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Tony Blair

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A Journey: My Political Life Kindle Edition

by Tony Blair (Author) Format: Kindle Edition

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Tony Blair is a politician who defines our times. His emergence as Labour Party leader in 1994 marked a seismic shift in British politics. Within a few short years, he had transformed his party and rallied the country behind him, becoming prime minister in 1997 with the biggest victory in Labour’s history, and bringing to an end eighteen years of Conservative government. He took Labour to a historic three terms in office as Britain’s dominant political figure of the last two decades.

A Journey is Tony Blair’s firsthand account of his years in office and beyond. Here he describes for the first time his role in shaping our recent history, from the aftermath of Princess Diana’s death to the war on terror. He reveals the leadership decisions that were necessary to reinvent his party, the relationships with colleagues including Gordon Brown, the grueling negotiations for peace in Northern Ireland, the implementation of the biggest reforms to public services in Britain since 1945, and his relationships with leaders on the world stage—Nelson Mandela, Bill Clinton, Vladimir Putin, George W. Bush. He analyzes the belief in ethical intervention that led to his decisions to go to war in Kosovo, Sierra Leone, Afghanistan, and, most controversially of all, in Iraq.

A Journey is a book about the nature and uses of political power. In frank, unflinching, often wry detail, Tony Blair charts the ups and downs of his career to provide insight into the man as well as the politician and statesman. He explores the challenges of leadership, and the ramifications of standing up, clearly and forcefully, for what one believes in. He also looks ahead, to emerging power relationships and economies, addressing the vital issues and complexities of our global world.

Few British prime ministers have shaped the nation’s course as profoundly as Tony Blair, and his achievements and his legacy will be debated for years to come. Here, uniquely, we have his own journey, in his own words.

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Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Critics who dubbed Britain's ex-prime minister "Tony Blur" for his allegedly substance-free politics swaddled in gauzy PR won't have their minds changed by this nebulous memoir. Blair's brief for his "ground-breaking" New Labour platform reads like a marketing plan: it's all about middle-class "aspiration," "focusing on the developing tastes of consumers," and "modernization," the glossed-over particulars being a muddle of small-bore education, health-care and law-and-order initiatives. The Iraq War is a similar "battle between modernizers and reactionaries," according to Blair's high-minded justification, a battle which would have gone well but for the meddling of Al Qaeda and Iran. He writes like an ad executive--"it had to be dignified, it had to be different, and it had to be Diana," he says of the laudably "modern" princess's funeral--but his candor can be bracing. He paints comic scenes of excruciating audiences with dull dignitaries and the weekly torment of Prime Minister's Questions, is nakedly spiteful toward his Labour rival and successor Gordon Brown, and never hides his preoccupation with image-crafting and media relations. ("Look like a prime minister," he reminds himself on election night.) Blair reveals himself to be savvy, charming, and sometimes earnest and impassioned, but never quite a statesman. (Sept. 2) (c)
Copyright © PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.

From Booklist

The longest-serving Labour prime minister of Britain, and still a figure on the international political stage, Blair recalls in detail the events of his premiership. He covers lots of actions and activities and shares with forthrightness his thinking on world and domestic issues he had to confront; on the other hand, on occasion he does play his cards close to the vest, avoiding a complete “spilling” of his thoughts about a certain situation he had then and now. Blair’s view of the late Princess Diana is discerning; of his successor, Gordon Brown, hardly affectionate; of George Bush (the younger), certainly controversial. Consciousness of his public image was never far from how he acted in office and now how he writes about his actions. Behind the scenes in the halls of power is always an interesting place to go, and Blair takes us there with delight on his part and on our part, from weekending with the royal family in Scotland to the nerve-racking “Prime Minister’s Questions,” when the PM must face inquiries (read “criticism”) from the opposition MPs. A necessary purchase for all public-library contemporary political-memoir collections. High-Demand Backstory: Reviews everywhere and author appearances on major television shows indicate just how much interest in this book is out there. --Brad Hooper

Review

-Especially welcome.- Luckily A Journey is not one of those leaden bricks of official reminiscence.- The tone is confiding, informal and forthright . . . A Journey is a deeply personal book, full of candid revelations . . . It provides a priceless glimpse into the mind of the man who devoted himself to the transformation [of the Labour party]-and who stood by America in some of its darkest recent hours.-
----------- -Martin Rubin, The Wall Street Journal
-
-Engaging and insightful . . . A better than usual contribution to the literary genre of political memoir.-
----------- -Claude R. Marx, The Boston Globe
-
-Well-written and perhaps unintentionally self-revealing . . . Blair reveals himself through his thrusting political ambition, his rationales for decisions, his preoccupation with public image and his determination to play a prominent role on the world stage.-
----------- -Leonard Downie Jr., The Washington Post Book World
-
-Fluently written . . . Engaging . . . Some of the most quoted bits of this book will doubtless include Mr. Blair-s thumbnail sketches of colleagues and acquaintances.-
----------- -Michiko Kakutani, The New York Times
-
-That Blair was a formidable politician can be seen in the glimpses we get of how his mind works . . . You are left thinking two things: that it would be a blessing if some of today-s politicians took note . . . and that, whatever your view of Blair, you still wouldn-t want to take him on in an election.-
----------- -John Lanchester, The New Yorker...

From the Back Cover

In 1997, the biggest Labour Party victory in history swept England, ending eighteen years of Conservative government. Prime Minister Tony Blair young, charismatic, and complex shaped the nation profoundly in the ten years that followed. Alternately beloved and reviled, he was an international figure to a degree matched by few British leaders a role he continues to this day through the Tony Blair Faith Foundation and his work in the Middle East. Now, for the first time, we see the fascinating journey and difficult choices of the Prime Minister through his own eyes.

About the Author

Tony Blair became an MP in 1983, leader of the Labour Party in 1994, and was prime minister of the United Kingdom from May 1997 to June 2007. Since leaving office, he has served as the Quartet Representative to the Middle East, representing the U.S., the UN, Russia, and the EU in working with the Palestinians to prepare for statehood as part of the international community’s effort to secure peace. In May 2008 he launched the Tony Blair Faith Foundation, which promotes respect and understanding among the major religions. His Africa Governance Initiative works with leaders and their governments on policy delivery and attracting sustainable investment in Rwanda, Sierra Leone, and Liberia. He also works with world leaders to build consensus on an international climate-policy framework.

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.

TWELVE

9/11: “SHOULDER TO SHOULDER”

It is amazing how quickly shock is absorbed and the natural rhythm of the human spirit reasserts itself. A cataclysm occurs. The senses reel. In that moment of supreme definition, we can capture in our imagination an event’s full significance. Over time, it is not that the memory of it fades, exactly; but its illuminating light dims, loses its force, and our attention moves on. We remember, but not as we felt at that moment. The emotional impact is replaced by a sentiment which, because it is more calm, seems more rational. But paradoxically it can be less rational, because the calm is not the product of a changed analysis, but of the effluxion of time.

So it was with 11 September 2001. On that day, in the course of less than two hours, almost 3,000 people were killed in the worst terrorist attack the world has ever known. Most died in the attack on the Twin Towers of the World Trade Center that dominated the skyline of New York. It was a workplace for as diverse a workforce as any in the world, from all nations, races and faiths, and was not only a symbol of American power but also the edifice that most eloquently represented the modern phenomenon of globalisation.

The explosion as the planes hit killed hundreds outright, but most died in the inferno that followed, and the carnage of the collapse of the buildings. As the flames and smoke engulfed them, many jumped in terror and panic, or just because they preferred that death to being on fire. Many who died were rescue workers whose heroism that day has rightly remained as an enduring testament to selfless sacrifice.

The Twin Towers were not the only target. American Airlines Flight 77, carrying sixty-four people from Washington to Los Angeles, was flown into the Pentagon. A total of 189 people died. United Airlines Flight 93, bound from Newark to San Francisco with forty-four on board, was hijacked, its target probably the White House. It came down in Somerset County, Pennsylvania. Its passengers, realising the goal of the hijack, stormed the cabin. In perishing, they saved the lives of many others.

It was an event like no other. It was regarded as such. The British newspapers the next day were typical of those around the globe: “at war,” they proclaimed. The most common analogy was Pearl Harbor. The notion of a world, not just America, confronted by a deadly evil that had indeed declared war on us all was not then dismissed as the language of the periphery of public sentiment. It was the sentiment. Thousands killed by terror—what else should we call it?

Opinions were forthright and clear, and competed with each other in resolution, not only in the West but everywhere. In the Arab world, condemnation was nearly universal, only Saddam ensuring that Iraqi state television played a partisan song, “Down with America,” calling the attacks “the fruits of American crimes against humanity.” Yasser Arafat condemned the acts on behalf of the Palestinians, though unfortunately, most especially for the Palestinian cause, the TV showed pictures of some jubilant Palestinians celebrating.

The most common words that day were “war,” “evil,” “sympathy,” “solidarity,” “determination” and, of course, “change.” Above all, it
was accepted that the world had changed. How could it be otherwise? The reason for such a description was also not hard to divine. The first attempt to attack the World Trade Center, in 1993, had been foiled, but the planning this time had obviously been meticulous. The enemy had been prepared to wait until it had accumulated the necessary means and opportunity.

However, more than that, a terror attack of this scale was not calculated to do limited damage. It was designed for maximum casualty. It was delivered by a suicide mission. It therefore had an intent, a purpose and a scope beyond anything we had encountered before. This was terror without limit; without mercy; without regard to human life, because it was motivated by a cause higher than any human cause. It was inspired by a belief in God; a perverted belief, a delusional and demonic belief, to be sure, but nonetheless so inspired.

It was, in a very real sense, a declaration of war. It was calculated to draw us into conflict. Up to then, the activities of this type of extremism had been growing. It was increasingly associated with disputes that seemed unconnected, though gradually the connection was being made. Kashmir, Chechnya, Algeria, Yemen, Palestine, Lebanon; in each area, different causes were at play, with different origins, but the attacks, carried out as acts of terror, were growing, and the ideological link with an extreme element that professed belief in Islam was ever more frequently expressed. Until 11 September, the splashes of colour on different parts of the canvas did not appear to the eye as a single picture. After it, the clarity was plain, vivid and defining.

We look back now, almost a decade later when we are still at war, still struggling and managing the ghastly consequences which war imposes, and we can scarcely recall how we ever came to be in this position. But on that bright New York morning, not a cloud disturbing the bluest of blue skies, we knew exactly what was happening and why.

We knew that so far as we were concerned we had not provoked such an outrage. There had been acts of terror committed against us: Lockerbie, the USS Cole, the U.S. embassy in Tanzania. We had tried to retaliate, but at a relatively low level. They were individual tragedies, but they did not amount to a war. They were the price America paid for being America. The other conflicts we reckoned were none of our business; or at least they were the business of our diplomatic corps, but not of our people.

So those carrying out such acts were wicked; but they weren’t changing our world view. George Bush had won the presidency after the controversies of the most contested ballot in U.S. history, but the battle between him and Al Gore had focused mainly on domestic policy. At my first meeting with him—Camp David in February of the same year—his priorities were about education, welfare and cutting down on big government as he saw it.

So there was no build-up to 11 September, no escalation, no attempts to defuse that failed, no expectation or inevitability. There was just an attack—planned obviously during the previous presidency—of unbelievable ferocity and effect. No warning, no demands, no negotiation. Nothing except mass slaughter of the innocent.

We were at war.We could not ignore it. But how should we deal with it? And who was this enemy? A person? A group? A movement? A state?

I was in Brighton that day, to give the biennial address to the Trades Union Congress. Frankly, it was always a pretty ghastly affair for both of us. As I explain elsewhere, I was frustrated they wouldn’t modernise; they were frustrated with my telling them how to do their business. Not that they were ever slow in telling me how to do mine, mind you. And sure-fire election-losing advice it was too. They ignored my counsel; and I ignored theirs. For all that, we sort of rubbed along after a fashion, and in a manner of speaking, and up to a point.

The great thing about Brighton is that it is warm, closer than Blackpool to London, and retains the enormous charm of yesteryear. Blackpool can be a great town and has a unique quality, but it needs work done on it. Brighton was where Neil Kinnock, posing for photos on the pebble beach on the day he became Labour leader in 1983, lost his footing and fell in the sea. You can imagine the pleasure of the assembled press. It must have been replayed a thousand times and became a slightly defining misstep; unfairly so, of course; but such things are never fair. In public, you are always on show, so always be under control. The trick, actually, is to appear to be natural, while gripping your nature in a vice of care and caution. Don’t let the mask slip; don’t think this is the moment to begin a new adventure in communication; don’t betray excesses of emotion of any kind; do it all with the ease and character of someone talking to old friends while knowing they are, in fact, new acquaintances.

Over time, I began to think there was never a moment when I could be completely candid and exposed. You worried that even sitting in your living room or in the bath, someone would come to photograph, question and call upon you to justify yourself. I became unhealthily focused on how others saw me, until, again over time, I refocused on how I saw myself. I realised I was considered public property, but the ownership was mine. I learned not to let the opinion of others, even a prevailing one, define my view of myself and what I should or should not do.

The TUC took place in early to mid-September, and the party conference a couple of weeks later. Both always made September a little nerve-tingling. From the TUC you could get a sense of where the party were liable to be in terms of contentment and/or otherwise. Trouble at the first usually presaged trouble at the second. The 2001 TUC was no exception. Having just won our first ever consecutive full term, in a second landslide victory, you would have thought it an occasion for general rejoicing. “I think mostly they’ll want to congratulate you on the victory,” Alastair said to me, po-faced, as we boarded the train.

“Do you think so?” I said, perking up.

“Don’t be ridiculous,” he replied.

Sure enough, the mood as I arrived at lunchtime was the usual mixture of sweet and sour, but with the sweet a decided minority. I went straight to the Grand Hotel. We had an hour and a half before I had to go to the new Conference Centre a hundred yards or so along the beachfront. I worked in the bedroom as the team gathered in the living room of the suite. Just after a quarter to two, around 8:45 Eastern Standard Time, Alastair was called out of the room by Godric Smith, his very capable deputy. Alastair came back in, turned on the television and said, “You’d better see this.” He knew I hated being interrupted just before a speech, so I realised I’d better look. The TV was showing pictures of the Trade Center like someone had punched a huge hole in it, fire and smoke belching forth. Just over fifteen minutes later, a second plane hit, this time graphically captured live on-screen. This was not an accident. It was an attack.

At that moment, I felt eerily calm despite being naturally horrified at the devastation, and aware this was not an ordinary event but a worldchanging one. At one level it was a shock, a seemingly senseless act of evil. At another level, it made sense of developments I had seen growing in the world these past years—isolated acts of terrorism, disputes marked by the same elements of extremism, and a growing strain of religious ideology that was always threatening to erupt, and now had. Within a very short space of time, it was clear the casualties would be measured in thousands. I ordered my thoughts. It was the worst terrorist attack in human history. It was not America alone who was the target, but all of us who shared the same values. We had to stand together. We had to understand the scale of the challenge and rise to meet it. We could not give up until it was done. Unchecked and unchallenged, this could threaten our way of life to its fundamentals. There was no other course; no other option; no alternative path. It was war. It had to be fought and won. But it was a war unlike any other. This was not a battle for territory, not a battle between states; it was a battle for and about the ideas and values that would shape the twenty-first century.

All this came to me in those forty minutes between the first attack and my standing up in front of the audience to tell them that I would not deliver my speech but instead return immediately to London. And it came with total clarity. Essentially, it stayed with that clarity and stays still, in the same way, as clear now as it was then.

From AudioFile

Former British Prime Minister Tony Blair recalls "his first and only job in government," taking listeners from his 1997 inauguration to his departure in 2007. From the start, his voice sounds like he's reliving the mixture of anxiety and joy he felt at his landslide victory. Listeners will hear his pride at his accomplishments in reforming Britain's Labor Party and his sadness at the death of Princess Diana. His frustration with the media and with dissent in his own party as troubles mounted during his later years is also clear. At times, the casual listener may feel bogged down by inside details, but, overall, the portrait of a pragmatic politician is interesting. J.A.S. © AudioFile 2010, Portland, Maine

Product details

ASIN ‏ : ‎ B003F3PMLG
Publisher ‏ : ‎ Vintage; Reprint edition (September 2, 2010)
Publication date ‏ : ‎ September 2, 2010
Language ‏ : ‎ English
File size ‏ : ‎ 17125 KB
Text-to-Speech ‏ : ‎ Enabled
Screen Reader ‏ : ‎ Supported
Enhanced typesetting ‏ : ‎ Enabled
X-Ray ‏ : ‎ Not Enabled
Word Wise ‏ : ‎ Enabled
Sticky notes ‏ : ‎ On Kindle Scribe
Print length ‏ : ‎ 753 pages
Page numbers source ISBN ‏ : ‎ 0307269833

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Tony Blair

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Tony Blair was born in Edinburgh in 1953. He became MP for Sedgefield in 1983, leader of the Labour Party in 1994 and prime minister of the United Kingdom from May 1997 to June 2007.

Since leaving Downing Street, Tony Blair has served as the Quartet Representative to the Middle East. He represents the USA, UN, Russia and EU, working with the Palestinians to prepare for statehood as part of the international community’s effort to secure peace.

In May 2008 he launched the Tony Blair Faith Foundation which promotes respect and understanding between the major religions and makes the case for faith as a force for good in the modern world.

His Africa Governance Initiative delivers projects in Rwanda and Sierra Leone and Liberia, advising the leaders and their governments on policy delivery and attracting investment.

As the first major head of government to bring climate change to the top of the international political agenda at the 2005 G8 summit, Tony Blair works with world leaders to build consensus on an international climate policy framework.

In recognition of his debt to the North East of England, he has launched The Tony Blair Sports Foundation, to increase opportunities for young people to participate in sport.

He is married to Cherie Booth QC, and they have four children.

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Tom Groenfeldt

Insightful and Surprising Fun

Reviewed in the United States on January 19, 2011

Verified Purchase

This book surprised me -- the reviews I read ranged from mediocre to hostile, but I found Tony Blair in excellent explanatory form, describing his thinking of New Labour, his efforts to get the party to adopt the ideas, and his fights along the way. That this wasn't simply a PR exercise is demonstrated by the election of a new party leader, Ed Miliband, who promptly announced the end of New Labour.

In chapters on New Labour, Princess Diana, Northern Ireland, government, Kosovo, Iraq and his battle with Gordon Brown, Blair provides his historical account, along with some excellent personality profiles, and then draws some conclusions about the change in English society, why government is slower than the private sector to adapt to change, what makes negotiations work or fail, and the changing role of national leaders in an era of frequent global conferences which leave them far less time to manage politics and parties at home. He is also good on what it takes to be a leader who will go for winning elections rather than persisting in the apparent purity of opposition.

"It's extraordinary how anyone who opposes the government is principled while anyone who is loyal is just a sycophant..."
Out of office for years, Labour needed to show that it could "cross the class and employment divide, that it could unite the nation. I was the modernizer, in personality, in language, in time, feel and temperament." Some of his colleagues understood that if they wanted to retake power they had to break from a union past; others argued and resisted and some came along; others never did.

One example of his task -- rewriting the party constitution to remove the demands for nationalization and state control, Clause IV, drafted in 1917. No one paid attention to the clause, but no one wanted to make the effort to remove it either. Blair insisted on change, leading some in the party to suggest he enjoyed making enemies within. But his argument is persuasive -- years after the Soviet Union and China had moved to market systems and away from nationalization and collective farms, British Labour still had nationalization and collectivism in its goals.

He proposed instead a statement of purpose that stressed the goals of individuals:

"The Labour Party is a democratic socialist party. It believes that by the strength of our common endeavor, we achieve more than we achieve alone so as to create for each of us the means to realise our true potential and for all of us a community in which power, wealth and opportunity are in the hands of the many, not the few, where the rights we enjoy reflect the duties we owe, and where we live together, freely, in a spirit of solidarity , tolerance and respect."

Okay, it might be the English equivalent of American Mom and Apple Pie but it does appear to renounce feudalism while celebrating achievement rather than equal poverty for all. As people become more educated they don't necessarily want the state making decisions for them, he said. During its years in the wilderness, Labour had become more of a cult than a party, and the Lib Dems even more so -- Blair must be watching with great interest their role in government rather than in perpetual opposition.

Blair had a battle, which is apt to continue, to persuade people inside and outside the party that the government and state agencies can become a vested interest. Reforms to health care were battled by physicians who said they would harm health, when the only real threat was to the doctors' well-being. It is a theme familiar to readers of The Washington Monthly where Charles Peters points out that when budgets are threatened governments invariably explain they will have to lay off firemen and close fire stations. State governments around the US are finding they can't afford the pension plans which elected officials and unions agreed upon as a way to raise compensation without paying for it.

Part of the problem was that Labour had confused means and ends. It had lost touch with its basic purpose. In Blair's eyes, political power should be about the individual...a powerful state, unions, social action and, collective bargaining were means to an end -- to help the individual gain opportunity. Government failed to recognize that its success had changed the society. By the 1960s, the first generation had been liberated and didn't want more state help but instead wanted freedom to earn money and spend it. The private sector moved fast with the change, state sector got stuck.

Governments, whether of the right or left, are not naturally inclined to reform the bureaucracy.
"...whereas the market compels change, there is no similar compulsion in the public sector. Left to its own devices, it grows. Governments can change it, but governments use the public sector, depend on it and are part of it...Whatever the enormous impact of the Thatcher reforms had been on the private sector in the 1980s, we had inherited a public sector largely unreformed; and we weren't instinctively included to reform it."

Blair is amusing in describing how at the time he was pushing for action against antisocial behavior his son, Euan, was arrested in the middle of London for underage drinking and being drunk in a public place. Police assigned to Number 10 located him and brought home through a back door.

"Around 2:30 a.m., Euan insisted on coming into my bed. Alternately he would go into a mournful tirade of apology and then throw up. I loved him and felt sorry for him, but had a police cell been available I would have been all for moving him there." Later that morning he had to address the Black Churches conference in Brighton, where all assembled prayed for him, Euan, his family, etc.

"I did, at one moment, want to point that, OK, he was drunk...but all this seemed a little excessive....But I didn't and it wouldn't have mattered a jot if I had. To them, the boy was lost and now was found, and that was all that mattered."

Heading back to London, his party stopped at a pub..."much to the amusement of the locals. They were all thoroughly supportive of Euan and I heard in turn each customer's tale of a similarly misspent youth. At moments like that, the British are very decent folk."

A few of my English friends really despise Blair for being all fluff and no substance, but this memoir provides ample evidence to the contrary. Blair really cared about how the government worked. A few minor reforms wouldn't do; he insisted structural change was required in crime, education, health, welfare and immigration, to start. At the suggestion of Instruction to Deliver: Fighting to Transform Britain's Public Services Michael Barber, the government established a Delivery Unit to measure the delivery of services, rather than, as governments so often do, discuss the goals. He is frustrated by a newspaper industry that was almost completely uninterested in government and mostly focused on scandals. I have to agree. It may be a function of shortened attention spans and a drive for profits over substance colliding with the increased complexity of modern governments.

Think what you will about him, with Blair Labour won three elections, and as he says the Tories never won a by-election from Labour during his time in office.
Governing is a learning process, writes Blair, as he dissects where he could have done better, lessons learned, mistakes that couldn't be corrected. His book is a useful and highly readable analysis for anyone interested in government.

Although not all my friends agree. At a wedding dinner recently a friend sitting to my left said Blair and New Labour had wrecked the fabric of England. On my right, a financial technology consultant who is now working with the Tories on policy, described the book as extremely self-aggrandizing and vomit-inducing.

But I enjoyed it and never got sick once.

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Allan M. Lees

An Excellent Read

Reviewed in the United States on May 24, 2013

Verified Purchase

I'd already left the UK by the time Tony Blair came to power. I'd voted for Thatcher back in the 80s because she represented a force for change in what was then a severely dysfunctional and moribund society. After she was ousted by her Party, the Conservatives presided over a period of decline reminiscent of the Heath, Wilson, and Callaghan years. In 1997 Major was defeated and a young, inexperienced and somewhat naïve Tony Blair stepped into 10 Downing Street. I was skeptical about the whole New Labor message - it seemed glib and merely a way to gain power. Underneath, surely, the old reactionary class-obsessed Labor apparatchiks were still lurking. Turns out, I was quite wrong about Blair's New Labor (though not about the reactionary "the State knows best and should control everything and we hate the markets and capitalists and anyone who's successful" old Labor types lurking in the background).

This book is basically the story of how Blair took the reins of the Labor Party, refashioned it to be more relevant for a new century, and then won the highest office in the land. But winning was merely the beginning of what turned out to be an extraordinary political and personal education. The great charm of Blair's book is that it really reads as though he wrote most of it himself. The tone is personal, immediate, introspective. We're always aware that this is the work of a master politician whose time upon the world stage is far from over. Hence he is generous to a fault in his assessment of those he's worked with. He mostly avoids the score-settling that is too common in political memoires. Indeed at times the book reads like a job application for The Next Big Job (and, frankly, many organizations would benefit greatly from Blair's experience and apparent integrity). But this is a minor quibble. What is truly important about this book is the points Blair makes about the modern political world.

We live in a time where the public attention-span is measured in seconds, and where even a sound-bite can end up being regarded as too complex. News organizations live and die by advertising, so they have become nothing more than a branch of the entertainment business. Truth, responsibility, real information - all these have been cast aside in the desperate quest for eyeballs. The result is that the electorate is growing ever less able to understand complex issues and discern what is really happening in the world. Important issues of policy are lost in the flotsam of news-of-the-moment. We live in a world in which the personal lives of celebrities get more attention than issues central to our very survival. The result is that the Western democracies are falling apart, rotting at the core. There has always been a gulf between the elites who make decisions and the masses who periodically get to exercise some sort of vote, but today there's no real trust between voter and politician. This is less the consequence of today's politicians being more venal and incompetent (realistically, the opposite is generally the case) but rather the consequence of the news media's absolute need for crisis, scandal, intrigue and anything else that will grab eyeballs for a few moments - just long enough to raise ad prices. When the pace was slower this mattered less. There have always been scurrilous magazines and newspapers out for sensation, but until recently the "news" wasn't 24/7 in our faces. It wasn't competing for eyeballs with "reality" TV shows and other ephemera on a must-win-every-tiny-extra-increment-of-revenue basis. By accident our world has turned serious decision-making into just another "reality" show and the media trivializes to the point where any serious issue is automatically abandoned (because it's too difficult) in favor of (contrived) scandal-du-jour.

It is difficult not to read this book and feel immense sympathy with Blair and those who, occupying high office in democratic governments, are actually trying to act in a positive way. Blair was consciously trying to be a leader rather than a follower, and that many of the decisions that defined his time as Prime Minister would have been dodged by some of his predecessors and successors. Indeed, Jacques Chirac (formerly President of France) built an entire career out of avoiding every difficult decision that came his way, and was re-elected by a grateful nation whereas Blair was ultimately deposed by his own people, as was Thatcher. The lesson, all too easily learned by people like Francois Hollande, is that it's better to drift and tack and compromise and waffle than to have convictions and to act purposefully. This is hardly the basis for any kind of stable or healthy civic society - and yet it's what we get because it's all the media can create. We live in a lowest-common-denominator entertainment world and thus in a lowest-common-denominator society. Which is, clearly, not a very good thing at all. My personal solution has been to turn off the noise - I don't own or watch a TV and I don't read newspapers. I do browse the BBC website and Le Monde Interactif and I read The Economist and I treat them all with caution and skepticism, regarding them as merely the best of a rather bad bunch: semi-reliable witnesses at best. But I doubt my approach has much general appeal and so... the fatal dance persists.

Aside from the final chapter in which Blair spells out his recipes for improving things, the appeal of this book is its "insider's account" of Blair's time as Leader of the (New) Labor Party and particularly his ten years as Prime Minister of the UK. We get to see some aspects of life behind the security cordon, though he's careful to present the illusion of completeness while actually avoiding disclosure of information that would potentially be damaging to national security, his successors, and perhaps (quite naturally) to himself. There's just enough on the Blair/Brown relationship that he doesn't skirt it entirely but he leaves the reader to draw the obvious conclusion. Some things are so blatantly obvious they don't need spelling out, at least for the informed reader. (In case you're not au fait with British politics, Gordon Brown - the former Chancellor/finance minister - undermined Blair in order to win the top job for himself. He lasted a couple of rocky years, quickly turned into an old-style fudge-and-flail Labor hack, and then proceeded to lose the next election after which he resigned and retreated into obscurity but not before crippling the Labor Party by returning it to its bad old ways.)

One thing Blair might usefully have expounded upon is the tendency among our species to be prey to sudden bouts of mass hysteria. There is very little difference between Germans suddenly discovering a passion for the "strong man" who could wipe out the stain of 1918, the Rwanda genocide, and the suicidal deposition from power that Blair himself experienced. Only the scale and object of attention was different. Perhaps it is because Blair himself is fundamentally a reasonable person who can't easily imagine a mob being whipped into a frenzy and then released on a mission of mass destruction that he fails to address this important aspect of human behavior. Yet without accepting this facet of humanity, it's difficult to see any of his post-Downing Street missions enjoying lasting success.

I came away from reading this book far more impressed with Blair than I'd expected to be. I enjoyed the two-volume Thatcher biography but this book is in a class of its own. The only major shortcoming is that Blair never really explains the nature of his religious faith, which therefore seems like evasion or perhaps is simply the result of the fact that there is no intellectual justification for religious belief. But it's clear that his faith, whatever it is, drives him in the direction of optimism and continued striving for positive change. It will be very interesting to see what happens with his Faith Foundation, which is built upon the premise that if people know more about one another they will be less likely to be hostile to each other - not a premise that has had notable success at any time or in any place, and indeed a thesis which is for the most part refuted absolutely by a mass of historical evidence to the contrary. But you have to admire his relentless optimism in the face of doom and gloom all around.

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James B.

No apologies on Iraq but the real issue was Tuition fees & TB-GBs.

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on December 21, 2023

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One of the best political books I've come across, rather than simply critique the way politics & the world is, Blair actually presents possible solutions such as a smaller government focused more on policy & strategy as during his tenure, there was the introduction of a Strategy, Delivery & Policy unit as well as the first chief of staff which all subsequent PMs have used to their advantage. As well as creating social intervention policies at younger ages because as mentioned, there is a direct link between organised crime and opportunity for upward social mobility. Although suggestions such as raising taxes & the retirement age is quite dubious, this must be done incrementally and the for the upper class as the government disregards a lot of the northern or worse off areas (as we all know) with not just food banks being required for communities now but also clothes banks and baby banks.

Different to most political biographies you'll find, Blair doesn't start from his early life and work forwards, rather deciding to discuss the key events in his career. Clearly more New than Labour, Blair presents the case for the new political arena no longer being as partisan as 'right and left' (although it's still just as tribal) but about creating a shared national purpose, rightfully claiming that the hard left will always lose out to the hard right.

Readers will be disappointed to know he doesn't apologise for Iraq & Afghanistan although while not justifiable, the evidence was there that Sadam was supressing the people and if kept in power would have become intolerable especially with secretively working on Chemical weapons.

How GB & his team forced out Blair was shocking as detailed especially Ed Balls, at the centre of it, leaking stories to the press & giving conflicting statements to undermine Blair. While not always a radical, Blair's view on the 92' election and party leadership is interesting, hard to fathom that someone who loves the limelight so much never saw himself as leader of the party but it was a turning point for the whole party evidently. Clearly Gordon never forgave him but there was never any chance of him & Labour lasting as long if GB was leader. The real dividing line for the party came over student loans & tuition fees oddly enough rather than Iraq and Blair would've resigned had they lost it.

L. Banfield

Interesting read

Reviewed in Canada on December 3, 2020

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Gift for my husband, he enjoyed reading it.

Mr Snowman

Blair v Thatchers

Reviewed in Japan on January 2, 2020

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I prefered Tony's style of writing than to Mrs Thatchers downing street years.Which is a very good read too. Tony is funny, thoughtful, and somewhat more relatable compared to Thatchers writing. Wether you're a conservative or labour supporter, you will certainly get something from this book. I especially liked the chapter about the peace process in N.I,which was serious, at times funny, and reminds us why the average man who thinks they have all the answers probably should leave it to the politicians. Highly Recommended.

abhijit aloni

Five Stars

Reviewed in India on March 12, 2016

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excellent book

Alfascerpi

Tutto OK

Reviewed in Italy on January 7, 2014

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Il libro non era in condizioni perfette, ma il prezzo era veramente basso, e il venditore si è curato di specificarlo. Onesto e consigliato

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