dad leaves office.

Did you get a sense that that was difficult for him?

Yes. Yes, and definitely a sense of unfinished business.

There you are, a seven-year-old. Yeah.

Do you remember anything about that day?

I remember being very sad.

I wasn't just leaving the house I was in,

I was leaving everybody else

who I'd grown up with who was there. Right?

All the people that worked there who had been, like,

you know, kind of raised me collectively.

I know it might sound a bit weird,

but it is really like that when you see people

every day from a very young age.

Both my mum and I were trying to hold back tears.

I think my mum made a sarcastic comment as she left, didn't she?

To the press? To the press.

Bye! I don't think we'll miss you.

What did you think of the press?

I hated the press.

They were particularly horrible to my mum.

They obviously don't like strong women.

Really, I think if someone today told me they worked

for the Daily Mail,

I'd probably turn around and walk in the other direction.

Your skill as a politician

is about knowing about the people and living with the people,

and understanding what the people want.

Ten years of living in the goldfish bowl,

you kind of lose contact with reality.

He didn't really bring on a generation

to carry on his revolution.

He was singular in that sense.

It was just him, and the way that he left gave one an impression

that it had always really just been about him,

that being Prime Minister was merely a stage on his career journey.

And he left a void in politics that was never really filled.

That is the problem with charismatic politicians.

Once the charisma has gone...

...there's just a bit of smoke left

and a faint memory of light, and the stage is empty.

So you were forced out, as you've put it,

of the biggest job in your life when you were 54.

How did that feel?

See, I don't...

I knew I was going to go.

I'd had more than ten years in the job.

I was literally thinking about, what's the future?

I mean, some people said to me, "You should take six months off.

"You should go and, you know, go and sit somewhere,

"read books and, you know, contemplate life."

I was literally not interested in that for a moment.

On his first afternoon not being Prime Minister,

he takes the train up to the north-east of England,

back to Sedgefield...

...and he arrives back at Darlington train station...

...and there's no-one there.

So the official car has gone.

All of that he has got used to over the previous ten years,

the British state just turns it off.

He is left on Darlington train station waiting.

And I think that sort of sudden, jolting change to your power

and status is sort of captured in that moment.

It's quite a frightening thing

to know that you're going from having...

...one of the most important jobs in the country...

...to walking out...

...into the world and...

...nothing.

But no red box this morning. No red box.

Yes, that was strange.

This will be a new government with new priorities.

And now let the work of change begin.

Thank you.

SHOUTING

Not only has he given up being Prime Minister,

he's giving up his seat in the House of Commons.

It's time to pack up his constituency house.

This is just... I mean, the thing is, it's one thing to

change your job, but then you change your job,

you move house at the same time.

Those are apparently the two most stressful things you ever do

and I'm doing both at the same time.

An American politician said

that losing high office is like the end of a love affair.

And the thing about a love affair is,

when you're out of one,

you shouldn't go too quickly into the next one.

And I think Tony was... Scared is the wrong word,

but worried at the idea that he'd have an empty diary.

With the help of the Americans,

Blair gets the job as envoy to the Middle East.

He wants to improve the situation between Israel and the Palestinians.

So, Mr Blair, what does it feel like being pitched into

one of the most intractable conflicts in the world?

It's hugely challenging,

but there's nothing more important in the world today than

to get this issue sorted out and in a different place.

Hello there.

He was a genuine statesman,

which is more than can be said for most of his successors.

But on the other hand, what he could not see

was how grievously

he was morally compromised by the Iraq War,

about all the fallout from that.

I brought you my closest adviser. Hello, good morning.

Yeah, good to see you.

This is Yuval Steinitz, who is the head of...

He's never been good at seeing himself as others see him.

So, where would you like to...? Right, shall we sit down here?

Do you want me...? I'll take my tie off, then.

If you want. If you're feeling casual, yeah.

But Blair is a statesman without a state.

And alongside his role in the Middle East,

he establishes several foundations for which he starts raising money.

No previous Labour Prime Minister

has ever gone after money like he did,

and he went to some very disreputable countries.

I think it was all because he wanted to be left with a big legacy

and a big reputation, and he didn't want to finish with Iraq.

Iraq was failure, but then he wanted to build another story

of him as a great leader and thinker and...

And that's why he threw himself into raising all this money.

The amount of money that a prime minister is paid

is ludicrous in this country - to pay them quite so little.

And if you had a political career as an MP, etc,

by comparison with an ordinary person, yes, you're paid well,

but by comparison with their contemporaries

from university, the people they compare themselves with,

they feel very poor. It's the same with civil servants.

So when they come out, they want to make money.

And I think Tony is just very competitive.

He wants to make more money than anyone else.

In office,

Blair tried to persuade some of the world's most controversial regimes

to move closer to the West.

And he still believes he can...

NEWSREADER SPEAKS RUSSIAN

...which takes him to Kazakhstan, advising President Nazarbayev,

a dictator known to have repressed his own people.

You advised some pretty unsavoury characters.

Do you think that was a mistake?

So, the advisory work we were doing, for example, in Kazakhstan,

was advisory work that was completely in line

with what the World Bank was doing there,

other consultancies and foundations were doing there.

But, anyway,

it was a complete mistake to do the for-profit in that way

because it looked like it was all to do with personal gain,

when, actually, it really wasn't.

It was to do with creating enough funding

that we could start the Institute.

And if you want to do something, you've got to raise money.

But money is never pure.

Well, money's money. It just allows you to do things.

If you leave office and you're in your early 50s -

and many people will now - and you've got maybe, I don't know,

maybe 20, 30 years of active life in front of you,

what are you going to do?

If you're the sort of person that became prime minister,

you're not going to want to go off and play rounds of golf all day.

And, certainly, that's not what I would ever want to do.

So, you know, you're going to want to create something.

But if you want to create something, I'm afraid you need money.

When Blair publishes his autobiography,

he donates the £4.6 million advance to the Royal British Legion.

But even the launch of his book proves controversial.

The first stop on his book tour is Dublin.

Shame! Shame! Shame!

AGGRESSIVE SHOUTING

Hi. Sorry about that. Brought that with me.

He then cancels his book launch in London,

and it looks like he may never shake off the legacy of the Iraq War.

You will remember the portrait that was painted of you

by Jonathan Yeo, I believe... Mmm.

...where the only real bit of colour is the poppy.

What did you think when you saw that?

I thought it was a good painting.

Significance of the poppy?

Yeah, of course.

I mean, it was bound to be seen in the context of the war and so on.

But I thought it was a good picture.

A portrait is in some ways meant to summarise someone.

Did it do that with you?

You decide whether...

I mean... I'm not interested in that type of stuff.

I mean, if people want to say that's all it was about,

and there will be plenty of people on the right

and plenty of people on the left who want to say,

"That was all he ever did,

"was take the country to war post 9/11,"

then, fine, they can say that. It really doesn't worry me.

You've got to understand,

I have enough belief in what I've done

and what I'm doing now that if people want to do that,

which, by the way, is for political reasons,

because I can't think of another British prime minister

that wouldn't have also wanted to be with America post 9/11.

But, anyway, leave that to one side.

If people want to make that the only thing they think about

when they think about me, that's up to them.

I don't... You have to understand, it's not going to determine

my view of what I've done or what I'm doing now.

I will have that debate with people.

I'm very happy to have it with people.

But, you know, there's no point in keeping asking me the same thing

around, you know, well, someone paints a portrait of you, you know -

"What do you feel when you look at it?"

And I actually felt it was a really good portrait

is the most important thing I thought.

This series is going to reflect the successes of your project.

But it has to touch on these other things.

Yeah, no, I understand that, Michael. I'm not... I'm not...

The reason I push back hard is because...

...you know, I feel it's got to be pushed back hard against

because, of course, it's what a lot of people say.

And, you know, this is a programme about me

and so I'm entitled to my view and I want to express my view.

You know, you asked me a lot about Iraq and everything,

but I always say to people,

"Look, we did an immense amount of good things

"and this country, on the day I left in June 2007,

"was a strong, capable country." And, in my view,

and I'm entitled to it as people are entitled to their view,

if we'd stuck with that strong centre-ground government...

...and we hadn't got into the mess we have got into as a country,

we would be in a much more powerful position today.

Ten years after losing power,

and Blair's aims for the Labour Party, Britain

and the world seem to be collapsing.

War criminal! War criminal! War criminal!

Jeremy Corbyn, who campaigned against the Iraq War,

is Labour leader.

Don't let those people who wish us ill divide us.

Stay together, strong and united,

for the kind of world we want to live in.

Thank you very much.

Nigel Farage, the once minor MEP, helps take Britain out of Europe.

Let June the 23rd go down in our history

as our Independence Day.

I mean, if you'd told me

that Nigel Farage was going to be a key player in British politics

and Jeremy Corbyn was going to lead the Labour Party,

I would have said, "That's never going to happen."

But I was wrong. Both did happen.

SIREN BLARES

And the new world order is crumbling.

Putin will later cite the Iraq War as one of the justifications

for his invasion of Ukraine.

Tell me about your perspective on Putin's character.

The question you always ask yourself is, "Was he always as he became

"and I just didn't see it, or did he change?"

And my view is that he did change. But, you know, who knows?

A huge part of what you fought for

has, frankly, crumbled since you left power.

Has that been difficult to watch?

Look, people in these last years

have moved against some of the things I stood for.

You know, belief that globalisation was basically a positive process

that we needed to manage,

Britain being in Europe, liberal interventionism.

Yeah, "We should all just disengage."

Yeah. People have moved against it.

But, you know, I remain committed to those things.

And I think, again, you've got to think,

you know, history's not static, it changes.

And people will, I think, come in time to realise,

you know, there are merits in the position that I took.

His sense of himself is that he is a man of the future.

Yes.

He believes that progress is real

and that history is moving in a direction from bad to good,

from dark to light.

Do you mind just giving me some level, please?

Right. My name's Tony Blair. I'll speak round about this level.

Thank you.

I think there is a sense of him being this kind of tragic character.

But in the kind of original kind of Greek tragic sense

of battling against a fate,

trying to shape the world into the kind of world that he wants,

into a liberal, international, democratic world order.

And this was what Blairite Britain represented.

Britain was going to be the beacon of this world,

and it just kind of collapses into something

that is completely different to that world that he imagined.

But yet he still holds on to the idea that he can see that future.

But just at that low point,

things start to turn around for Blair.

He sets up a new organisation,

the Tony Blair Institute for Global Change.

We speak every morning, sometime between 5.30 and 6.30.

We're trying to grow something that's going to outlive him.

Blair personally advises world leaders

and his institute pumps out policy papers,

coming to prominence during the pandemic.

When Covid first hit, Tony and I decided

we were going to pivot the entire organisation to work on Covid

because we knew every single leader we worked with across the world

was going to be grappling with this issue.

Good morning. How are you doing? How are you doing?

Blair becomes an early proponent of mass testing.

And his strategy for vaccinations is adopted by governments

across the world.

It was the Tony Blair Institute

which seemed to be ahead of the government.

You suddenly started to see

prime ministers going to see Tony Blair

or asking Tony Blair to come in to Number 10.

Liz Truss saw him, Boris Johnson saw him,

Keir Starmer certainly saw him before he became prime minister.

This is the kind of influence that he has managed to build for himself.

Blair's Institute employs over 900 people

working in more than 40 countries.

Do you have as much power and influence now

as you did in Number 10?

So, I don't know as much power as I did when I was prime minister,

but influence, yeah, to a degree.

Many of Blair's old allies found their way back to power.

His chief of staff, Jonathan Powell,

is Britain's national security adviser.

And, until recently, Peter Mandelson was Britain's ambassador

to the United States.

And thank you very much indeed, also,

for that very typical 11th-hour intervention by you

with your phone call to the president.

Do you think there's a small part of him that would rather like your job?

I'm not sure that Tony Blair is quite ready

to become a mere ambassador,

but he'd certainly want to exercise influence over the person

who was actually doing it.

And Blair is still in the frame...

...when it comes to trying to bring peace to the Middle East.

Even 18 years after leaving power,

Tony Blair still provokes a kaleidoscopic range of opinions.

As we sit here, with all that's going on,

I look back...

I think he was an integral part of a golden age in Britain,

which I think a lot of people would wish we were now back on,

because we sure ain't in a golden age today.

There are still many people who hate him.

Often the people who used to love him most.

He was a formidable figure

brought down by some of the very qualities

that had taken him to the top.

The tragedy for Tony Blair, if there is to be one,

may well be that his achievements are blotted out

by the mistake that's unacknowledged.

That is a tragedy.

I know there are some people who absolutely despise the guy.

There are some people who'll celebrate the day he dies.

But I think Northern Ireland alone puts him in the top rank

of British prime ministers. He's a big historic figure.

His strength is all the communication and charm,

and he's brilliant, brilliant, brilliant at that.

And he wants to be the big thinker, which he isn't.

But that's what he's trying to play out.

There will be those who will never forgive him for Iraq.

But, you ask me, I think he did a good job.

What would you say are his flaws?

He is an amazing politician.

As a husband and as a human being, that's a different matter.

But that's really between me and him.

He doesn't stop. I think he's busier than he was then.

Why do you think that is?

Because he's just not finished.

He wants to do the work that he set out to do,

and so he won't stop.

And also... it's very important to understand about me -

I'm not into psychoanalysis, right? I think there's far too much of it.

I think people spend far too long constantly analysing themselves.

I know why I do what I do - cos I believe in it.

If people want to accept that, they can accept it.

If they don't accept it...

...I'll just get on with doing it.

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