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September 3, 2024 - 10:00am
On the surface, there is something strangely conservative about Tony Blair these days. The experience of power seems to have left him with a melancholic awareness of its reality. In an interview with the Observer over the weekend, for example, the former prime minister argued that the most dangerous period which any leader faced was the moment they began to feel they knew how to do the job. “Experience makes you believe that you know more than you actually do,” he told Andrew Rawnsley, inadvertently making the old Burkean case for restraint and tentative evolution over the kind of bold reforms those from the “radical centre” usually demand.
Blair goes further than this. In his telling, it is only once a leader understands how little they know that they are able to govern effectively. Indeed, Blair observed, the tragedy of power is that by the time leaders have acquired the maturity of self-awareness, they have usually lost power because of their own hubris. And so the cycle continues. Blair believes he narrowly escaped this trap himself, acquiring the wisdom to govern only in his last few years of office, by which time the tragedy of Iraq had cost him much of his authority. “Then I realised just how much more complicated everything was,” he added.
Blair now also believes that the Civil Service is essentially unreformable, a bureaucracy naturally inclined to remain bureaucratic, and should be accepted as such. “You have to understand that you can’t really stop that happening,” he told Rawnsley. “My experience is that there is no reform of the system that is going to deliver you big change.” Blair is also convinced of the need for authority in government, arguing — in essence — that people are naturally inclined to want to be led. It’s hard to think of two more naturally conservative propositions.
Perhaps the most striking of these reflections on power, however, is Blair’s admission that the idea of history moving in one pre-ordained direction towards its liberal democratic “end” was, in retrospect, misguided. And yet even though the former prime minister accepts there was a “certain naivety” to the end of history narrative, he cannot help but frame this naivety in progressive terms. “I would also say that the naivety was to do with an exaggerated sense of the power of reason,” he told Rawnsley. “We might have been naive about the power of reason to drive people in the direction of greater liberalism and democracy and openness, but I don’t think we were wrong about the consequences of moving in the opposite direction.”
On the surface, then, Blair might now sound as though he has developed a gnarled old conservative shell, but in reality he remains as much of a radical liberal as ever. Strip away everything else and he still believes that “reason” lights the way towards a more liberal, democratic and open future. The journey to this end might be “more complicated” than he first assumed — involving occasional detours into the jungles of human emotion — but we cannot escape the reality of logic.
Yet to the real conservative, this belief remains as naive as Francis Fukuyama’s original thesis. It fails to address the central “trilemma” of our time, as the Harvard economist Dani Rodrik once put it: that liberalism, democracy and global “openness” are not “rational” but are instead competing ideals which must be balanced against each other. The more open and global we become, as Rodkrik observed, the less powerful our national democracies are. To govern is to choose. No matter how rational we are, we cannot escape this bind.
Tom McTague is UnHerd’s Political Editor. He is the author of Betting The House: The Inside Story of the 2017 Election.
TomMcTague
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SubscribeExcuses, excuses. I wonder what Top Job he is angling after that is important enough to sanitise his past?
He doesn’t need a ‘top job’. The TBI is working with 50 different countries and growing. I share as to cheer you up. (Full interview worth a read)
Head of Digital ID for every citizen in the world, starting with the UK. When he says people want to be “led” he means controlled. To Blair I say foxtrot oscar.
Check out his foundation’s dirty deal with Larry Ellison of Oracle to get his hands on our health data as a starter for 10.
He’s The Anti-Christ but not revealed as such yet.
‘…Blair observed, the tragedy of power is that by the time leaders have acquired the maturity of self-awareness, they have usually lost power because of their own hubris…’
Yeah, sure. Stalin was in power 29 years. Indira Gandhi 15 years. Merkel 16 years. Putin already 25 years. Many many such cases across the spectrum of free and authoritarian states.
When exactly did those guys “acquire the maturity of self-awareness” then?
With the exception of Merkel, they were able to keep themselves in power by greater or lesser thuggery. And Merkel proves Blair’s point!
And my point is this: it would be a huge leap of faith to say that a Blair born in Russia at the same time as Putin, would not have turned out a bigger thug than Putin. But I repeat my question in the specific case of Merkel: when exactly did she achieve enlightenment then?
And you if born in Syria, or Afghanistan perhaps, not someone who tired to migrate elsewhere?
Where do you want the scenarios to stop and start?
After the rational German public would not see any positive aspects of her open borders policy, I suspect. But as politicians approach the end of their careers, and prepare to write their memoirs, they tend to become reflective, and Merkel is a highly intelligent woman who from her background hugely values open society.
I think you are wrong on Blair incidentally. Democracy is in his blood, even if yiu profoundly disagree with his policies. There’s no democracy in Putin’s soul; more romantic belief in ancient Russia and power from above.
I’m not saying Blair has anti-democratic instincts – at least not the Blair we have, as opposed to the counterfactual Russian Blair. Exactly the same can be said about, for example, me of course. I’m a lot less certain about the democratic instincts of Starmer and others in his cabinet – time will tell. Blair was a genuine heavyweight superstar even though I didn’t like him or Brown at all. In comparison Starmer is a nonentity and his cabinet is pretty talentless. Regardless, it’s odds on they are going to attempt to skin us over the coming half decade. Again, time will tell how that works out. I think they are going to be rather distracted with events outside their control or experience (around technology) for most of their term.
Yes, apart from one or two the cabinet is alarmingly lightweight and emotionally driven
My reply has gone in the sin-bin even though I didn’t say anything untoward. I expect they will release it from jail, on parole of course, in a few hours.
That’s how the Russian people like it believe me.
“Democracy is in his blood, even if yiu profoundly disagree with his policies.”
If it is, he’s been infected with it against his will. Genuine democrats do not support the EU.
Read the Interview – he was referring to democratically elected leaders
Ha ha ha. Joke Joke !
“Blair now also believes that the Civil Service is essentially unreformable, a bureaucracy naturally inclined to remain bureaucratic, and should be accepted as such. “You have to understand that you can’t really stop that happening,” he told Rawnsley.”
If he’d read the Crosman Diaries (as I have recently – beats anything published in the last 20 years), he’d have known all about how the Civil Service behave in advance.
But the key job (and litmus test of an effective government) is the ability to get past the Civil Service blockers and actually get stuff done.
But what’s Blair’s answer ? Just give up. After, of course, making sure that the blockers in the Civil Service mainly agree with you.
But he’s partly right. At some point you have to break up the sclerotic bureaucracies and start again. Because it’s not reform they need, but reformation. Civil Service, NHS, the lot.
It could be said that the Johnson/Cummings disaster duo tried to make a start with the Civil Service problem. How far they’d have got if Covid hadn’t hit is anyone’s guess, but at least the problem was recognised. I fear it may be too late now, certainly without very severe political action and fallout.
Blair was without any question the worst thing that happened to this country in the last 80 years. He architected devolution (a disaster), mass immigration (a disaster), the embedding of Human Rights into every crack of every piece of legislation, in cahoots with his dreadful accomplice Lord Irvine, thereby eroding the supremacy of parliament (a disaster), the creation of the”supreme court” (a disaster – see previous), embarking on an illegal war in Iraq (a disaster – and illegal in the sense that he lied to parliament about the casus belli), the massive increase in house prices due to failure to build affordable homes (a disaster – although he did manage to assemble a £35m property portfolio for himself and his ghastly wife). I am sure that the rap sheet is much longer – these are simply the first things that leap to mind.
If there were ever a politician more deserving of a short rope and a long drop I cannot think of one (and to be fair the competition in this regard is pretty stiff) and I would personally be happy to pull the lever. In fact I’m sure if one raffled off the right to do so one could make a significant inroad into the national debt.
Utter nonsense. He made Labour into a sensible party, undone by Corbyn and it seems now, Starmer. And he made some sensible structural reforms, backed enterprise, kept tax rates down. Whilst Atlee sat by, allowing the extreme left to wreck the economy, introduce the appalling model for the NHS, etc etc. Then Wilson; Heath’s U turn, May…
Except you haven’t adressed any of the specifics raised in the rap sheet-a simple “Utter nonsense. He made Labour into a sensible party,” doesn’t wash.
Well yes, he did make Labour a sensible party. The problem is that this then enabled Labour to keep winning elections, giving Blair a decade to run around our institutions like an angry toddler, smashing anything he didn’t like the look of. And the sensible stuff he did were all things that the Tories would have done anyway.
It hasn’t stayed sensible for long.
Don’t hold back.
Tell us what you really think.
Joking aside, I think Tony Blair is like many that have come before him and significantly many who will come after.
I believe they whole heartedly think they are doing good. Doing what is, to them at any rate, the obvious right thinking thing to do. But like so many others, they have zero idea of what they are about to unleash.
The real sadness is we are now seeing the same misguided thinking all over again with Two Tier.
When will these learn?
Never.
I think you give too much credit to Blair in his ilk for altruistic motives. The truth is more likely that they become drunk with power from the moment they attain office and demonstrate that power by imposing their worldview on an electorate who never really signed up to its manifestations, as so ably and rightly listed by Santiago Excilio above. Conversely, their failure to curb and dominate the civil service bureaucracy is employed as a ready-made excuse for underperformance or lack of achievement when their power ends.
A complete contradiction, as usual with these bloviating analysis-free political anathema. “The truth is…….” some simplistic rubbish. Even I don’t think “he truth is that Lenin was evil” is a sufficient explanation of Marxist Leninism. Drunk with power and impotent at the same time…..
?????
A perfect example of bliovating by an expert!
Unintended consequences for the win.
Sorry. Was my response a bit of a cliche?
I just don’t think Blair is evil. Misguided and egotistical. But not evil.
There are evil doers out there. Alistair Campbell comes to mind.
Nah, I agree with you. Government that cares and attempts cradle to grave support is the devil.
“Never” is exactly right. It’s not in the nature of Utopians like blair and starmer to ever learn from history. The only way to prevent their wrecking nations is to keep them out of positions of power by any means necessary.
…the near total deregulation of the gambling industry…
This is a ridiculous diatribe with the usual benefit of 20:20 hindsight. The Conservatives were even more gung ho about the Iraq War. So you support the Socialist Workers and Greens do you?.
Political fashions and moods change, often radically. Devolution: the overwhelming majority of Scots support it, even if we might both consider the SNP government poor and often acting well beyond its formal powers.
But we can ask the British people whom they prefer, Tony Blair or Nigel Farage – I doubt it’s an answer you’d like.
YouGov has already done the work and apparently the British people prefer nigel farage to tony blair. In fact, farage is the most popular politician in the UK. Is that the answer you like?
By definition any commentary on the past comes with the benefit of hindsight. The Liberal Democrats were against the war; perhaps you recall? Also 16 conservative MPs voted against it despite the three line whip, after Blair lied to the HOC about weapons of mass destruction.
As for devolution, 25 years on the latest polling on whether devolution has been good for Scotland has only 50% saying yes, 25% saying no and the rest don’t know. Hardly an overwhelming majority. That’s down from 70% positive in 2009. So yes, I would agree that political moods and fashions change.
Utopia doen’t exist, who knew…
Politicians get to a certain point, then they settle for comfortable for their friends.
Blair forgets that most stumble or are dropped in to power and are no more suited to be “great” nor “good at it” than the beggar at the Palace gate. Like most who were booted out he overcomplicates a simple job. Just to rule justly and with favour to competence and hard work is most people’s expectation.
And you haven’t read the actual Interview. He talks about how unqualified democratic leaders often are, himself included. And the idea it’s a simple job shows you haven’t given it much thought either.
You are such a negative old dry balls.
There are always trade-offs. Progressives are just like other utopians in believing otherwise.
Agreed. It’s one of the things Thomas Sowell always talks about: all political “solutions” are in fact tradeoffs, and a refusal to admit this is the commonest political deceit there is.
I scrolled to the bottom of these comments just to read Champagne Socialist’s troll effort. Disappointing he’s not here.
Will mine be an adequate substitute.
Indeed. We cannot escape this bind. The Human condition, that is.
My reasoning often leads me to differ from Mr Blair, but not as much as it does with Snake Charmer and his lack of real ideas, judgement and insight.
Utopian Progressivism (the End of History), since it requires government of ever-increasing detail of human activity is antithetical to individual prosperity, or the “Life, Liberty and Pursuit of Happiness” ideal which founded America.
Progressivism guarantees slavery, requiring, as it does, an unelected oligarchy driving artificial constraints on life (such as carbon rationing), administered by an increasingly forceful intellectual elite, who have the temerity to imagine that they are a) the smartest and b) the wisest among the general population.
Progressivism pushes power up the political pyramid until you reach, not Utopia, but the North Korean model where every tiny detail of a menial life is driven by Dictator Kim.
Hence Progressivism is also antithetical to democracy, because a steeper pyramid of power means that there is no power of choice at all at the bottom. How can you risk Disinformation from contaminating the one true way of Reason?
Progressives either don’t know that their Utopia always ends in Tyranny – which makes them useful idiots – or they do know, which makes them wicked. I tend to put Blair in the ‘useful idiot’ camp.
And now we’ve got Dictator Keir and soon we’ll have our own Stasi too. That will be all those thousands of unofficial police he says he is going to enrol to keep control in neighbourhoods. It’s the old STASI.
One wonders how they will “earn” further employment after they control the hood.