Halfway through this brilliant and unusual book there is a line you won’t hear from any current prime minister or president. “It’s a great time to govern,” writes the man who left Downing Street 17 years ago. You won’t find here a hint of pessimism about how intractable the world’s problems are, or complaints about how difficult politics has become. That smile that first enamoured and then infuriated Britain shines through the 40 chapters of Tony Blair’s novel. On leadership.
His message is that things can only improve if government leaders focus on delivering results, embrace technology and seek respect rather than love. That word “leader” with a capital L appears on almost every page. Blair does not believe in first among equals or soft touch. For him, that is a fantasy of academics who study politics, not of those who practice it. He defines leadership as “moving forward and not just being; action and not mere analysis; solving the problem and not just articulating it.”
So this book is very much aimed at those who are out in the field and get their hands dirty. It’s not an autobiography, it’s… I already wrote one —although it is riddled with anecdotes. Nor, despite its lofty title, is it an abstract work of political philosophy. It contains some intelligent commentary on current events, such as the war in Ukraine, tensions with China, and the artificial intelligence “revolution,” but it is not a manifesto.
Instead, it is an instruction manual for leaders, a political version of the “secrets of success” book you see on the business bookshelves at airports. There are chapters on how to conduct a foreign negotiation, how to manage a bureaucracy, how to deal with the media, how to deal with enemies and sycophantic acolytes, how to switch off by finding “that little touch of Zen”… and how to manage the inevitable downfall.
Leftists who would rather lose than betray unworkable ideals will be as disappointed by Labour’s election victory as ever. Blair denounces the tendency of progressive politicians to turn a deaf ear, embarrassed by the views of the working classes they claim to represent. Blair says natural gas is “essential” to the green energy transition. He warns politicians dealing with the burning issue of Gaza that the public is wary of the presence of Islamist groups among protesters calling for a ceasefire.
Their message on public services is to look at users (parents and patients), not producers (doctors and teachers); combine reform with investment; and let the private sector in as a partner. This makes uncomfortable reading for a Keir Starmer government that simply handed out huge pay-offs to striking doctors and train drivers without asking for anything in return.
Of course, right-wing populists get short shrift. The whole book is a riposte to Boris Johnson’s premiership. Blair despises politicians who merely repeat what the public wants to hear and confuse the superficial “trust” given to “plain speakers” with glib answers with the deeper trust that comes when people respect that you will do things they don’t like and that are unpopular, but that you know need to be done. Like, he says, balancing the public finances.
Blair is generous in his self-criticism. An ethical foreign policy was the “foolish” promise of a naive opposition. In Iraq and Afghanistan he was “arrogant” about the ease of establishing a democracy. At home he failed to take good care of his most loyal supporters, the Blairites.
“I have been surprised, shocked and, at times, horrified, by how much I have learned since leaving office,” he writes. “I have continued to mature,” adds the most active former British prime minister of all time. That “if I had known then what I know now” tone permeates the book – indeed it may be its raison d’être: listen to what I have learned, not what I did, he says. But I wonder if Blair is right when he says he was a better prime minister in his second five years in office than in his first five.
One of the key lessons he gives to leaders is to focus on their domestic priorities, minimise foreign travel and avoid distractions. But after 2002, Iraq exhausted its government’s political capital. He dismisses the changes governments can make simply by passing a law and values the much more difficult and complex structural changes (such as pushing for patient rather than provider choice in the NHS) that led to lasting improvements in public services.
But will history remember the founding hospitals and academy schools in east London of Blair’s final years? Or will his signature national achievements be the landmark legislation that made the Bank of England independent, created a Scottish parliament and imposed a minimum wage? It celebrates only the last of these.
Throughout the book, it is assumed that the longer a leader is in office, the more experience he or she gains and therefore the more capable he or she is. But I have also seen baggage accumulate. Policy mistakes grow like barnacles and cannot be easily removed. Governments groan under the weight of all the things they have said in the past that no one wants to deny. Prime ministers are surrounded by a team of advisers who have only known them as prime ministers. Soft corruption sets in, with respect for rules dissipating and all senior officials appointed to their posts by the current administration.
Democracies need change. New blood and the “anything is possible” enthusiasm that accompanies inexperience have a place, too. There’s a reason Americans decided presidents should serve no more than two terms, and a reason only two British prime ministers since World War II have served 10 years in office — and then been ousted soon after.
One of them, of course, was Blair. When I became an opposition MP in 2001, he was at the peak of his career. When I called him “the Maestro” among our gang of modernising Tories, I only did so partly in jest, and I only got a chance to experience something of the life he writes about when he had already left the stage.
What this book captures about Blair, however, is not just his mastery of the political arts, but his infectious optimism about politics itself. Unlike so many others, he seeks the better half of our human nature. We could use what he calls that “uplifting spirit” essential to great leadership here and around the world today.
The book is informative, intelligent and interesting, but it is more than that. It is the most practical and useful guide to politics I have ever read. Its publishers will want to sell lots of copies, but I think Blair himself wrote this book with a much smaller audience in mind. I felt it had been written specifically for me, or at least for a younger me, ten years ago.
This is a lifetime of learnings from a former leader for current and future leaders. Even if only a handful of them read it and do their jobs better, then the author will feel that his tireless energy will have been well spent.
On leadership: lessons for the 21st century By Tony Blair Hutchinson Heinemann £25, 368 pages
George Osborne is chairman of the British Museum and a former Conservative Chancellor of the Exchequer.
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