The Podcast of the Lotus Eaters - October 01, 2024


PREVIEW： Brokenomics ｜ Tony Blair - On Leadership


Episode Stats

Length

31 minutes

Words per Minute

158.26173

Word Count

5,016

Sentence Count

279

Hate Speech Sentences

1


Summary


Transcript

00:00:00.000 Hello, and welcome to Brokernomics. Now, as you know, this show is about the collapse of systems,
00:00:06.280 not just economic, but geopolitical, political, and all of those things. So I thought it'd be
00:00:12.140 good to speak to somebody who really knows about leadership at the absolute highest level. So I
00:00:17.500 thought, who do I know who has run a country? And then I thought, ah, me old mucker Tony Blair.
00:00:23.420 Tony, are you on the line? Okay, we might be having some technical issues. I think my producer
00:00:31.620 is just getting Tony on the line, and as soon as he comes through, we go into the interview.
00:00:36.260 But in the meanwhile, I do have his book here that he's just written, which I've made a number
00:00:42.760 of notes on. So I thought it might be worth to go through this book, because, well, he's written
00:00:48.280 about leadership. Now, this isn't an autobiography. It is not about his time in office. It's not about
00:00:56.320 party politics. But what it is about is the art of leadership, how you do it. And it is surprisingly,
00:01:05.700 actually, quite good. This is not to say that I think that Tony Blair was a good Prime Minister.
00:01:11.340 I think that he was absolutely ruinous for this country. Looking back on it now, I do have to
00:01:17.900 wonder whether this country would have been quite as ruined if it was somebody else in power. Because,
00:01:23.120 of course, you look at the Anglosphere. You look at Canada, Australia, New Zealand, and America,
00:01:27.440 and all of them have gone to the dogs at about the same time as well. So clearly, there is something
00:01:31.200 in the globalist waters which is steering in this direction. But undoubtedly, the effect of Tony Blair
00:01:38.860 was awful for this country. So, and even though he rarely mentions policy examples in here, when he does,
00:01:49.140 I disagree with him 100%. So, for example, he highlights what he believes to be the perfect policy,
00:01:56.080 which was the COVID policy era, and the lockdown. So he considers that basically an example of perfect
00:02:02.620 policy, which is an anathema to me. If you've been watching my show for a while, you know that
00:02:08.900 that was what radicalised me. So I disagree with that. He also uses Brexit as an example of a bad
00:02:16.660 policy. So basically, whenever he gets, and he doesn't do this very often, but when he does get
00:02:21.700 down to the policy level, he has a take which is basically 180 of what I would give you. Nevertheless,
00:02:29.300 most of the book is actually just practical advice on how to be a leader. And he does that extremely
00:02:35.040 well. And the book is basically written as if it is to be given to a new world leader or somebody
00:02:42.960 who is about to become a world leader. Now, you might think, OK, well, there are 167 countries in
00:02:48.020 the world. This book, what is this book? This book costs 25 quid. So he's presumably not doing it for
00:02:57.020 the 4,175 pounds of just that. This book, I think, is suitable for anybody who wants to understand the
00:03:04.060 mind of Blair, why he was such an effective politician. And actually, this book should be
00:03:08.720 read by anyone who is in a senior leadership position, or expects themselves to find themselves
00:03:15.400 in a senior leadership position, because it gives so much, by the way, of practical and helpful
00:03:22.480 advice on just the mechanics of being a senior leader.
00:03:29.400 Now, of course, what Tony Blair did, and actually, before I move on, I'd best cover what
00:03:34.440 I dislike about Tony Blair so much. And reading this book, I'm now starting to realise that this
00:03:41.820 country basically never stood a chance back in 1997, it details how driven and focused he was
00:03:50.740 to enact the change that he wanted to make. And he comes back to this repeatedly about how he was
00:03:56.360 pushing a central agenda in order to change the way that the country functions. And he was looking
00:04:06.280 to do it in a way that was unreversible. So basically, what that means is that he was
00:04:12.120 he was reorganising the system of the state, so that his friends and people who thought like him,
00:04:23.280 people who shared his assumptions, were going to be the decision makers in perpetuity,
00:04:30.000 regardless of whether he was in office or not. And after his almost 10 years in government,
00:04:36.920 he had managed to achieve that. I mean, there were many, many examples, he took every aspect
00:04:43.860 of things that could normally be in ministerial control, and he pushed them out to quangos,
00:04:51.660 he pushed stuff out to the newly created Supreme Court, and he set and other regulators,
00:04:57.940 Ofcom, he did it with a whole bunch of aspects of state power, he actually took them out directly
00:05:03.920 of state hands, where a later government could have simply issued a decree, and had the policy
00:05:12.980 agenda of these things changed. And he put them in separate autonomous organisations,
00:05:19.860 staffed and managed and run by people who, like I say, shared all of his assumptions.
00:05:26.620 So that even if you now get a right-wing government come into power, which of course we haven't had
00:05:33.900 a right-wing government since Tony Blair's days, because you know, the Conservatives were a very
00:05:40.060 left-wing party, that was, that's probably the other of his great achievements, nothing gets undone,
00:05:46.300 or at least it is significantly more difficult to undo the damage that he did. So that's why I have such
00:05:53.740 a problem. But I acknowledge that he is an absolutely masterful politician.
00:06:01.820 If you are looking to go into politics, you should absolutely go onto YouTube and just start watching
00:06:09.740 his old speeches. The simple art of delivering a political speech, he just did it better than
00:06:16.460 really anyone else I can think of. And in fact, I can't think of anybody who's done a better job
00:06:23.660 in terms of the ABC mechanics of being a successful politician. I mean, even little things. I mean,
00:06:30.460 I don't want to go too much into tangents here, but he understood that when he was being filmed,
00:06:36.620 giving a political speech that the TV people wanted good footage to put in their clips for the nightly news.
00:06:49.500 So when he was talking about something that he wanted them to put on the nightly news,
00:06:55.260 he would be facing the camera and smiling and doing the Blair hand gestures and all the rest of it.
00:07:02.540 And when he was talking about something that he didn't want them to put in the news, he would start
00:07:06.780 leaning down and scrutinising on his notes because he knew that that would make bad TV and therefore
00:07:12.060 those would not be the clips that would be used on the nightly news. It's little subtleties like that.
00:07:17.900 And there's so many of them that just makes it essential to study Blair the politician.
00:07:27.100 And as for what Blair is doing in this book, he's doing this art of leadership stuff.
00:07:31.900 Now, there is actually quite a lot of ink has been spilled on the subject of leadership,
00:07:40.540 perhaps not so much in recent years. But the study of the art of power has a long bedigree
00:07:49.420 with some distinguished writers. Many of them are actually on our side of things because they're not
00:07:55.900 modern writers, they're pre the whatever this era is. I'll tell you who's good for that. The former
00:08:03.820 guest of this show, Nima Parvini, he has done a book called The Populist Delusions, and then the
00:08:10.220 follow up, which he will be annoyed that I've forgotten, but blah, blah, blah. Anyway, he's written
00:08:15.660 a couple of recent books on this thing, the art of leadership and how power works and how power is
00:08:22.540 conveyed. And you will see from that that there are citations going back through. Prophets of doom,
00:08:26.860 that was it. There are many authors who have looked at this thing about the sort of dynamic
00:08:31.260 of power. And even going further back, I mean, Machiavelli, for example, which he kind of makes
00:08:35.980 a reference to in here. This is a long studied thing, and I don't get the impression that Blair has
00:08:42.300 read any of them. He appears to have discovered these rules of leadership for himself and then
00:08:51.900 written a book about it. And it happens to be in line with, you know, all of these great thinkers
00:08:56.780 on this subject. So with that, while we're trying to get Tone back on the line, my producer is waving
00:09:02.620 at me saying that apparently there's some sort of issue, but we'll get Tone back on the line soon.
00:09:07.500 I'll start going through the book. And as you can see, I made a number of notes,
00:09:09.980 so I will try and keep it brief, but let's see if we can pick out what's going on inside the mind
00:09:16.140 of this man. So the first bit that I wanted to highlight is he talks about how governments have
00:09:24.060 been around forever, of course, but the 20th century saw an unprecedented expansion in what
00:09:28.780 they do and what the public expects of them. So he acknowledges that the state has grown to astonishing
00:09:35.180 proportions of what it used to be. The state used to be something like 15 percent of GDP pre-World War
00:09:43.340 One, and now it's at least 50 percent. But if you include all of the government contracts and all
00:09:49.740 the things that are dependent on government funding, even if they go further and include all the things
00:09:55.500 that are tightly regulated and therefore very much within the orbit of government, the government makes
00:10:00.860 up the big majority of all GDP at this stage. It has become a behemoth. And he acknowledges that it
00:10:10.220 has become so big, although he never gives any qualm about the fact that it has got to that size. He
00:10:16.380 says people now alarm their government to organise and fund the education of the children, provide care
00:10:21.260 when they're sick and the financial support from their role. So basically he's making what he then
00:10:25.260 goes on to say, the reality is that this is here to stay and it's a significant part of how our lives
00:10:30.620 are led. He doesn't acknowledge that there could be any rowing back on this, even though the numbers
00:10:35.740 clearly don't add up, as we talked about in Brokeconomics a number of times. But I wanted to throw
00:10:40.060 that in there as a starting point that he does not see the size of the state as in any way something
00:10:45.100 which is out of control or even something which is undesirable. It is simply something that needs
00:10:49.500 to be managed well. So having said that, what are you supposed to do as a leader?
00:10:59.340 And he thinks about it again quite differently to the way that most of us would think about it. Most
00:11:02.620 of us would say, well the purpose of a leader is to provide what it is that the people want,
00:11:09.260 what is right for a people, its culture, its identity, which is not necessarily just GDP go up.
00:11:20.460 I mean you want a little bit of GDP go up, but not at the expense of everything that is culturally
00:11:24.460 significant and important to you. And no, he has a very different take. I'll read you a section.
00:11:33.020 Tony says, I love the old line of Henry Ford, but when asked about giving people what they wanted,
00:11:39.660 he says, if I had asked people what they wanted, they would have said faster horses.
00:11:45.500 It goes on to say, what applies in business also applies in politics. He absolutely does not see
00:11:52.140 politics as giving people what they want, but he sees politics as him deciding what the people should
00:11:59.420 want and then giving them that. And his cop-out on this is that, well, if you don't like, because
00:12:06.860 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
00:12:14.140 not elect me the next time round and somebody else can have a go.
00:12:18.220 Of course, the part of the genius of Blair is because he managed, through his skill as a politician,
00:12:25.580 he managed to mould even the Conservative Party into being, well, David Cameron himself described
00:12:32.220 himself as the heir to Blair. Cameron saw himself as emulating Blair. In fact, I knew a lot of the
00:12:42.780 Tory shadow ministers, later ministers at that time, and they all idolised him. They described
00:12:49.180 themselves as blue Blairites, they actively wanted to be like him. But my criticism of,
00:12:58.460 well, not just Cameron actually, but all of the Tory's is they only understood the surface level of
00:13:03.100 what Blair was about. The surface level is the good politics, the presentation, the messaging, all of
00:13:12.220 that kind of stuff. What Blair was actually about is what he describes in this book, which is driving
00:13:17.340 through a change programme and using all of that other stuff as a shield over the change programme
00:13:24.380 that you are pushing relentlessly. And the Toys never understood that aspect of it, they just copied
00:13:31.260 the superficial aspects of it. And you know this because they became increasingly more adrift to the
00:13:38.060 point of, you know, when we got to, you know, Rishi Sunak. I mean, can you think of anything that Rishi
00:13:45.980 Sunak achieved? I mean, the only thing that I can think of that he achieved while he was in power was
00:13:53.740 the lifetime ban on people who are currently 12 or something from ever being able to smoke by
00:14:00.460 raising the age limit every year, which is absurd. I don't know how they're going to make that work.
00:14:05.420 But we had a conservative party that was completely in adrift because they didn't understand the
00:14:11.980 actual core message of this book. So right, let's dig into what the core message is. He thinks that,
00:14:16.540 you know, you know, you're there, that the leader is there to lead and we're all going to end up doing
00:14:22.940 what he wants. And he talks about this process of driving forward. This is quite an interesting quote.
00:14:31.980 It is essential the leader does know where they're going. They're driving the bus. Drive it with purpose
00:14:38.860 and speed and the passengers will be sat behind the driver, giving unwanted or misplaced advice,
00:14:44.860 with varying degrees of politeness, but nevertheless sitting in their seats. If for one moment the bus
00:14:52.860 driver stops to ask for directions, the passengers will get off and start discussing it amongst themselves
00:14:59.260 and believe me, they will never get back on that bus. This builds up in some of the following quotes
00:15:08.540 that I'm going to give you. He's all about driving that change and never letting it slow down.
00:15:15.260 So the early chapter, chapter two, is talking about making the centre strong. He acknowledges here that
00:15:24.220 politics is quite a weird profession because in no other profession could you get to the senior most
00:15:30.700 levels with having zero experience of the thing that you're trying to do. Whereas it is entirely
00:15:38.380 possible for somebody with no experience of anything useful, and this happens all the time obviously,
00:15:44.540 for somebody to rise to a position of extraordinary power. So he acknowledges that,
00:15:49.340 which is a good point. Then he goes on to talking about, okay, how do you make that
00:16:01.020 centre strong? And he starts with an interesting, but actually this is absolutely right what he goes on
00:16:06.620 to say. You might think this is a weird diversion, but actually it's not. He talks about how when he
00:16:11.260 was leader of the opposition in the UK and he went to visit the White House, President Clinton at that
00:16:17.340 time. And apparently Clinton said to him in their meeting, remind me to tell you something really
00:16:23.980 important before you leave. And Blair was quite excited about this. He thought he was going to
00:16:28.380 have some deep, great secret of state imparted to him. And so just as he's leaving, he reminds
00:16:35.420 Clinton and says, okay, what is this great nugget of political wisdom that I need to know?
00:16:39.900 And Clinton tells him, whoever runs your schedule is the most important person in your world as leader.
00:16:48.620 You need time to think, you need time to study, you need time to get things done that you came
00:16:54.060 to leadership to do. You need personal time, all of that stuff. And he says, if you lose control of
00:16:58.940 the schedule, you will fail. Blair talks about how he's a little bit underwhelmed with this advice when
00:17:04.380 you know, Clinton is telling him, you know, managing your schedule is, is, is the most important
00:17:09.180 goal. No, actually that is, that is exactly right. I've been in a number of senior leadership positions.
00:17:19.180 And if you just turn up and react to events, it is entirely possible to be busy the entire day
00:17:26.780 and achieve next to nothing apart from firefighting. A lot of small business people
00:17:32.940 get into this situation once they've grown their business to a certain size.
00:17:38.620 They're there constantly reacting to stuff. If you are going to be a leader,
00:17:45.180 you need to be very ruthless with your schedule. And if you're the, if you're at this level of
00:17:49.500 leadership, where you're not running your own schedule, but you've got somebody to run your
00:17:53.100 schedule for you. He's right. It is of the utmost importance that that person is of like,
00:17:58.780 is of the highest caliber. So that you are, that you're given your personal time, you're given your
00:18:07.020 space to think, you're not tied up in meetings too much. He talks about this person has to be
00:18:11.500 a strong character who can say no to people all the time. No, you can't have the leader's time. No,
00:18:18.460 you can't have access. Who can say to event organizers, he's only going to be there for an hour,
00:18:26.860 and then he's going to have to leave. Although he does say that this person should also have the
00:18:31.260 nows to realize that sometimes there are certain events that you do need to be there all day,
00:18:36.460 and they're supposed to know the difference. I wondered if that was slipped in there as a
00:18:41.500 reference to Rishi Sunak, who of course, one of the most disastrous aspects of his recent
00:18:49.660 election campaign was that he went to the D-Day celebrations for a couple of hours,
00:18:54.540 and then he just left and did 90 of the interview. So I wondered if that was a reference to that.
00:18:58.220 But yeah, schedule is absolutely crucial for leaders. And if you are operating at the level
00:19:02.620 where you have somebody managing your schedule, make sure that person is a high caliber person who knows
00:19:08.220 how to give you the time to do the stuff that you need to do, because otherwise it will all get
00:19:12.620 swallowed by meetings from evening to night. So you might think that was a strange one to put up
00:19:18.940 front and to put Labour so much importance on, but he is absolutely correct on this. He then goes on to
00:19:27.180 talking about what it was that made him so effective as a leader. And this is some core stuff. This is
00:19:33.740 why, let's say the Lotus Eaters ever set up a political party. If it ever looked like we were
00:19:40.060 getting to the stage where we were destined for high office, I would absolutely insist that everyone
00:19:44.780 at ministerial level and above reads this book, because he talks about, okay, how do you actually
00:19:49.980 deliver? And he talks about you have to drive the key aspects of your agenda. And what he did,
00:20:04.060 and this is a model that has now been replicated widely across the world, and in fact this is what
00:20:08.460 the other estimate I should talk about in this book is an advert for the Tony Blair Institute. So
00:20:15.580 the Tony Blair Institute is an enormous think tank. It is probably the largest think tank in the world
00:20:22.380 today, and what it does is it sells very high-priced services to world leaders. Quite often they're
00:20:29.660 African dictators, but they can be others as well. And one of the core skill sets that he's going to
00:20:38.300 be imparting in there is how you structure the office of leaders so that the stuff you actually
00:20:43.580 want to get done gets done. And he spells it out here briefly. There are other books that you can read,
00:20:51.180 such as his former chief of staff or lead strategist or something was a guy called Michael Barber,
00:20:58.540 who wrote a book, Deliverology. If you want to get into the level you can go and read that. But his
00:21:04.380 brief summary of how it works is he created separate units, the policy, strategy, communication and
00:21:11.340 delivery units. Let me go through them because this is key. The delivery unit concept is what we're best
00:21:20.540 known for. And it focuses on, well, as you can imagine, delivery speaks for itself.
00:21:28.780 He comes back to this, so I will come back to it as well. The policy unit that tracks government policy
00:21:37.340 and it measures, it suggests improvement and it measures. The strategic unit is doing that long arc
00:21:45.900 thinking of where ultimately do we want to get to, which then obviously filters down to the delivery
00:21:52.220 unit once the policies have been derived. And the communications unit, which is the last unit,
00:21:58.940 which is vital because you need to be able to persuade people that the things that you're doing
00:22:03.980 are in their interests. And it goes back to his point about driving the bus. You need to be setting
00:22:09.660 the agenda so that they are always reacting to you. You are not reacting to events.
00:22:17.420 That is very good advice. If you are in some sort of leadership position, even if you're just a thought
00:22:23.820 leader on a social media platform or whatever it is, don't respond to what other people are putting out.
00:22:34.460 Now, well, unless it makes a point you want to make for you, you need to always be putting forward
00:22:42.940 what you believe is the right thing to do or the right policy or the right argument.
00:22:49.340 Don't argue with them and let them respond to you. Don't respond the other way around. You have
00:22:56.540 to be the one driving. So that's a brief summary of how he did it, but he does get into more detail
00:23:02.860 of how it's done. And then his closing thought on this is make the center strong. And this is one
00:23:08.460 of the few words in the book he's decided to fully capitalize and stick an explanation mark behind.
00:23:15.180 It is that driven change. Okay. So let's get into the nuts and bolts of running this operation as a
00:23:20.940 leader. He's got a chapter on prioritization and he says, and in this chapter, he's basically saying,
00:23:27.100 look, try and do everything and you will likely do nothing. And he then barefacedly
00:23:38.540 uses an old joke about the devil and compares himself to the devil. This is quite interesting.
00:23:46.060 So he recounts the old joke. The old joke is that a bunch of souls arrive outside the pearly
00:23:57.500 gates in heaven and they're waiting to go in. But before they go in, the devil intercepts them.
00:24:05.020 And the devil says, look, I appreciate you on your way into heaven, but I just want you to know that I'm
00:24:12.060 a greatly maligned character. And I think that you should at least see what hell is
00:24:19.900 for yourself. Just come and have a look and then I'll bring you back here.
00:24:24.940 Just check it out. Just see what you think. So they agree. The devil takes them to hell and
00:24:31.420 it is raucous parties, lots of people having fun, lots of debauchery, you know, is a bit wild,
00:24:42.860 but it looks kind of interesting. And then the devil takes them back and and lets them have a look at
00:24:49.740 heaven. And in heaven, it's people just sort of sat around quietly talking in hushed tones to each
00:24:58.380 other. You know, maybe they'd be meditating, maybe, maybe reading a good book.
00:25:06.780 And after having seen this, the the group of souls
00:25:11.340 find themselves stood in front of St. Peter and they say, well, thank you very much for offering
00:25:16.060 us heaven. But we've decided actually we would we would rather have hell.
00:25:20.060 So they go down to hell. When they get down to hell, suddenly it's very different.
00:25:30.380 People are on fire. There's anguish.
00:25:35.260 People are screaming. And, you know, these newly arrived souls, they they confront the devil and they
00:25:40.940 say, what's going on?
00:25:42.860 And the devil says to them, oh, yes, you have to understand that before I was campaigning,
00:25:49.740 but now I'm governing. Blair recites that old joke before immediately going on to say,
00:25:58.220 well, that's basically what I did in order to get elected. And he gives his anecdote.
00:26:05.260 When I first arrived in Downing Street as a new prime minister, I was met by the cabinet secretary,
00:26:10.300 who is the very senior leader of the civil service.
00:26:18.780 And he told me that he had been reading the manifesto and drawing up plans for implementation.
00:26:26.460 And Blair says how alarmed he was by that, because he had to explain to the cabinet secretary
00:26:34.220 that what you think are the priorities having read the manifesto are not actually my priorities.
00:26:40.700 I have a different set of priorities. So he's so he's directly compared himself to the devil in this old joke.
00:26:45.900 And it is very true. The things that Blair ran on platitudes.
00:26:51.900 But he had a.
00:26:54.540 An absolutely steel tipped agenda, which I've already talked about before, which is to transfer the levers of power
00:27:00.220 into the hands of people who thought like him.
00:27:02.140 And I just found it fascinating that he.
00:27:09.180 He saw himself in that old old devil joke, because I don't know quite if he realizes how that's true.
00:27:16.860 Yeah, I'm going to highlight this bit here in the following chapter where he's talking about good policy.
00:27:22.860 OK, so the policy chapter.
00:27:26.140 Is all about how do you make policy?
00:27:31.420 In his view.
00:27:33.900 Policy is not.
00:27:35.260 Policy is a technocratic process.
00:27:41.580 So you work out what the best outcomes will be.
00:27:44.540 And then you work out how you can achieve it.
00:27:46.620 That's your policy.
00:27:48.940 That's your policy.
00:27:50.460 And then finally, you work out the politics.
00:27:53.100 You wonder how you're going to sell it.
00:27:55.580 But in Blair's mind, there is a correct answer.
00:27:59.420 And that correct answer is whatever drives the metrics that he wants to see driven
00:28:07.180 in the direction that he wants to go.
00:28:09.900 So it could be, you know, we want immigration up.
00:28:15.260 Why do we want immigration up?
00:28:16.540 Well, it's because it will drive the end result which he wants, which is GDP to go up.
00:28:22.300 OK, so the policy, the right places GDP go up.
00:28:25.900 You achieve that through the policy of driving up immigration.
00:28:28.220 And what are the politics that you sell that with?
00:28:31.260 Well, you can just start calling everybody who disagrees if you're racist or whatever it is.
00:28:35.420 But there is always the correct and right solution.
00:28:38.540 Now, Blair continues this thinking to this day.
00:28:41.740 Whenever you hear Tony Blair talk about something, he always talks about as if the thing that he wants
00:28:48.380 to happen is inevitable.
00:28:51.180 It's going to happen.
00:28:52.220 It's the right thing.
00:28:53.420 There is no discussion on this.
00:28:55.020 It is simply a question of whether we get there smoothly and efficiently or whether we get there
00:29:02.700 via some convoluted process.
00:29:04.140 But he speaks in such definite terms.
00:29:08.380 And the example that he says here, I often used to say in cabinet or in our discussion with close
00:29:12.940 advisors, let's first out work out what the right answer is.
00:29:16.220 We can get to the politics later.
00:29:17.580 And this is also where he starts to talk about COVID and about how COVID was the perfect policy.
00:29:26.060 Although he does acknowledge that you have to be aware of
00:29:30.940 the concerns that come with some of this stuff.
00:29:37.500 But I mean, I'll pick that up in a bit.
00:29:40.780 I've just found the bit on immigration.
00:29:42.060 This is perfect.
00:29:43.180 So take immigration, he says.
00:29:45.660 Our economies depend on it.
00:29:47.020 Yeah.
00:29:47.260 So the summary that I gave of his view of GDP go up.
00:29:51.580 The policy is immigration goes up to achieve the goal.
00:29:56.780 And then we can work out the policy.
00:29:58.220 That's an example of the way he thinks.
00:29:59.820 He does acknowledge a deficit in the thinking about immigration later in the book.
00:30:04.620 Basically, he says that if you push too far, too fast,
00:30:07.900 people are going to react to it.
00:30:09.100 And therefore, you need to acknowledge those concerns.
00:30:11.500 OK.
00:30:13.420 Let's move on to his chapter about chapter seven, where he talks about democracy.
00:30:17.660 Now, what he's doing here is he's addressing the criticism.
00:30:23.180 The Tony Blair Institute, as I talked about big, big think tank.
00:30:28.940 Works with a lot of African dictators.
00:30:31.100 That's where most of his fee income comes from.
00:30:34.780 And so he has to acknowledge it here.
00:30:37.260 And he's saying, and this is quote,
00:30:39.580 whether a leader is operating in a Western style democracy,
00:30:42.460 a managed form of democracy or a benevolent autocracy,
00:30:47.660 or is just simply a strong man, it's always about delivery.
00:30:58.220 OK, before I go on with the point that he's driving at here,
00:31:02.380 I do just have to acknowledge that I find it interesting
00:31:05.100 that he thinks there is a difference between Western style democracy
00:31:08.860 and managed democracy.
00:31:10.220 Is it managed democracy what they have in Helldivers?
00:31:12.620 I think that was the thing that came up in there.
00:31:15.100 No, it's all managed democracy these days.
00:31:18.460 People who have views that are insufficiently aligned with what the regime wants
00:31:24.940 cannot even get status as a political party.
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