Harvard Book Store; WGBH Forum Network; Tony Blair: My Political Life

So tonight, I am humbled to welcome you to a most unique conversation. Former Prime Minister Tony Blair will discuss his political career and his new memoir, A Journey with renowned journalist Tina Brown. Tina Brown is the author of The New York Times bestseller of the Diana Chronicles and has written for numerous publications including The London Sunday Times, Times of London, Spectator, and The Washington Post. Ms. Brown is widely regarded for her revival of magazine publications. She has worked as editor-in-chief of The Tatler, The New Yorker, and Vanity Fair, where during her tenure, they won four national magazine awards. Ms. Brown is now, as this audience no doubt knows, operating as the wonderfully successful founder and editor-in-chief of The Daily Beast, and I'm thrilled that she's here to engage our guests tonight. Let's get this conversation started. I'm going to turn the introductions over now to Tina Brown. Please join me in welcoming Tina Brown. Thank you, Heather. Good evening, everybody, and welcome to this very special event.

And thanks to the Harvard bookstore and the first parish church. It's an upsetting really for this conversation because the man with whom we'll spend the next hour has written in his new memoir that he's always been more interested in religion than politics. And it's rather hard to imagine where Tony Blair might be now had he gone off to work with God. I wonder if the Pope knows that the man he's just welcomed into the Catholic Church is an obsessive modernizer. Some would say I suppose that his political career was itself something of a miracle. He raised to the Labour Party from the dead and was elected three times. His government affected constitutional reforms, modernised and expanded social services, led on gay rights and the environment. And of course, he won peace in Northern Ireland that many thought impossible. Now he's founded the Tony Blair Faith Foundation and he speaks for the quartet in trying to find peace in another impossible situation, the Middle East. Here in America, he's best known of course for his partnership with two very different

presidents. With Bill Clinton, he found a political soulmate in the creation of the International Centre Left Alliance called the Third Way. In Britain, between Labour's class-based stateism and thatchers, full throttle capitalism. The new Labour Party that he welded together by his intelligence, eloquence and political skill, sought like Clinton to apply progressive policies to governance in the new era of globalisation and interdependence. Together they fought the cause of a war along with our NATO allies against ethnic cleansing without a single casualty. Then there was that other special relationship with George W. Bush, where we're visiting that subject and its consequences more than once tonight, but meanwhile when she please give me a very warm welcome to former Prime Minister Tony Blair. So I remember that beautiful May date in 1997 when you came in as that young, modernising new Prime Minister sweeping out those Stodgy Old Tories, a triumphant reformer of your own

marginalized party, and 12 years later, here we are, it was controversial, there was a lot of tremendous highs, lows, bitterness, noise, you left, really in a spirit somewhat of living in all to Gordon Brown because in a sense your popularity at that point had been eroded by the Iraq War. But through it all you were always somebody who could win elections, you could sell books of the new book as a bestseller, selling beyond belief in England, and have gone on to do some extraordinary things now. It was something of a journey I suppose to actually write this book at all and before we get into the rest of it I really wanted to ask you, what did you learn about yourself as you wrote it? Well first of all can I say it's a real pleasure to be in Cambridge, Massachusetts in the first parish church and to thank the Harvard bookstore as well for giving us the privilege of being

here this evening and thank you very much Tina. We were at university together in Stanley, many, many years ago. She was way above my pay grade though, I never really got to know her then, I got to know her later and I would never have guessed if you told me when I was a student in a rock band at Oxford that I was going to be interviewed by you 30 odd years later I've been very surprised. I mean look, what I tried to do with the book is to write it in a different way, you know so it's a very personal account, it's a human account of what it's like to be a decision maker, an ordinary human being in living in extraordinary times and what did I learn about myself during the course of this? I think what was interesting is I was able to reflect back on my time as Prime Minister and try to draw out some of the lessons not just for my time as Prime Minister but lessons that are relevant to politics today so on the security issue obviously, on the economic

issue but also on the future of progressive politics because at the moment certainly in Europe, you know progressive politics is in a pretty difficult state and the left's been put out of power in most places in Europe right now and so I wanted to write the book in a sense yes as a retrospective of my time and office and the decisions I took but also trying to frame some of the questions for the future too. When you look at the new young Prime Minister of Britain, David Cameron and his young partner in the coalition Nick Clegg, do you feel a commonality with them, they've just come in on their journey and they face of course enormous problems different from yours but nonetheless pretty daunting? Well he's a Tory so no I don't but except that I do in one sense of course I mean the toughest thing in politics today is it was an American politician actually a Mario Cuomo who said that we campaign in poetry but we govern in prose and the problem is that you come in often this may have echoes here in America you come in on a huge tidal wave of

expectation right because the other lot of people have been there for a long time they've become unpopular you know your campaigning to get the job you get the job and then what you find is that actually the realities that you face and the decisions that you have to take are difficult you know are hard and that very quickly takes the age of all that you know great expectation of you I remember straight after President Obama's victory meeting somebody in New York back in in December 2008 before he'd actually taken over and she said to me isn't it wonderful now everything is possible and I said to her like what and she said well everything you know and you have that feeling in sense when you're the new government coming in but very quickly you have to settle down to the long hard slog difficult business of governing obviously the Tea Party movement in the primaries yesterday

have a lot to crow about now there was a lot of they've had you know some some some big big traction recently here what do you think about the Tea Party movement in America does it how do you explain it come looking it as you are as a tremendous professional you know political understand of how politics works what do you see in the Tea Party movement I mean I think it's it's interesting if you compare this with what's happening in Europe right now as well and basically my my thought of of of today's world and today's politics is that we live in a nearer of low predictability right you know you look at the economy or security or any of these issues it's really tough to work out where things are going to go and what the right answers are and in this climate therefore people get quite insecure right and then someone comes along and says I've got the answer and if they appear to be definitive enough and clear enough they can pull

people towards them so you could get an election in Europe in fact some elections are being one in Europe on a sort of anti-immigrant you know pretty hard line right wing message the Tea Party here obviously is in a different context but it's it's very much a sense that we are going to take on the people in power we're going to change everything you know everything is possible provided we kick these people out we put these people in it's a very powerful and beguiling political message right now and what it means is that those of us who are maybe more from the the center ground of politics we've got to get on our metal a bit I think and get out there and argue with sufficient clarity and strength ourselves about why some of these answers may sound very you know attractive but actually don't really result in much of an answer and why in fact you know a sensible modernizing and more moderate position is actually where people should be

because I think the other interesting thing and I think you can see this here but you can see this again in Europe is that you've got a sort of paradox happening I think the center ground in terms of public support has never been stronger but I noticed a sort of quite partisan divide in terms of the way political parties are tending to approach things now why is it so hard to find passionate centrist who can communicate with the same kind of vivid color and connective tissue that the people in the marginal extremes of politics are able to do because you know you think he was a farmer who was such a great communicator if anybody could do it he could and yet oddly enough the language of centrism that you know you might say is embodied by him just doesn't connect in the same fervid way first of all a sort of claim of opposition it is so much in a sense more powerful than a claim of responsible government you know so if you're out there saying

these people are rotten and terrible and they've let our whole country down it's a very strong and powerful message if you're there sitting there in a reasonable position in government saying well actually the following five policies are immensely relevant to how we determine our future you know people are yeah and then you've got you know frankly you've got a media environment today in which you know you just imagine it in the newsroom someone comes up and says Obama I think has got this on balance wrong because I think when we really analyze it it's not quite the right answer no it's going to I mean that's not a piece of reporting someone comes up and says Obama is taking this country to hell in a hand basket they're they're going to be on the news yeah but it's nonetheless it is the job as you found in politics to to to see those moments and figure out a way to connect with the public and actually one of the most interesting things that I found in your book is a lot of the stuff I think that's the best in the book actually

is your ability to sort of explain the emotional quotient factor in politics and how important it is to understand these moments and be able to get a message across and you you write that the moments when people switch on a defining moments the trick is to spot them missing them is very bad news the professional politician every waking moment is defining what were you for you those kind of defining moments where you saw that and you came out and one of them I can remember of course was that was the moment when Princess Diana died I mean oddly enough that became a very defining moment when you did see an importance in connecting immediately and making that that statement of the said field when you've just come into office she died and no one was really speaking in the royal family at all and you came out and you made those statements about it being the people's princess do you did you see that as that kind of moment I mean I kind of what one of the things I did in the book incident is is write about certain things like the events with Princess Diana and then you know chapters on Northern Ireland you know Iraq and 9-11 and so on

and I've tried to do it in a way where where people can take those chapters as a as a whole and some of those are defining moments with Princess Diana that was there was very much about how my country at this particular moment came through this with respect for the monarchy intact at the same time as as people felt very angry that someone they loved and was an iconic figure have been taken from them but I think for me the the beginning of the defining moment was about the Labour Party itself because we've been in power very little of our over 100 years of history you know we'd never won two successive full terms before I became the Labour Party leader in all of our history we then won three and we were in power this last time for more than double the length of the previous Labour government and I remember it's very hard because making change in a political party is also very very difficult and for me this was a defining moment and when I was trying to change the Labour Party we used to have a bit like this a meeting here and people outside giving voice

and you know one of the I used to be saying that we've got to reconnect with the electorate you know because we've been out of power for 18 years and there were people used to hold banners outside as I went into the meeting saying no compromise with the electorate it's just one of the all-time great political slogans for a democratic party and you know I think so that was obviously defining I mean of course the issues to do with security but I think just to go back to this point I think what the people who are certainly from the progressive wing of politics what what we've got to do is have clarity because through clarity becomes strength and through strength comes the ability to persuade and that's where I think we've got to be and you know that it's very very hard to do this because when you're subject to pressure from the extremes you can feel very squeezed and very you know uncomfortable actually in it but I think you know recognizing that you need to

be clear right this is the way we're going to go and then I think this is the test of leadership in the end being prepared to say this is where I'm prepared to go and if you agree with that that's fine if you don't agree with that that that's fine but this is where as far as long as I'm leader we're going and I think you know in this climate of insecurity and uncertainty I think that's a very important part of what we we've got to be about and I and I found all the way through my leadership defining moments like that one of them I remember very clearly as well was about part of the difficulty and this is something I tried to explain in the book here's an astonishing revelation I mean political leaders in the end are human beings you know they don't in fact come from Mars we just seem like that but we we're not and therefore one thing that you do when you come into government is you learn you know you learn on the job and the job is difficult

and the decisions are tough but you actually learn to be somebody who is capable of recognizing those decision points and when they come actually taking the decisions well let's obviously now move to your relationship with President Bush because they're in lies so many questions about leadership and decisions and that'll probably be pretty popular here first of all I mean you say in the book that it's it's wrong to think that President Bush is stupid which has been very much the rap that that he has had you say he's actually quite smart but you you don't really give us specific examples I mean so this is our child when did you say to yourself hmm when give us an example of him do it for us don't I tell you what I what I thought smart in the way of Bill Clinton know but and this was the single most difficult thing for me because I was

obviously from the progressive side of politics completely different politics but I think there were there was a clarity about his view after September 11th that I shared now many people didn't and many people don't today but I did and and the difficulty was I and I found myself obviously as as time went on it was extremely difficult for me to be supporter particularly as a labor party leader of a Republican president that was let's say not you know while they popular in Britain at the time and yet I you know this was the problem for me I actually thought and and think that on that central question namely that September 11th changed the whole prison of foreign policy was basically right so it was a you know it was it was difficult and I think in relation to this issue actually and and him as a person I mean first of all I think your political system given you what you have to do to win the nomination and then what you have to do to win

the presidency I mean I it's easy to caricature people are stupid but I personally think not many people survive that process unless they've got a certain basic level of of intellect and and indeed credibility but I also think that one of the hardest things about the political decision making now as we look at the world now is and I find myself and I say this in the book I actually don't think people are foolish if they disagree with me on Afghanistan Iraq 9-11 any of the rest of it I think there's a perfectly rational case against what we did it's just that in the end I came to the conclusion and went the way that I did so of course a lot of the book you very carefully in a very painstaking way sort of teased out your case if you like for why you did make this decision about Iraq and that you today still feel strongly that it's something that you would really

have done again or certainly that you don't regret having done and you often know apologies or or you defend your decisions but I actually did get the sense that you are still working it through that you aren't fully at peace if you like with the decision I mean almost as if you were protesting you know a little too much and teasing out just with a little too much emphatic quest for the detail it was a one place where I didn't feel that you have that internal real clarity about what happened well I think you'd be very wrong and indeed somewhat lacking in humanity if given everything that's happened you didn't constantly reflect and reconsider and I do and I think the hardest thing is I think you know to throw it forward we've got a very difficult decision on Iraq facing us right now and I think these risks are incredibly difficult to judge

but I came to the conclusion in the end there was kind of two different ways of dealing with this one way is to manage this the world as it is this this look you know I spend a lot of time out in the Middle East now I see this this strain of extremism everywhere but it's possible that the way to deal with it is to just manage it where there are countries that depart from proper norms of behavior you try and circle them with sanctions or whatever and you try basically to create a situation in which there is a benign evolution of this extremism right that's one strategy the other strategy is to say no this thing is never going to evolve in a benign way it has to be confronted now that's in the end the decision that I took and the reason why I took that was because of essentially because of what happened on 911 and the reason for that was

because you know that was the worst terrorist attack the world had ever had 3000 people killed in one day in New York my whole point there all the way through about that was and this is what changed my thinking in foreign policy terms if those people could have killed 30,000 or 300,000 they would have done it and they would still in my view and therefore when I look at for example today the issue of Iran a nuclear weapons capability my view is you cannot let them do that you know you cannot let them acquire a nuclear weapon now some people would say to me what what are you crazy you're actually now contemplating military action against Iran after everything we've been through to which my answer is I don't want to contemplate it I think we should try everything else but I don't think you can take that option off the table yet the one thing I think that we'd all agree that Iraq taught us was this terrifying law of unintended consequences that in the taking out if you like of you know one uh metal amaniac despot who was torturing his own people uh we let

loose a pandora's box of absolute you know unintended consequences and tribal you know rifts and and civil war and our cater pouring in where they hadn't been before and all of the uh Iran then getting into this terrible sort of toxic brew that then came forth in Iraq wouldn't really that exactly the same thing lightly unfold in Iran and we haven't yet uh completed if we ever will the the mission in Afghanistan so if you were to take your eye off the ball as we did with Iraq and go into Iran you'd be reproducing the same raft of problems all over again it's a completely reasonable point so what do you do because here's the thing that I think is toughest of all because sometimes people say to me look it's not a rocket's Afghanistan or it's not a rock or Afghanistan it's really Pakistan you want to worry about and then someone else says Iran and then someone else rightly would say today we'll look at Yemen you know look at Somalia um if you just take the

Minden ab dispute in the Philippines 150,000 people have died in that I mean it's barely in the news we most people wouldn't even know what that was about um you look at what his Balar is doing in Lebanon you look at how Hamas on the day literally the day we started the quest for a new piece between the Israelis and Palestinians they go and kill um a group of settlers but including a pregnant woman and the parents of six children and put out a statement afterwards saying the people who killed them are heroes you know financed an armed by Iran I'm afraid now do you let those people get a nuclear weapon it's that's the issue and it it's you know the thing is and this is what I think is so important about the political debate and and one of the things I try to get across to people you know we're not going to resolve this by um one group of people saying your war mongers the other group of people saying you're sort of appeasers you know this is not this is not it's not

like that it's a really really difficult decision now if I was a decision maker today um I wouldn't take the risk of Iran with a nuclear weapon but if you say to me well look at the consequences that could flow from from that position that I'm taking I agree they they could be you know huge and severe and difficult but I I wouldn't let them do that I wouldn't let them well I think that you know one of the sources I guess of of some quite a lot of the bitterness in a way in the in the UK for those who who who who don't seem to feel able ever get over Iraq is just a sense that the you you were sort of run over by the Bush Express train that that you know you pledged to stand shoulder to shoulder with Bush and yet when you argued for the second UN resolution authorizing military action Bush you know he he made the decision anyway to go ahead without it and and President Clinton told the author Andrew Rawnsley Tony was called naked in the middle of

the room wasn't that for you are humiliating when we didn't you feel let down by your partner in the center prize we couldn't get the second resolution because in the end there was a political decision by Russia and France not to back it so it was never going to happen that way I mean I would have given you a moral high ground from which you could at least have protected your own political you know I may have been able better to protect my own politics but let's be honest about this it wouldn't have made a difference and to what was going to go on after the removal of Saddam because that was the problem and that in itself holds a really important lesson in this the truth is we got rid of Saddam in two months right from the middle of June from the middle of 2003 from June 2003 we were there American forces British forces the forces of other countries full UN authority with a UN process UN people moved in set up the electoral process opened the office and Baghdad what happened was the terrorism came in from the outside Al Qaeda linking up with some insurgents it's true but basically Al Qaeda on the one side Iranian back militia on

the other and the problem that I have with the the idea that well if you knew that all those people were going to come in and do this should you then have just stayed out is I think we've got to be really careful as to what we're saying here you know because that an external force that started operating on Iraq is of course exactly the same type of phenomenon we see not just right around the Middle East but of course in Afghanistan where it's also very difficult today and where in a sense everybody you know from pretty much a point on the left spectrum right through to the right thought that it was the right thing to do and I feel this is just my view about this and I I base this as much as anything else on spending time out in that part of the world I think we are in a situation where there is this strain of extremism it's based on a perversion of the proper faith of Islam which is a peaceful and decent faith but it's there and it's narrative

which is that West the West is oppressing Islam reaches I think far deeper into the spectrum of opinion out there than we really think and so you know you feel that at the time though you didn't ask perhaps deep enough questions about that about the the contextual undertow of all these issues about Islam and the sex and the and the differences between them and what we could possibly be stirring up with this I think on the soon she had divide I think we did ask the questions but I think you're right to this extent and I actually say this in the book that I mean I know a lot more about this now than I did then and we know a lot more about it I'm not sure though that would have been right to have let those people though if you'd known about it say okay well as one Iraqi put it to me so we've got a choice between rule by Saddam and rule by terrorists I mean why can't we have your choice you know which I think is a you know reasonable position I think you know

to me that the key thing is if if Afghans and Iraqis and you know I can think of other cases as well if those people were saying to us look we don't want this democracy stuff there as a Western idea go and take that somewhere else but they're not and you know I think one of the most important things in the Middle East right now is that there are people and countries that are developing democratic institutions just beginning to do it you know we should be encouraging them we should partner alongside them so I don't think the answer to this is all military might and hard power there's a whole soft power agenda that we need alongside with it but where the terrorists are using these terrorist activities and tactics I do think it's important that we stand up and that we are prepared to confront them and defeat them like obviously in taking on this position this shoulder to shoulder with the Bush administration which was so violently unpopular in the UK you you you you lost that political capital that you had in the sense with your your own nation I

mean you went you had an argument with your own country in a sense and wise thing to do and unwise thing to do democratically and politicians you know and they and and it's still rankles as we know tremendously so and of course at the same time it probably didn't help you in your battles with the man who became who started as your partner in new labor and really became an internal rival who was the chancellor of the extractor your colleague Gordon Brown who always thought that he should have been the prime minister except that he wasn't you were and it's not an uncommon thing actually in politics you know and you write about the Titanic struggles between you and I think a lot of people think well you know here you were willing to take such strong sort of clear positions when it came to you know facing down Saddam Hussein taking the decision to persuade President Clinton and we must go into Kosovo and these kind of decisions and yet you didn't seem to like confronting or wanting to confront this kind of worm in the bud in your own in your own political

administration I mean you know you say it would have not been tenable you said you know politically to have got shot of Gordon Brown when he started to become a thwater instead of a helper but why not just face it out why not just have that bloody fight politically Gordon's here next week incident I gone and actually I hope some of you get a chance to to to hear him and to see him because the little little probably answer that question the fact is he is what we had a severe political disagreement and it was very very difficult but I will always say and do say in the book he's also someone of absolutely outstanding brilliance played an enormous part for example in the financial crisis internationally was a great part of the government and you know in politics people fall out from time to time the point is that in the end obviously he wanted to be

Prime Minister and I was Prime Minister but the reason wasn't a fear of confronting him it was a judgment that in the end his presence in the government was better than his absence well he's certainly not mistaking them now I was saying I mean obviously he had this obsession that he was put on earth to be the Prime Minister and that he was going to be the person who followed you my only question is just why did you not could you not disabuse him of the notion that well stuff happens Gordon you know I got it and you didn't and you know to eat a lot of quality yeah I mean people it's very hard to disabuse someone of the notion they shouldn't be Prime Minister let me tell you but I mean you know he in a sense at the end he was really undermining you leaking on you creating negative press around you having factions around you and in the sense he did wear you down and you left and left him as to be Prime Minister but it you know when I look back on the government and think we were in power as I say more than twice

as long as the last Labour government he was a big part of that so yes I mean I haven't hidden in the book and I describe in the book it's this was an interesting interesting partnership as well because of course we were you know very very close political friends and we and personal friends indeed all throughout the 1980s when the Labour Party was in the wilderness and we were thinking through all this so it goes back a long way this relationship and it's people always ask me to explain it and I never can it's it's complex and it's difficult but in the end I retained and still retain an immense affection for him and incidentally you know you're right the people can be very harsh about him now but I actually say in the book and I mean they underestimated his ability to be Prime Minister when he wasn't and they actually underestimate his time as Prime Minister now and I think the single biggest decision he had to make and it was the biggest decision

that any political leaders had to make in a long time I mean probably on a par with some of the decisions I had to make was in the financial crisis he stepped in he recapitalized the banks in an imaginative way in a way that was really important for the future so I don't you know funny enough people often felt harder against him on my behalf than I did myself but as you looked at what happened after you left and now of course he's gone and we have David Cameron and you talked a lot at the end it later part of the book about how you wanted him to continue your reform agenda yeah well the last thing that's you know that's going to happen is that because now we have a Tory government so in fact he let you down in that regard and he didn't manage to well that was the disagreement I mean look I have remained I believe aside all this kind of foreign policy issues for for a moment in terms of where progressive politics is I have a very very clear view for the Labour Party for the Democrats for progressive politics

in Europe and elsewhere we win when we're at the cutting edge of the future we win when we're prepared to make the changes in public services in welfare in our system of government that mean that we understand the world today is not the world as it was you know and if you give people a choice between a big state and a minimalist state that the right one they'll choose a minimalist state right unfortunately in my view if you give them a choice between a big state a minimalist state and what I would call a strategic state that is about empowering people rather than controlling their lives they will choose that way you know that's why Bill Clinton and I were third wave progressive politicians and in the end I wanted to push ahead on school reform healthcare reform pensions welfare and in very much a sort of new Labour new Democrat way and Gordon didn't agree with that and that was the disagreement really between us but you know there it is do you feel that the foreign policy dramas that consumed you know with Iraq and Afghanistan

so on actually did derail you though somewhat from that modernizing agenda because you talk in a lot and interestingly and actually amusing in your book about the Prime Minister's time management being everything and it's always struck me when I when I see something like happening like the you know the the consuming nature of something like the Iraq business or in the case of Obama when he chose to do healthcare how much really can can one leader do at a time I mean there's a you know there's a kind of PR of it is always what we can deal with a lot of things at any one time I mean it's never going to be absorbed into one issue but actually surely that's not true life is what it is and you are absorbed with one issue I mean did it did Iraq not only consume you for several years I should fill in up into my second term 2001-2005 was when we really started to get public service reform going I mean part of the trouble is in politics you would love things to happen in an orderly and sequential way you know we were spent six months on economic policy and then afterwards we'll have a foreign policy crisis and then we can deal with that

and then we'll go on to healthcare reform because that will then be the issue of the day it doesn't happen like that and you know I came into office I mean you know in these these these questions that they ask you know people running for office they say kind of name the foreign minister of Spain and you said oh god you know you know I wouldn't I didn't know much about foreign policy I mean in fact you know I remember about few months into my premiership you know I speak French but not as well as I thought I did and so I you know not understanding all the complexities of the foreign policy I decided to do a press conference with the then French prime minister Leon L. Jospin I decided to do it live in French and so French journalist gets up and he asks me in French whether there are any policy positions of the French prime minister I decide to emulate right I mean to say there are many policy positions of the French prime minister I decide to

emulate instead of which I get a phrase wrong in French and what I actually say is I decide the French prime minister in many different positions so you know I you know well just quite hard to recover from I can tell you know I mean he did blush actually I should have said that you should have said that a sarcasm yeah I think that you will be able to understand that other one should be that way in climb but it's you know so I you know foreign policy if you told me that the foreign policy was going to dominate my premiership when I went in 1997 I would have been horrified actually but that's the way it is so you have to get used to dealing with things at the same time and and you know I find this is when I'm you know here and people say to me well why President Obama should have done this thing first and that thing next and you know you should be on the economy and never mind the Middle East peace process I'm saying hang on a minute the entry is the entry okay you can't just say I'm sorry but can you guys in Israel and Palestine

just hang on a couple of years we'll get through this and then I'll come back and deal with it's not like that well of course you know one of the things that I'm crushed to read in your book is that I mean for years everybody here I think particularly has you know watched their cease ban and seen you on prime minister question time and seen this incredible gladiatorial process where you parried and thrusted and did things with greater land and now in your book of course we learned that you were in complete agony and that you were virtually throwing up before prime minister's question time is that a useful process you know and you're talking about dealing with things seriously did it hold on your thoughts did it make you more of a you know a honed thinker going through that because you talked you've talked about clarity and you've talked about you know the need to to be able to answer questions and know where you're going do you think that that process was a help um no uh do we answer Frank the prime minister's questions because occasionally people in the US will say to me you must really miss prime minister's questions and I look at what I mean it was the most terrifying thing um and you know even now well Wednesday today isn't it yeah three minutes to twelve I feel a chill on the bag of my

kids what used to happen is I used to go over to the house of commons and I had a little room the prime minister has a little room just behind the house of commons chamber and the the MP who looks after the prime minister who's called his pps always at three minutes to twelve every Wednesday which throw the door open you know you used to I used to watch the minutes as they ticked by going up three minutes to twelve and I used to think it was like being led along to the execution chamber um and he used to throw the door open this guy and he used to say prime minister a grateful nation awaits and then you would go in and they oh the abuse used to get and it was just um because people would be the thing people never quite understand is because a lot of the noises and picked up but people would be very very close like the front row the pew there and and you know when you would be standing at the dispatch box it wasn't just that we were having to answer the questions but people would be like the the the Tories on the front bench would be they'd be shouting at you the whole way through they'd be saying things like it was really ill today didn't he

I was I was they used to make remarks about your clothing you know particular whether you or you were you know buttoned up or not and that type of thing and it was completely so you'd be having all this coming at you and then thinking I've got to answer this question and it was a physical yes it was a physical dual and it was a I mean it's a great part of a theater but you know there is a there is a myth that the prime minister is held to account that way I mean I know people get upset when I say this in in England but it's really you know no one's really interested when they ask the question in the answer what they're interested it does I suppose it's particularly striking here because we do tend to feel that the president is so managed I mean the press I know when I first came here from the UK it felt as if the a presidential press conference was such a kind of managed stage there really wasn't any real exposure to this chance that the president would be exposed to any real

total kind of you know searing questions that was just taken apart yeah I mean I think no you're your position with the president is different because your president's your your head of state so and I think I actually think it's rather I mean I can't like the respect that shown to the office of president well you would yeah I would really like watch it's not like that with the prime minister at all instead because of course we got the queen so yeah that is good it's not like that but I look by the way there's a controversy about the fact that use the your account of how you met the queen is exactly like the movie of the queen and the writer of the movie of the queen says that he couldn't have been like that because he made it up yeah now do you really meet the queen or did you meet Helen Meron well no I I read that this this the the guy who did that the movie said this I mean I've actually told the story for years it happens to be the true story um what happened was that that when I went in for the for the audience with the queen well there are two things that happen

actually the which I don't know that this is in the movie I haven't seen the film for a reason I will give you in a moment but my wife hasn't my kids haven't lots of my friends have and what happens we have an election campaign that's about four weeks is a little different from you and uh but what we don't have is that is the interregnum after the campaign and before you take office so you literally first days polling day Friday you're in as prime minister so you're completely exhausted instantly as you because you've been up all night listening to the results and you know making speeches and so on and so forth and you go along to Buckingham Palace um to to them become the prime minister because you're not the prime minister until the head of state has a bless you and made you the prime minister as it were so I go along for the ceremony which is which is called the ceremony of kissing hands right it's a tradition anyway I'm standing there I'm absolutely exhausted before I go in and see the Queen who's in the room next door and there's one of these very aristocratic

English types um standing there dressed in extraordinary sort of costume um and he says to me just before I'm about to go and he says to me Mr Blair I should tell you that the ceremony of kissing hands does not actually involve kissing the Queen's hands you brush them gently and I'm completely floored by this I say what well anyway I'm trying to think of what that means to brush when the door opens and I'm actually dinner and my mind's it and I trip over the little carpet just before the where she's sitting in the chair and I actually neither kiss her hands nor brush them but fall upon them which which I then do but then she you know once we'd settle down obviously Charlotte she recovered she then said to me um well my first prime minister was Winston and that was before you were born so that is actually what happened

and she was actually immensely kind gracious and very decent to me as a matter of fact but you were aware that you were sitting opposite a piece of history in a sense and I remember when I had my little investiture you know what it's quite a daunting business it is because you always and you know especially if you're brought up in you know as you know as you're brought up in England I remember when I was a kid in Durham and the north of England the Queen came to town you know standing waving the flag by the by the roadside so it's it's it's uh it's one of the the things that's you know that's very much about our system and and there we are but no whether it's in his film or not uh it's that's true to you and I'm meant to tell you why why I haven't watched the film yeah because when the film came out um I had my audience with the Queen right that mean the real Queen not Helen Merritt so we're sitting like this and you always sat literally just the two

of you in the room and you would have about an hour and a half together talking about everything in the world and everything and the Queen says to me this occasion I sit down she says to me I hear there's a film as a pause she says about us there's pure no cow yeah there was another one for us and she said I should just inform you that I shan't be watching it so I then said well okay in that case I don't suppose I will be either there and I have I love it that's great um well let's get back to that comment uh you know you said at the beginning I said at the beginning or mentioned at the beginning that you said that you really be more religious into the religion than politics which is really extraordinary because that you throw that out about page 636 and you've now got your faith foundation but can you just tell us uh what a little bit about your faith Tony I mean you recently became a

Catholic how does your faith inform your decisions well here's the thing because people say often look you say religions more important to you than politics you don't talk a lot about religion in in the book or not very much and and I will say about my faith that that I mean I am someone who religious faith and that's what I believe and so on but the trouble is faith can give you strength it can be very important in your life it can be a major part of your life a major part of the way that you you feel as a human being the thing is however it doesn't tell you the right policy answer and that's the problem and so I used to say to people I mean I don't go into a corner and pray to God and say you know watch at the minimum wage b next year because I don't get an answer and and actually even on the difficult decisions I mean people often ask about the decisions of war and peace it I'm afraid your faith can give you your values it can give you as I say your your your belief system but it can't tell you the right answer the reason I work on issues to do with religion today though is that I do passionately believe that the issue

for the 21st century will not be fundamentalist political ideology I mean I think that the the era of left versus right in a very fundamentalist way I think is a 20th century issue I think however that the 21st century could be about fundamentalist religious or cultural ideology and I think the single most interesting thing you see this here you see this right-round Europe at the moment is religion and its position in the public space is a huge issue well of course we have the ultimate teachable moment on that for your faith foundation with this whole rather about the mosque and ground zero have that controversy this you know this inflamed issue happened in your country when you were Prime Minister if if this same issue would come up perhaps on the ground you know in the venue of where the the the July bombings happened in the UK and a mosque was being put up how would you have handled it I think there's a really really important principle here in a

sense we did have a similar type of issue actually when I was Prime Minister which was about whether Muslims should be entitled to have Muslim schools because we have we have church schools in the UK and and we have actually Jewish schools in the UK people are allowed to do that in a way you're not in your public school system here and the issue was whether Muslims could start their schools and I took the the view then and I would take it now about any similar issue is that one of the civilized values we're fighting for is that people should be treated equally irrespective of their religious faith and you cannot say that that is true for Christians but not for Muslims and you know one of the things that we're going to have to do in the world in which we live today is we're going to have to stand up for that civilized value and the people we want standing alongside us are not just people of our own religious faith you know we want Jews and Muslims and Hindus and

Buddhists this this extremism is is is based on a perversion of Islam it is a strain within Islam and you can't deny that and I think it's foolish to deny it but let's be absolutely clear the way to defeat it is to say that you may have your views to the right religious path as a Muslim I have mine as a Christian but I will respect you and treat you as an equal and will not discriminate against you and that is to me absolutely fundamental you know I introduced actually the first Muslims into the House of Lords I made the first Muslim minister that we'd ever have in my government and you know the first military action I took was actually in respect of Kosovo where we were protecting Muslims against a Christian country in Serbia and I just think you know I really do believe this the only way we are going to win in the 21st century is on the basis of mutual respect and solidarity between people of different faiths and anything else plays into the hands of

those who want a religious conflict I just want to ask you one last question now as we you said as you you say at the end of your book it has never been entirely clear whether the journey I've taken is one of triumph of the person over the politics or the politics over the person the book's called the journey but is there a more personal book to be written do you think as you further resolve that question I don't know I think you know one book's enough for the moment I think I think what in the end I think and hope you'll get from the book and this is why I wrote it in the way that I I did write and I wrote it kind of laboriously long hands it's my technological skills is somewhat limited what I've tried to do is to give you a personal and human account of what it's like to be a decision maker and the most the oddest thing I mean I love going in

addressing groups of young people particularly actually in schools and things where I kind of look at them all gazing up at me you know when you're prime minister of country and you go along and you there you are the prime minister and they're sort of thinking it's interesting that's the prime minister you see him on the tele and you know I try to explain to them I was like you once you know and actually you have the same doubts and hesitations and worries and inadequacies that anyone else has and one of the problems with today's politics is people want to know far more about their politicians and their decision makers you know you know far more about their private lives about the people around them you know they've filled the gossip columns you really wonder in your politics here or or in ours back home you how would Winston Churchill and Lloyd George and John F Kennedy and everyone fair today I mean I would you know with all that degree of scrutiny and what I wanted to do in the book is say if that's the way it is which it probably is today

you want to know far more and you're going to know far more then know it from the other side of the fence as well because otherwise what you do is you invest in your politicians hopes that can't be realized and expectations that are bound to be disappointed and the single most important thing to realize in the end is the only way government today works in the modern world where people can't afford to put their politicians really on a pedestal but should have some regard for their humanity is through partnership through some sense of shared responsibility between the government and the government and the real problem is that that is harder for all of us not just hard for the politicians it's hard for the people as well and the people it's so easy for them to say it's their fault so chuck them out and all that does actually is lead to a fresh wave of expectation and then a fresh wave of disappointment and actually if you come to a more realistic

more sensible more practical better grounded you know understanding of what decision making is about and the fact that there are human beings like you that are put in these decisions of responsibility the more that happens the better we will evolve our democracy into something a more understanding and more sensitive and therefore more real and more effective and that's what I've tried to do thank you very much Tony Blair