PREVIEW： Brokenomics ｜ Tony Blair - On Leadership
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Summary
Tony Blair's new book, The Art of Leadership: How To Be a Great Leader, is out now, and it's actually quite good. It's not about his time in office, not about party politics, but about the art of leadership, how you do it. And it's surprisingly good.
Transcript
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Hello, and welcome to Brokernomics. Now, as you know, this show is about the collapse of systems,
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not just economic, but geopolitical, political, and all of those things. So I thought it'd be
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good to speak to somebody who really knows about leadership at the absolute highest level. So I
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thought, who do I know who has run a country? And then I thought, ah, me old mucker Tony Blair.
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Tony, are you on the line? Okay, we might be having some technical issues. I think my producer
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is just getting Tony on the line, and as soon as he comes through, we go into the interview.
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But in the meanwhile, I do have his book here that he's just written, which I've made a number
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of notes on. So I thought it might be worth to go through this book, because, well, he's written
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about leadership. Now, this isn't an autobiography. It is not about his time in office. It's not about
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party politics. But what it is about is the art of leadership, how you do it. And it is surprisingly,
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actually, quite good. This is not to say that I think that Tony Blair was a good Prime Minister.
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I think that he was absolutely ruinous for this country. Looking back on it now, I do have to
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wonder whether this country would have been quite as ruined if it was somebody else in power. Because,
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of course, you look at the Anglosphere. You look at Canada, Australia, New Zealand, and America,
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and all of them have gone to the dogs at about the same time as well. So clearly, there is something
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in the globalist waters which is steering in this direction. But undoubtedly, the effect of Tony Blair
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was awful for this country. So, and even though he rarely mentions policy examples in here, when he does,
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I disagree with him 100%. So, for example, he highlights what he believes to be the perfect policy,
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which was the COVID policy era, and the lockdown. So he considers that basically an example of perfect
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policy, which is an anathema to me. If you've been watching my show for a while, you know that
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that was what radicalised me. So I disagree with that. He also uses Brexit as an example of a bad
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policy. So basically, whenever he gets, and he doesn't do this very often, but when he does get
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down to the policy level, he has a take which is basically 180 of what I would give you. Nevertheless,
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most of the book is actually just practical advice on how to be a leader. And he does that extremely
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well. And the book is basically written as if it is to be given to a new world leader or somebody
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who is about to become a world leader. Now, you might think, OK, well, there are 167 countries in
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the world. This book, what is this book? This book costs 25 quid. So he's presumably not doing it for
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the 4,175 pounds of just that. This book, I think, is suitable for anybody who wants to understand the
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mind of Blair, why he was such an effective politician. And actually, this book should be
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read by anyone who is in a senior leadership position, or expects themselves to find themselves
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in a senior leadership position, because it gives so much, by the way, of practical and helpful
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advice on just the mechanics of being a senior leader.
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Now, of course, what Tony Blair did, and actually, before I move on, I'd best cover what
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I dislike about Tony Blair so much. And reading this book, I'm now starting to realise that this
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country basically never stood a chance back in 1997, it details how driven and focused he was
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to enact the change that he wanted to make. And he comes back to this repeatedly about how he was
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pushing a central agenda in order to change the way that the country functions. And he was looking
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to do it in a way that was unreversible. So basically, what that means is that he was
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he was reorganising the system of the state, so that his friends and people who thought like him,
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people who shared his assumptions, were going to be the decision makers in perpetuity,
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regardless of whether he was in office or not. And after his almost 10 years in government,
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he had managed to achieve that. I mean, there were many, many examples, he took every aspect
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of things that could normally be in ministerial control, and he pushed them out to quangos,
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he pushed stuff out to the newly created Supreme Court, and he set and other regulators,
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Ofcom, he did it with a whole bunch of aspects of state power, he actually took them out directly
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of state hands, where a later government could have simply issued a decree, and had the policy
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agenda of these things changed. And he put them in separate autonomous organisations,
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staffed and managed and run by people who, like I say, shared all of his assumptions.
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So that even if you now get a right-wing government come into power, which of course we haven't had
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a right-wing government since Tony Blair's days, because you know, the Conservatives were a very
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left-wing party, that was, that's probably the other of his great achievements, nothing gets undone,
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or at least it is significantly more difficult to undo the damage that he did. So that's why I have such
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a problem. But I acknowledge that he is an absolutely masterful politician.
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If you are looking to go into politics, you should absolutely go onto YouTube and just start watching
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his old speeches. The simple art of delivering a political speech, he just did it better than
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really anyone else I can think of. And in fact, I can't think of anybody who's done a better job
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in terms of the ABC mechanics of being a successful politician. I mean, even little things. I mean,
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I don't want to go too much into tangents here, but he understood that when he was being filmed,
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giving a political speech that the TV people wanted good footage to put in their clips for the nightly news.
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So when he was talking about something that he wanted them to put on the nightly news,
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he would be facing the camera and smiling and doing the Blair hand gestures and all the rest of it.
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And when he was talking about something that he didn't want them to put in the news, he would start
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leaning down and scrutinising on his notes because he knew that that would make bad TV and therefore
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those would not be the clips that would be used on the nightly news. It's little subtleties like that.
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And there's so many of them that just makes it essential to study Blair the politician.
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And as for what Blair is doing in this book, he's doing this art of leadership stuff.
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Now, there is actually quite a lot of ink has been spilled on the subject of leadership,
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perhaps not so much in recent years. But the study of the art of power has a long bedigree
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with some distinguished writers. Many of them are actually on our side of things because they're not
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modern writers, they're pre the whatever this era is. I'll tell you who's good for that. The former
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guest of this show, Nima Parvini, he has done a book called The Populist Delusions, and then the
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follow up, which he will be annoyed that I've forgotten, but blah, blah, blah. Anyway, he's written
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a couple of recent books on this thing, the art of leadership and how power works and how power is
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conveyed. And you will see from that that there are citations going back through. Prophets of doom,
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that was it. There are many authors who have looked at this thing about the sort of dynamic
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of power. And even going further back, I mean, Machiavelli, for example, which he kind of makes
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a reference to in here. This is a long studied thing, and I don't get the impression that Blair has
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read any of them. He appears to have discovered these rules of leadership for himself and then
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written a book about it. And it happens to be in line with, you know, all of these great thinkers
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on this subject. So with that, while we're trying to get Tone back on the line, my producer is waving
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at me saying that apparently there's some sort of issue, but we'll get Tone back on the line soon.
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I'll start going through the book. And as you can see, I made a number of notes,
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so I will try and keep it brief, but let's see if we can pick out what's going on inside the mind
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of this man. So the first bit that I wanted to highlight is he talks about how governments have
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been around forever, of course, but the 20th century saw an unprecedented expansion in what
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they do and what the public expects of them. So he acknowledges that the state has grown to astonishing
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proportions of what it used to be. The state used to be something like 15 percent of GDP pre-World War
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One, and now it's at least 50 percent. But if you include all of the government contracts and all
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the things that are dependent on government funding, even if they go further and include all the things
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that are tightly regulated and therefore very much within the orbit of government, the government makes
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up the big majority of all GDP at this stage. It has become a behemoth. And he acknowledges that it
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has become so big, although he never gives any qualm about the fact that it has got to that size. He
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says people now alarm their government to organise and fund the education of the children, provide care
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when they're sick and the financial support from their role. So basically he's making what he then
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goes on to say, the reality is that this is here to stay and it's a significant part of how our lives
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are led. He doesn't acknowledge that there could be any rowing back on this, even though the numbers
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clearly don't add up, as we talked about in Brokeconomics a number of times. But I wanted to throw
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that in there as a starting point that he does not see the size of the state as in any way something
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which is out of control or even something which is undesirable. It is simply something that needs
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to be managed well. So having said that, what are you supposed to do as a leader?
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And he thinks about it again quite differently to the way that most of us would think about it. Most
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of us would say, well the purpose of a leader is to provide what it is that the people want,
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what is right for a people, its culture, its identity, which is not necessarily just GDP go up.
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I mean you want a little bit of GDP go up, but not at the expense of everything that is culturally
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significant and important to you. And no, he has a very different take. I'll read you a section.
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Tony says, I love the old line of Henry Ford, but when asked about giving people what they wanted,
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he says, if I had asked people what they wanted, they would have said faster horses.
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It goes on to say, what applies in business also applies in politics. He absolutely does not see
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politics as giving people what they want, but he sees politics as him deciding what the people should
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want and then giving them that. And his cop-out on this is that, well, if you don't like, because
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I'm here to lead, I'm not here to care about what you think, and if you don't like it, well you can just
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not elect me the next time round and somebody else can have a go.
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Of course, the part of the genius of Blair is because he managed, through his skill as a politician,
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he managed to mould even the Conservative Party into being, well, David Cameron himself described
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himself as the heir to Blair. Cameron saw himself as emulating Blair. In fact, I knew a lot of the
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Tory shadow ministers, later ministers at that time, and they all idolised him. They described
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themselves as blue Blairites, they actively wanted to be like him. But my criticism of,
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well, not just Cameron actually, but all of the Tory's is they only understood the surface level of
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what Blair was about. The surface level is the good politics, the presentation, the messaging, all of
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that kind of stuff. What Blair was actually about is what he describes in this book, which is driving
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through a change programme and using all of that other stuff as a shield over the change programme
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that you are pushing relentlessly. And the Toys never understood that aspect of it, they just copied
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the superficial aspects of it. And you know this because they became increasingly more adrift to the
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point of, you know, when we got to, you know, Rishi Sunak. I mean, can you think of anything that Rishi
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Sunak achieved? I mean, the only thing that I can think of that he achieved while he was in power was
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the lifetime ban on people who are currently 12 or something from ever being able to smoke by
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raising the age limit every year, which is absurd. I don't know how they're going to make that work.
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But we had a conservative party that was completely in adrift because they didn't understand the
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actual core message of this book. So right, let's dig into what the core message is. He thinks that,
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you know, you know, you're there, that the leader is there to lead and we're all going to end up doing
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what he wants. And he talks about this process of driving forward. This is quite an interesting quote.
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It is essential the leader does know where they're going. They're driving the bus. Drive it with purpose
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and speed and the passengers will be sat behind the driver, giving unwanted or misplaced advice,
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with varying degrees of politeness, but nevertheless sitting in their seats. If for one moment the bus
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driver stops to ask for directions, the passengers will get off and start discussing it amongst themselves
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and believe me, they will never get back on that bus. This builds up in some of the following quotes
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that I'm going to give you. He's all about driving that change and never letting it slow down.
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So the early chapter, chapter two, is talking about making the centre strong. He acknowledges here that
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politics is quite a weird profession because in no other profession could you get to the senior most
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levels with having zero experience of the thing that you're trying to do. Whereas it is entirely
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possible for somebody with no experience of anything useful, and this happens all the time obviously,
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for somebody to rise to a position of extraordinary power. So he acknowledges that,
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which is a good point. Then he goes on to talking about, okay, how do you make that
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centre strong? And he starts with an interesting, but actually this is absolutely right what he goes on
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to say. You might think this is a weird diversion, but actually it's not. He talks about how when he
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was leader of the opposition in the UK and he went to visit the White House, President Clinton at that
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time. And apparently Clinton said to him in their meeting, remind me to tell you something really
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important before you leave. And Blair was quite excited about this. He thought he was going to
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have some deep, great secret of state imparted to him. And so just as he's leaving, he reminds
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Clinton and says, okay, what is this great nugget of political wisdom that I need to know?
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And Clinton tells him, whoever runs your schedule is the most important person in your world as leader.
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You need time to think, you need time to study, you need time to get things done that you came
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to leadership to do. You need personal time, all of that stuff. And he says, if you lose control of
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the schedule, you will fail. Blair talks about how he's a little bit underwhelmed with this advice when
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you know, Clinton is telling him, you know, managing your schedule is, is, is the most important
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goal. No, actually that is, that is exactly right. I've been in a number of senior leadership positions.
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And if you just turn up and react to events, it is entirely possible to be busy the entire day
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and achieve next to nothing apart from firefighting. A lot of small business people
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get into this situation once they've grown their business to a certain size.
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They're there constantly reacting to stuff. If you are going to be a leader,
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you need to be very ruthless with your schedule. And if you're the, if you're at this level of
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leadership, where you're not running your own schedule, but you've got somebody to run your
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schedule for you. He's right. It is of the utmost importance that that person is of like,
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is of the highest caliber. So that you are, that you're given your personal time, you're given your
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space to think, you're not tied up in meetings too much. He talks about this person has to be
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a strong character who can say no to people all the time. No, you can't have the leader's time. No,
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you can't have access. Who can say to event organizers, he's only going to be there for an hour,
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and then he's going to have to leave. Although he does say that this person should also have the
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nows to realize that sometimes there are certain events that you do need to be there all day,
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and they're supposed to know the difference. I wondered if that was slipped in there as a
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reference to Rishi Sunak, who of course, one of the most disastrous aspects of his recent
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election campaign was that he went to the D-Day celebrations for a couple of hours,
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and then he just left and did 90 of the interview. So I wondered if that was a reference to that.
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But yeah, schedule is absolutely crucial for leaders. And if you are operating at the level
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where you have somebody managing your schedule, make sure that person is a high caliber person who knows
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how to give you the time to do the stuff that you need to do, because otherwise it will all get
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swallowed by meetings from evening to night. So you might think that was a strange one to put up
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front and to put Labour so much importance on, but he is absolutely correct on this. He then goes on to
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talking about what it was that made him so effective as a leader. And this is some core stuff. This is
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why, let's say the Lotus Eaters ever set up a political party. If it ever looked like we were
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getting to the stage where we were destined for high office, I would absolutely insist that everyone
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at ministerial level and above reads this book, because he talks about, okay, how do you actually
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deliver? And he talks about you have to drive the key aspects of your agenda. And what he did,
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and this is a model that has now been replicated widely across the world, and in fact this is what
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the other estimate I should talk about in this book is an advert for the Tony Blair Institute. So
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the Tony Blair Institute is an enormous think tank. It is probably the largest think tank in the world
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today, and what it does is it sells very high-priced services to world leaders. Quite often they're
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African dictators, but they can be others as well. And one of the core skill sets that he's going to
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be imparting in there is how you structure the office of leaders so that the stuff you actually
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want to get done gets done. And he spells it out here briefly. There are other books that you can read,
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such as his former chief of staff or lead strategist or something was a guy called Michael Barber,
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who wrote a book, Deliverology. If you want to get into the level you can go and read that. But his
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brief summary of how it works is he created separate units, the policy, strategy, communication and
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delivery units. Let me go through them because this is key. The delivery unit concept is what we're best
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known for. And it focuses on, well, as you can imagine, delivery speaks for itself.
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He comes back to this, so I will come back to it as well. The policy unit that tracks government policy
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and it measures, it suggests improvement and it measures. The strategic unit is doing that long arc
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thinking of where ultimately do we want to get to, which then obviously filters down to the delivery
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unit once the policies have been derived. And the communications unit, which is the last unit,
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which is vital because you need to be able to persuade people that the things that you're doing
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are in their interests. And it goes back to his point about driving the bus. You need to be setting
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the agenda so that they are always reacting to you. You are not reacting to events.
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That is very good advice. If you are in some sort of leadership position, even if you're just a thought
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leader on a social media platform or whatever it is, don't respond to what other people are putting out.
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Now, well, unless it makes a point you want to make for you, you need to always be putting forward
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what you believe is the right thing to do or the right policy or the right argument.
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Don't argue with them and let them respond to you. Don't respond the other way around. You have
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to be the one driving. So that's a brief summary of how he did it, but he does get into more detail
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of how it's done. And then his closing thought on this is make the center strong. And this is one
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of the few words in the book he's decided to fully capitalize and stick an explanation mark behind.
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It is that driven change. Okay. So let's get into the nuts and bolts of running this operation as a
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leader. He's got a chapter on prioritization and he says, and in this chapter, he's basically saying,
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look, try and do everything and you will likely do nothing. And he then barefacedly
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uses an old joke about the devil and compares himself to the devil. This is quite interesting.
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So he recounts the old joke. The old joke is that a bunch of souls arrive outside the pearly
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gates in heaven and they're waiting to go in. But before they go in, the devil intercepts them.
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And the devil says, look, I appreciate you on your way into heaven, but I just want you to know that I'm
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a greatly maligned character. And I think that you should at least see what hell is
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for yourself. Just come and have a look and then I'll bring you back here.
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Just check it out. Just see what you think. So they agree. The devil takes them to hell and
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it is raucous parties, lots of people having fun, lots of debauchery, you know, is a bit wild,
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but it looks kind of interesting. And then the devil takes them back and and lets them have a look at
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heaven. And in heaven, it's people just sort of sat around quietly talking in hushed tones to each
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other. You know, maybe they'd be meditating, maybe, maybe reading a good book.
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And after having seen this, the the group of souls
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find themselves stood in front of St. Peter and they say, well, thank you very much for offering
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us heaven. But we've decided actually we would we would rather have hell.
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So they go down to hell. When they get down to hell, suddenly it's very different.
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People are screaming. And, you know, these newly arrived souls, they they confront the devil and they
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And the devil says to them, oh, yes, you have to understand that before I was campaigning,
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but now I'm governing. Blair recites that old joke before immediately going on to say,
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well, that's basically what I did in order to get elected. And he gives his anecdote.
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When I first arrived in Downing Street as a new prime minister, I was met by the cabinet secretary,
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who is the very senior leader of the civil service.
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And he told me that he had been reading the manifesto and drawing up plans for implementation.
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And Blair says how alarmed he was by that, because he had to explain to the cabinet secretary
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that what you think are the priorities having read the manifesto are not actually my priorities.
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I have a different set of priorities. So he's so he's directly compared himself to the devil in this old joke.
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And it is very true. The things that Blair ran on platitudes.
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An absolutely steel tipped agenda, which I've already talked about before, which is to transfer the levers of power
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He saw himself in that old old devil joke, because I don't know quite if he realizes how that's true.
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Yeah, I'm going to highlight this bit here in the following chapter where he's talking about good policy.
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So you work out what the best outcomes will be.
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But in Blair's mind, there is a correct answer.
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And that correct answer is whatever drives the metrics that he wants to see driven
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So it could be, you know, we want immigration up.
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Well, it's because it will drive the end result which he wants, which is GDP to go up.
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You achieve that through the policy of driving up immigration.
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And what are the politics that you sell that with?
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Well, you can just start calling everybody who disagrees if you're racist or whatever it is.
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But there is always the correct and right solution.
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Now, Blair continues this thinking to this day.
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Whenever you hear Tony Blair talk about something, he always talks about as if the thing that he wants
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It is simply a question of whether we get there smoothly and efficiently or whether we get there
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And the example that he says here, I often used to say in cabinet or in our discussion with close
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advisors, let's first out work out what the right answer is.
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And this is also where he starts to talk about COVID and about how COVID was the perfect policy.
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Although he does acknowledge that you have to be aware of
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the concerns that come with some of this stuff.
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So the summary that I gave of his view of GDP go up.
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The policy is immigration goes up to achieve the goal.
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He does acknowledge a deficit in the thinking about immigration later in the book.
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Basically, he says that if you push too far, too fast,
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And therefore, you need to acknowledge those concerns.
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Let's move on to his chapter about chapter seven, where he talks about democracy.
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Now, what he's doing here is he's addressing the criticism.
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The Tony Blair Institute, as I talked about big, big think tank.
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That's where most of his fee income comes from.
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whether a leader is operating in a Western style democracy,
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a managed form of democracy or a benevolent autocracy,
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or is just simply a strong man, it's always about delivery.
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OK, before I go on with the point that he's driving at here,
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I do just have to acknowledge that I find it interesting
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that he thinks there is a difference between Western style democracy
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Is it managed democracy what they have in Helldivers?
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I think that was the thing that came up in there.
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People who have views that are insufficiently aligned with what the regime wants
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