Tony Blair is out with a new book, “On Leadership,” which he says offers all the tips he wished he’d been told when he entered 10 Downing Street in 1997.
Given the timing, one can’t help but think of it as a user’s guide for Keir Starmer, the first Labour leader to win a British general election since he did.
Mr. Blair said the book is “absolutely not” aimed at Mr. Starmer, whom he insisted he is “really not” advising, though the two did appear onstage together last year, as Mr. Starmer was gearing up for a campaign. In this global year of elections, Mr. Blair is offering lessons to any rookie leader who will listen — about geopolitical upheaval, surging populism and how to deal with a politically unstable United States.
“I think you’d have to say American politics in some ways has become bitterly divided and at a certain level, dysfunctional,” Mr. Blair said in an interview. “But it’s happened at the same time as America itself has re-emerged as, in my view, easily the strongest country in the world.”
Affable, expansive and only fleetingly defensive, Mr. Blair, now 71, offered a reminder of why, 17 years after he left Downing Street, he remains an enduring presence but also something of a riddle.
He spoke proudly of his government’s achievements in overhauling education and strengthening Britain’s public health service. Yet in his lucrative post-government career, which has included advisory roles for banks, Middle East diplomacy and his own consulting business, he has drawn criticism for mixing too readily with autocrats and billionaires. He defended engaging with Saudi Arabia and extolled the transformative potential of A.I. in government — only to become reticent on the subject of Elon Musk, whose inventions he celebrates.
Mr. Blair’s nonprofit organization, the Tony Blair Institute for Global Change, works with Mr. Musk’s satellite network, Starlink, which may explain why he deflected questions about Mr. Musk’s emergence as a political influencer and purveyor of conspiracy theories through his social media platform, X.
“I don’t get into the politics of the people,” Mr. Blair said of Mr. Musk, whom he credited with pioneering two industries: electric vehicles and commercial space travel. “It’s their inventions I’m interested in, not their politics.”
For Mr. Blair, the return of a Labour government marks another step in his own political rehabilitation. Although he is still reviled by many in Britain for his decision to join the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq — Queen Elizabeth II’s conferral of a knighthood on him in 2022 drew angry protests — Mr. Blair has cultivated ties with Mr. Starmer and quietly assumed the status of an elder statesman.
Within the Labour Party, Mr. Blair is credited with being a masterful communicator — a talent that seems even more striking in comparison with Mr. Starmer, who is by all accounts a less charismatic figure. After Mr. Starmer’s drumbeat of warnings that the economic legacy left by his Conservative predecessors will mean hard choices, some critics yearn for a bit of Mr. Blair’s bounce.
In his book, Mr. Blair emphasized the need for leaders to project optimism. “No one wants to get on a plane with a depressed pilot,” he wrote. But he was careful not to apply that to Mr. Starmer, whom he said had inherited a far worse economy than he did. Mr. Starmer also came into office after the upheaval of Brexit.
“He’s our sixth prime minister in eight years,” Mr. Blair said, raising his eyebrows. “This is Britain. When I left office, I’d been the third prime minister in almost 30 years.”
Having emphasized the scale of the challenge, Mr. Blair said he expected that Mr. Starmer would be “balancing that out” in coming speeches with more upbeat plans to recharge the economy and improve life in Britain.
In the sleek Fitzrovia offices of Mr. Blair’s institute, there are relics of his time as prime minister, as well as of his diplomacy afterward: A photograph of him posing with Irish leaders after they sealed the Good Friday Agreement in 1998, ending decades of sectarian violence in Northern Ireland. A signed photo of him with John Kerry, in which Mr. Kerry, a former secretary of state, thanked him for his work as a special envoy for Middle East peace.
These days, Mr. Blair said he was fully occupied by his institute, which works with governments in 40 countries. Some of those clients are autocrats, for which Mr. Blair makes no apology. He defended his dealings with Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman of Saudi Arabia, for example, despite evidence that he was responsible for the killing of the dissident journalist, Jamal Khashoggi.
“I don’t think any of us who believe we should engage with Saudi Arabia has ever dialed back our disapproval of that,” Mr. Blair said. “But I do think that what is happening in Saudi Arabia is a social revolution which has immense and positive implications for our security, and for the Middle East.”
Mr. Blair pointed to American efforts to broker a three-way deal between Saudi Arabia, Israel and the United States as proof of the upside of such engagement, although the war in Gaza has raised hurdles to that negotiation.
On the most contentious issue of his premiership, the Iraq War and the futile search for weapons of mass destruction, Mr. Blair has little new to say. “I’ve dealt with it so many times,” he said, citing his 2010 memoir and multiple public inquiries. “I’ve come to the conclusion, you’re not going to convince anyone who’s not convinced.”
To the extent that Iraq figures in Mr. Blair’s thinking, it is as a lesson for how leaders should tend to their legacies so they are not defined by a single issue. “I didn’t do enough, frankly,” he said, adding, “It’s ultimately going to be determined in years to come by people you’ve never met.”
For Mr. Blair, perhaps the thorniest diplomatic dilemma today is navigating between China, with which many countries have trade ties, and the United States, on which many rely for security. This is becoming almost a binary choice, he said. Under pressure from the United States, for example, Britain banned the Chinese telecommunications giant Huawei from its high-speed wireless network.
“If you’re a developing country that’s already got a strong relationship with Huawei, you’ve got to think, ‘How do I manage that?’” Mr. Blair said. If a leader decides to defy Washington and align with Beijing, he said, “Then there’s certain companies that won’t be doing business in your country.”
As for the United States, Mr. Blair proclaimed himself an optimist, despite the upheaval of the last several years. He steered clear of questions about the presidential election, instead noting that America was the world’s leading military power, largest exporter of oil and gas and No. 1 technology innovator.
“My view,” Mr. Blair said, “is that America will go through this period and return to functionality, and the question is, how it does that.”
Still, he concluded, the radical swings in American politics provided an argument for preserving Britain’s constitutional monarchy. The queen and now King Charles III, he said, have acted as a stabilizing force against the gyrations of post-Brexit Britain — an anchor that does not exist in its former colonies.
“If you guys change your mind,” Mr. Blair said with a twinkle, “we’ll let you back.”
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