Transcription
It's possible we're about to have the seventh prime minister in 10 years. A serious country can't do that to itself. Um, and what is bizarre about the present situation is that we're all talking about politics when the key thing is to talk about policy. If you don't decide what your policy direction is, there's no point in changing the leader. And so the whole essence of the essay is to say it should be policy first, politics second.
So the Labour Party, I think, is asking itself the wrong question. Yes, because you, you look, what I say is there are two major changes going on in the world today. One's geopolitical. Leave that to one side. The other is this technology revolution, which I say is the 21st century equivalent of the industrial revolution. It's going to change absolutely everything. You've got to refashion policy and the way government works around it, and it's not even part of the debate. So you can have a different personality occupying Number 10, but unless you have a policy agenda which makes sense of the way the world's changing, then you're not going to be any further forward as a country. And you'll find the country keeps shuffling the deck with prime ministers. Okay, let's try this one. That didn't work. Let's try that one. And we'll carry on doing that unless we have a serious debate about how the country is changing.
Hold on a second. People might say, look, Labour was elected on a promise of change. It got a vast majority on the basis of that promise. And here you are arguing that when Labour ministers came to office, they should have ripped up their promise to protect workers with more rights, to increase the minimum wage, to turn our energy supply green and clean. Blair comes along and says, "No, no, forget all that. Now you're in office. That's a daft idea."
Yeah. No, it's a really good point. But here's the problem. If this AI revolution is what I say it is, and if we need higher levels of growth as a country, which we obviously do, then even if you put these things in a manifesto, and let's be clear, I, I, I don't think Labour won the last election because people read the manifesto and said, "This is what we want." I think people thought that Conservatives have behaved completely unacceptably. And to Keir's great credit, the Labour Party was an acceptable alternative. Now, when it came in, it saw the state of the inheritance. I think at that point, of course, it would be difficult. Everything in politics is difficult. But if I'd been them, I'd say, "Look, all of these commitments, they may be very worthwhile. They may be proper commitments in easy times, but in these hard times, we've got to prioritize growth. We've got to prioritize support for the business sector." And this artificial intelligence revolution, we've got to grasp it, both its opportunities and its risks with both hands. And so I think, yes, it would have been tough, but I think you could have explained to the country why it was necessary.
And there are more tough things that you propose in this essay. You talk about fundamental reform of welfare, saying what to voters, saying that, for example, we're about to end up in a situation where, before, just before the pandemic, it was only five or six years ago, we had 2.8 million people, working-age people, on disability incapacity benefits. We're going to have, by the end of this decade, almost five million people, right? You, you can't carry on, you, you can't carry on in a situation where you're going to end up, if you're not careful, spending more on incapacity and disability benefits than you are on defense. And then I, I know again, all of these changes are really difficult, which is why I think whoever takes them on is going to have a really tough time. But it's like the triple lock on, on pensions. You look at the figures and you look at where Britain's going to be in, in 2030 years' time, if it continues with this policy, it's not affordable. And at some point, you've got to be able to stand up and have an honest debate with the public, which is to say, look, ultimately, we're probably taxing people too much, spending too much, borrowing too much at the moment. If we carry on like this, with these large increases in, in, in capacity benefit, with the triple lock on pensions, we're going to create a situation where economically we're not, we're not able to grow because we put such a weight, affecting growth, on the back of our economy. And there's yet more of these difficult choices. You talk on health of a fundamental realignment, getting rid of old chiboliths. Now, most people reading that will say, if not privatization of the health service, much greater involvement of the private sector. Is that right?
Yeah, it is right because let me tell you why. The whole of healthcare is under, this is part of this artificial intelligence revolution. It's going to revolutionize drug discovery. It allows you, if you use data properly inside the health service, to engage in a completely different way of organizing your healthcare system. People are already, if they can afford to, for example, these weight loss drugs, right? We've got a program that makes them available to quite a small number of people on the NHS. Outside of the NHS, people who can afford to are already buying them. So, it, it's not that you're, it's not this whole debate about, are you privatizing, in inverted commas, the NHS? When I was in office, we improved the NHS and we doubled the spending on it. But it's a different world today, and you've got both the opportunity and the responsibility to do healthcare completely differently.
Well, we've got the agenda. Now, let's turn a little bit to the leadership. And people might think listening to this, well, we know who advocates all this. It's Keir Starmer. It's the leader of the Conservative Party. She says, "Let's get rid of net zero targets." She says, "Let's get rid of business taxes that are doing damage." She says pretty much everything you've just said. And indeed, Rishi Sunak was in that chair just minutes ago saying, "Yeah, wholeheartedly endorse the lot."
Yeah, he does wholeheartedly endorse a lot, by the way, including the artificial intelligence revolution, including things like digital ID and so on, which we can come to if you want. But you see, I'm not asking the question about, is it Tory, is it Reform, is it Greens, is it Labour? I'm just saying, okay, take a step back, analyze the world, where do we go? And I, I don't really, I think part of the problem with, with the way we have this debate is that it always does start and usually end with politics.
You started a sentence there and you stopped. I don't really, I thought you were going to say, I don't really care.
Well, I was going to say, I was going to say, I don't really care whether it's left or right in a traditional sense.
You don't really care whether it's Labour anymore, do you? In that sense, as long as the policies...
I don't, I don't think Labour's got something. It's, I'm not tribal in the sense that I think one political party is going to have the exclusive capability of deciding the right answer. And I guess, you know, the interesting thing when you go out of politics, and this is where I think the most interesting politics today comes from people outside of politics, because when you step out of politics and you start seeing how the world is changing, it, it's not really about traditional left and right politics. In fact, I think that gets in the way a lot of the time of just asking the question, okay, look at the world. What's, what do we, how do we make sense of it? How do we keep Britain strong, its economy strong? How do we build its military and so on?
Now, central to that, I do want to come to the leadership arguments because you do address the individuals who are involved. I'll come to that in a second. But central to your argument, it seems that underpinning it all is that technological revolution. And you say in your essay, let's end the hostility to technology. Let's embrace it and the change it can bring about. This program every day though is filled by people scared of technology. They want government to protect their children. They want government to protect artists' copyright. Even the Pope has talked about AI being disarmed. It's not realistic, is it, for you to come along and say, "Look guys, it's the way of the world." You say it is what's happening.
No, but I'm not saying that. What I'm saying is it is the biggest single change you're going to have, right? It is the 21st century equivalent of the industrial revolution. Now, was the industrial revolution all good? No. You look at the conditions of the workers in the industrial revolution. You look at the displacement of people from the countryside. There were huge problems with the industrial revolution. There are going to be massive dangers with this revolution. So, I'm not saying, despite what people think, I'm not saying you embrace the opportunities, there aren't any risks. It's general purpose technology there. There are huge opportunities. There are huge risks. I mean, this latest invention from the Anthropic company, Claude 3, right? That is, I mean, most people probably don't even know what that is. That is itself revolutionary. You're going to be able to have people sitting in their front room potentially hacking into the infrastructure of the country. So I am not, and social media and its impact on young people. Yes, of course. But look at the opportunities as well to do government and public services completely differently.
One of the most interesting things I think in this essay is your description of leadership. And you say you've studied Donald Trump. You make clear that you're not advocating the way he does things, but you describe as a man who when he sees a wall, drives through it, speed, people get injured, bits of the car fall off, but they're injured. You say he's got attitude, a tribe, a project. Is that the sort of leadership you think we need now?
Well, I think what I say is the challenge of democracy is efficacy. It's getting big things done. And therefore, you, you do need to understand, if you're ever going to defeat this populism, you need to understand its essential appeal. And I think its essential appeal is, we're going to make the thing happen, right? Everyone else is arguing about, well, it's very difficult. I'm not sure we can do this or that. The, the, the populist appeal is, I'm going to make it happen. And therefore, what I'm saying, discussing the radical center, which is where I think the best politics comes from, is that's got to be radical. It's the center is not going to be the place of managing the status quo. It's got to be the place of making big change, but it's based on policy first, politics second.
And many people hearing you say that say, well, we know what radical is. Going back into the EU, where Starmer has just said it as one of the leading leadership candidates. And yet in this essay, you go, forget it, it's not going to happen.
I don't say it's not going to happen. What I say is, you don't start there. And look, no one was more passionate against Brexit than me. And I think the results were both predictable and predicted. But if Britain's going to go back into a structured relationship with Europe, it's got to do so from strength. We're not strong at the moment. And it's going to be a negotiation. And in particular, if I'm right about the technology revolution, we've got to make sure Europe is not moving in a, in a, in a direction, and presently, by the way, it is, which is hostile to that technology revolution. Now, I think Europe may well change its position around that, but it's got to be a negotiation. It's not a, just as it wasn't the answer to Britain's problems in 2016, reversing it isn't the answer to Britain's problems in 2026. I remain of the view that, of course, we should have a structured relationship with our own continent, but you can't just click your fingers and have it.
So, you have the joy, as you say, of now being, in inverted commas, outside politics. But Labour MPs don't. They have to make a choice. Keep the leader, get rid of the leader, choose Andy Burnham, choose Wes Streeting, or someone else. What's your advice?
My advice is choose your direction first and make sure that before you have any leadership change, you make the, all the candidates set out in detail their policy, what the government's got right, what it's got wrong, what we should do differently.
And we've seen some of that, and you're pretty scathing about it, aren't you? You say that Burnham and Streeting are both getting it wrong in the promises they've made so far.
Well, I just look, I just think when you look at the analysis, for example, of, and by the way, I hope Andy wins Makerfield. I think he's a great guy. I want to see him in parliament. But, you know, when he does this thing about 40 years of, you know, wasted, uh, I don't know what it is. We've been going the wrong direction.
40 years of neoliberalism, he says.
Okay. So, I mean, we're 2026. Let's go back to 1986. Well, we assume he doesn't mean the first seven years of Margaret Thatcher, right? So, back to the 70s. I mean, okay. And what? Nothing good happened in that period of Thatcher with the business community or New Labour. I, I don't think he really means that. But what I'm saying, if you're going to change leader, you've really got to force people to say where they stand because otherwise you'll be in what I think was always a problem for Keir. I'll be very honest about this, and I, I, I like him and I wish him well. But when we switched from that Corbyn agenda, there wasn't enough explanation, not as to why Corbyn was an election loser, that was pretty obvious, but why the whole agenda was wrong. You have to explain to people why it's wrong if you want to lead the party in the future in a coherent way.
You see, I think some people listening to this, particularly in the Labour Party, will say, "Yes, we do want leadership that has a mission and an agenda. It is protecting working people." And what Burnham calls neoliberalism has protected the rich. And they look at you and they say, "Look, Tony Blair, he flies around the world. He's with the tech bros. He's staying in smart hotels and on private jets. He understands the have yachts and not the have-nots."
Yeah. I mean, you can, and that's, that's the easiest thing for people to say so that they don't have to deal with the argument. But by the way, when I was in office, we had a strong economy. We had improving public services. You know, we had improving results in education. We reduced poverty, both for pensioners and for children. You know, we were a progressive government. We weren't a neoliberal government. We doubled the spending on the health service, for heaven's sake, and introduced the minimum wage. So people know that you spent some time during the Corbyn years thinking whether it's time to launch a brand new political party, a kind of movement like Emmanuel Macron's. This essay reads to me like a man who wishes he'd done it.
No, I don't wish I'd done it, but I think a lot of the issues that were raised at the time are still there and with us. And look, my whole belief about the Labour Party, it's had 120 years of, of history. It's been in power really for about a quarter of that time. And the reason for that is what I've always called the birth defect of the Labour Party, when you separated the Liberal Progressive side from the Labour side. And New Labour was an attempt to fuse those two things back together, and that's why we won successive elections. The trouble is, since then, we've moved away from that. And you do have, I think, this unrepresented center in British politics. And I think it's basically a supply problem and not a demand problem.
There are a couple of other things they say about you, and you know, they'll be saying today now that you have re-entered the political fray. Not just is he a friend of the rich, but his institute, which has what, a thousand staff around the world now, the Tony Blair Institute, gets an awful lot of money from a tech bro, from Larry Ellison. This is a man who is working on behalf of someone who has an interest.
Yeah. But the, the, the reason we, we are very happy to, to, to, to work with people like Larry is because we share the same view about the importance of this technology revolution. Doesn't mean to say we share the same politics on everything. And the institute, we work in almost 50 countries around the world today. And therefore, we see what's happening in these countries and the importance of technology to their development. So, of course, you know, it's like when I argue against the net zero people say, oh, well, but they do work in the, in the Middle East, so it's all because of the, you know, the, the oil producing countries. It, it's honestly to do with looking at the world and asking what the right answer is.
And the other thing I noticed, the Guardian had picked up is that they say that you want the Labour Party of the country to get closer to Donald Trump, more like him. Now, you praised his Gaza plan as bold and intelligent. I think people listening who are generous to Donald Trump would say, "The problem with that, it's all talk, isn't it? What happened to the board of peace that we thought at one stage you might chair in Gaza? Terrible." And, and, I mean, the Guardian, I mean, you, you, you got to love them. I, I always used to say when I was Prime Minister that the most, the greatest source of election-losing advice was always from the Guardian. I'm not saying the Labour Party should love Donald Trump, get close to Donald Trump. I'm simply saying the American relationship matters to Britain. And on Gaza...
And on Gaza, look, we put together a plan that ended the war. Now, at the moment, you've still got some fighting going on. You've still got a dire situation for the people. Uh, actually, this next week, we will have further negotiations with Hamas because, you know, we need to move this new government into Gaza. So, and we need Hamas to agree that this, this government should be in control of Gaza. So, it's a very tricky, difficult situation. But we, we have, if, if the plan is allowed to work, it will give people a fresh start with a new Palestinian government and a large amount of funding behind it.
Let's be clear, you're not on the board of peace, let alone chair again. But you've just said we...
No, the, you're involved.
No, there's a lot of misunderstanding by this. The board of peace itself is sitting leaders. Right. Underneath that is an executive board, and I'm on that.
And, and therefore, it is, we, when it comes to Gaza. Now, you're in another "we," which is the trade union of former prime ministers. We've had two of them on the program today. Want to end by asking if you could advise whoever is the next prime minister after it's over. They're in office. There's an envelope in front of them, and you've got a line or two of advice you can give to the next prime minister of this country, what would it be?
Well, first of all, I'd start with an expression of sympathy and solidarity. But the advice I would, I would give is get the best people in from wherever they are who understand the world, who understand how it's changing, and who can give you a proper worked-out, coherent strategy for putting the country back on its feet.