Tony Blair urges leaders to ignore 'waves of populist opinion'

When Tony Blair first entered 10 Downing Street, he became Britain's youngest prime minister of the 20th century. He rode in with the Labour Party's landslide victory in 1997 and left a decade later as the party's longest-serving prime minister.

And now, Blair has written the kind of leadership guide he wishes he had on hand at the start of his government career. On Leadership: Lessons for the 21st Century — out Sept. 10 — urges leaders to ward off hubris and instead embrace maturity and humility. An entire chapter proclaims that "it's better to be respected than loved, feared or 'trusted.'" And he urges governments to better harness the use of technology, especially artificial intelligence, while he reserves some choice words for social media, which he says has "given birth to the era of the loudmouth."

"The first thing is, governing is difficult, right?" he told NPR's Steve Inskeep in an interview from London. "When you decide, you divide, and every decision you take, you will have people that oppose it."

Blair certainly lived that divisiveness during his time in government. He oversaw the Northern Ireland peace process and public-sector reform. He also led his country's response to the 9/11 attacks in the United States. His pro-American interventionism in Iraq made him increasingly unpopular.

In his interview with Morning Edition co-host Steve Inskeep, Blair spoke about his vision for leadership in the 21st century.

This interview has been lightly edited for length and clarity.

Interview highlights

Steve Inskeep: Why don't we just dive right in? Did you start this project with an idea that your party might have a new prime minister who needs advice by the time it came out?

Tony Blair: Frankly, I didn't. I mean, it was started some years ago and finished before the election. I'm very conscious of the fact that when you're a new prime minister, the last thing you want is one of the former prime ministers sitting on your shoulder giving you advice all the time. So it's not really advice to him, although obviously it's got relevance to the fact there's a new Labour government in the U.K. But it's really based not just on my 10 years experience as British prime minister, but in the work my institute does, the pressures and the types of things that you need to know if you want to try and get up the learning curve fast.

Inskeep: What do you think about the low esteem in which politicians are held as you're talking about politics almost as a calling or an avocation? And that's not the way a lot of people see it.

Blair: It's really tough today. The first thing is, governing is difficult, right? When you decide, you divide, and every decision you take, you will have people that oppose it. We live in a social media environment today which, in a way, it's got many positive things to it, but in terms of politics, it can be a plague, frankly, because it creates this very toxic environment in which everyone questions everyone's motives, their honesty, their integrity and so on. I think that secondly, we live in a world today where if you're leading a country, you've got to have a relationship with the citizens where, in a sense, you're being open with them about the problems. We don't live in a differential age anymore, which is a good thing, but it means people have also got to respect the fact these decisions are difficult and they've got at least to understand that we all have the responsibility to try and reach the right solution for a country's problems. And you can't just put a set of demands on the leader's desk and say, "Meet all of those."

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Inskeep: Let's talk a little bit about the recent history of your country, where a set of demands was placed on the leader's desk by the voters, the Brexit vote. And I think about this situation because this was an act that you personally opposed and spoke against. There was a referendum. People voted for it. A succession of conservative governments eventually did it. If I'm not mistaken, surveys now show that most people in the U.K. believe Brexit was a mistake, and yet the new government is not going to do anything about it, nor was the old government going to do anything about it. What do you make of that situation?

Blair: Well, to be fair, I think the new government will try and repair some of the damage and will try and repair the relationship with Europe. But you're right, they're not suggesting we reverse the decision. And even if, I think, probably a majority of people in the country do believe it was a mistake, there's a reluctance to go and revisit it because it was such a divisive time. The Brexit decision, the way it was taken, is itself an interesting example of why you've got to be careful in politics. This is why you need an honest conversation with the voters that the idea of having a referendum and deciding the entire future of the country on a one-day yes-no, in-out referendum on a subject of enormous complexity was really driven by a kind of populist sense of the people have got to decide. Yep, fine. But the consequences of that decision were enormous. And it's not democracy. This may seem a strange thing to say: Democracy isn't actually about finding out what the people want and just trying to do it. Democracy is about setting out a vision and a plan for the country and persuading people to follow it. And if they don't like it, they can put you out and elect someone else. But what you can't do is just be driven by waves of populist opinion of whatever sort, left or right.

Inskeep: Do you think that wave of populist opinion has crested and receded in the U.K.?

Blair: Yes, to a degree, because when I finished my time as prime minister, I was the third prime minister in almost 30 years. And when Keir Starmer became the Labour prime minister in the recent election in the U.K., he was the sixth prime minister in eight years. You can't run a country like that, I'm afraid, and succeed. So I think there is a big sense in the U.K., and this is to the advantage of the new government, that we need a period of stability and we need to do some long-term thinking because in the end, if you want to change a country and improve the country, you've got to take decisions that are not just short-term responses to emergencies but are long-term responses to the deep underlying problems.

Inskeep: Because you write about populism, I want to stay on this topic for a moment and look at the rest of Europe. You have a fascist government in Italy, you have right-wing parties in France and Germany that in recent weeks have not taken control of the country but made advances. What do those election results tell you?

Blair: Well, there's a big wave of dissatisfaction. And what I always say to people about populism is populists don't, on the whole, invent grievances. They exploit them. They tend to ride the anger rather than provide the answer. But it's important for those of us who oppose that type of short-term populist politics, you've got to provide answers to problems. So if there's a problem, there's no point in complaining about the fact there is a problem. You've got to sit down and work out the solution to it and a solution that's fair. In the countries you've mentioned, if you take Italy, for example, Prime Minister [Giorgia] Meloni, even though elected on a far-right platform, has actually significantly moderated in government. And in the recent French election, in the end the far-right-wing party did not win a majority. So I think even in those countries where there is strong populist sentiment, if you are able to provide a strong centrist alternative, most people will usually vote for it.

Inskeep: If I think about one common issue in country after country, it would be immigration. And I'd like to know as a centrist leader, the way you would want a democratic government to think about that problem.

Blair: I have a sort of very clear mantra around this: If you don't have rules, you get prejudices. And therefore, what's important is that you create an immigration system which people think has integrity, where you decide who comes into the country and who doesn't. I've put forward a series of proposals in the U.K. that would allow us, I think, to control that immigration properly while reaping the benefits of properly controlled immigration.

Inskeep: Politically speaking, does it almost not matter what the rules are so long as people perceive them as being enforced?

Blair: Well, I think in the end, it probably does matter. But you're right in the sense that the most important thing is that people want to know that whether you come into our country or not is a decision and not an action taken by the person wanting to come in without any say on the recipient countries.

Inskeep: This is an extraordinarily complicated issue. But you mentioned that you put forth proposals as a matter of principle. Who would you generally want to let in and not let in?

Blair: We want people who are going to strengthen your economy. You want people who are going to be comfortable and supportive of the way of life of your country. You want people who are going to make a contribution to the country. And you want people to come in as a result of a proper legal process.

Inskeep: You write that Donald Trump has endured up to now "against all the odds," which almost seems like a degree of respect, that he has maintained his political support for so long.

Blair: Well, it's a statement of fact. One of the things I always say to people in these situations, I don't get into the rights and wrongs of the American election. It's for you guys to decide who you elect as your president. It's not a wise thing for even a former prime minister to get into your politics, which is complicated enough for you guys rather than for outsiders. America, like many other countries — like my own country prior to Brexit — has been deeply divided. And I think the question for all of our democracies is how do you get back to a center of gravity in politics, where there's a lot of unity and common working and people prepared to understand each other's point of view and disagree with each other respectfully. And that's the type of politics, obviously, I would like to see.

The broadcast version of this story was produced by Lilly Quiroz. The digital version was edited by Obed Manuel.