The Tony Blair Story (2026) s01e01 Episode Script

1
This programme
contains strong language.
Some say you were his Lady Macbeth.
If anyone thinks Tony's my puppet,
they just don't understand
the nature of the man.
Right.
He could always
As we say at home,
he could always talk
an owl out of a tree.
When you think of Tony Blair,
what words spring to mind?
I think he's a man in denial,
actually.
Tony Blair, a Prime Minister
who never lost a general election.
He is, without doubt,
both one of the most successful
and one of the most controversial
leaders Britain has ever had.
One way of looking at him is
of thinking of him as an explorer.
His whole story,
the life story of Tony Blair,
is one of exploration of the world
to see how far he can get.
If you're giving an interview,
you've got to be pretty
disciplined about it.
I've been pretty frank with you,
actually, most of the time.
Oh! I think you should be
relatively pleased.
Not all the time.
Well, as much as you
As much as you deserve.
HE CHUCKLES
Is it a real bore to have
to answer questions?
No, it's not,
but as I said to you when you
started doing this programme,
I don't even know why anyone
would be interested
in doing a programme on me,
but since you are, that's fine,
and, you know, let's see.
These are Tony Blair's parents,
Hazel and Leo Blair.
Leo's story is remarkable.
He was born the son
of travelling performers
and put into the foster care
of a Mr and Mrs Blair
in a poor part of Glasgow.
Tony's father joined the Army
and then the Conservative Party.
He had dreams of becoming
Prime Minister.
My dad was a remarkable man.
He was chairman of
the local Conservative Party.
He was a very successful barrister,
great speaker.
By the way, I think he could have
been a Prime Minister, but anyway
Tony's father sends his son
to this boarding school
..at the age of 13.
We were inside those railings,
and you were pretty well cut-off.
At Fettes, there was fagging,
there was beating,
there was the church.
There was still that feeling
you were being prepared
to run an empire,
to be sent off to Burma
or to India or somewhere
to run a tea plantation.
Tony was very self-confident.
He was very clever, too,
and I think he knew he was clever.
Tony arrived at Fettes
on the back of a family tragedy.
His father had a massive stroke,
from which he never fully recovered,
and any dreams his father had
of being Prime Minister were over.
I want to take you back
to July 1964.
You will remember that
that's when your dad had a stroke.
Tell me what happened.
I guess I was ten, 11 years old.
How did it impact you, do you think?
I don't spend a lot of time
psychoanalysing myself,
but I think when I look back on it,
it must have had an impact on my
thinking about the world and life.
You know, it was such
a traumatic event.
I remember the event of that night
and that day and the next day
and the days that followed
so vividly that
Of course, it makes
an impact on your life,
and I guess it teaches you
that life is fragile.
Tony's father's speech
never fully recovered,
but at school,
Tony kept this to himself.
You never had any sense of
how his father's stroke
might have affected him?
No, not really. No, no.
We never really discussed it.
It's sort of It's bizarre, yeah.
What do you think Fettes taught
Tony Blair about himself?
The school teaches you to survive.
It knocks a lot of
the emotion out of you.
You become very insular.
And he was strong,
and didn't really show much
in the way of emotion -
or I never saw it.
It was a bad thing to show emotion
when you were at these schools.
After Fettes,
Blair goes up to Oxford.
He studies law
and sings in a rock band.
Also in Oxford is his childhood
friend Anji Hunter,
who would go on to become one
of his closest political advisers.
Tony arrived, fresh-faced, fun.
He was good-looking,
he was fun to be with,
articulate.
And he looked like every other guy
that came to Oxford in 1972,
which basically was long hair,
and he had a big fur coat.
We just became great friends.
I want to touch on something else
that happened while
you were at university,
which is a good friend of yours
took his own life, Euan.
Yes, erm
So, Euan Euan
..had been my dearest friend
at school.
There was a group of us,
and he was a great guy.
He was a wonderful,
wonderful young man, and
..unfortunately he got into drugs,
I think.
And he became
sort of mentally unstable
and then took his own life
and it had a big impact on me,
because he
First of all, because obviously
he was a very, very dear friend
and secondly, because I
You know, I I just
I felt what a waste it was
because he had such talent.
He was such a clever young man
with such a strong personality.
He would have done great things
and when my first son was born,
I named him after him.
Euan's suicide had
a big impact on Tony,
and he came back, it was
at the end of the summer term,
I remember he came back
the following term
with his hair cut
and he wasn't wearing the fur coat.
He straightened up a lot after that.
Tony makes his way at Oxford,
doing well enough to plan
for a career as a lawyer.
In those days, of course,
you made a telephone call
from a telephone box,
putting the coins in the box,
and therefore, you weren't
every day in contact
with your family as you are today.
My mother had been ill.
I knew she had cancer,
and the family didn't
want to tell me
because I was doing
my final exams at Oxford.
They didn't want to tell me
how serious it was.
But I remember when
I got off the train
and my dad picked me up
at the station,
he said to me,
"Look, you know, you should
"just prepare yourself for this."
And I said,
"But you're not seriously telling me
"she's going to die?"
And he said, "Well, no,
I am telling you that. She is.
"She's in hospital
and she's going to die soon."
So that was, you know
Yeah, of course.
The thing that experience
teaches you,
when you have
an experience like this,
and your parent dies
when you're very young,
is you just realise, well,
if you've got something
to do with your life,
you better get on and do it -
because who knows what happens?
# Hey, everybody, take a look at me
# I've got street credibility
# I may not have a job
but I have a good time
# With the boys that I meet
down on the line
# I said, D-H-S-S
# Man, the rhythm that
they're givin' is the very best
# I said, B one, B two
# Make the claims, on your name,
all you have to do #
It's 1982.
Mrs Thatcher is in power
..and the Falklands War is raging.
The Conservatives have captured
the mood of the '80s.
Meanwhile, the Labour Party
is in the doldrums
We've had a very long day.
INDISTINCT CHATTER
OK, you get annoyed if you like,
but I need a credential to get
to the conference.
..and this is their leader.
How have you found your day here
at the Beaconsfield by-election?
Well, I think it's been
a pretty good day.
First of all, we've got
a wonderful candidate.
Everybody agrees that Tony Blair
is one of the very best possible
candidates there could be.
Rather a large majority, isn't it,
against you, unfortunately? Well
After leaving Oxford,
Blair became a barrister.
But now he has
political ambitions
..running to be a Labour MP
in a seat he can't win.
Oh, that's good.
Got a nice smile, ain't he?
Anthony Charles Lynton -
3,886.
BOOING
He's lost his deposit.
CHEERING AND APPLAUSE
As expected, Blair loses.
When I first met Tony,
we were co-pupils and rivals.
We then became friends, and we were
vaguely flirting with each other.
It was about 18 months
after his mother had died,
and I think he was still very much
coming to terms with that.
The first thing we really
sort of talked about was religion.
Both of us, in different ways,
had religious faith.
Was he romantic in his courtship?
Er No, not very.
Tony's not very romantic.
No. Really? Yes.
He's never bought me flowers,
for example.
And now he says,
"Well, if I bought you flowers,
"you'd be very suspicious,"
which is probably true.
SHE LAUGHS
So
Tony is desperate to become
a Labour MP,
but first, he has to be chosen
as a candidate
by a constituency Labour Party.
He travels up and down the country,
telling them all what
they don't want to hear,
that the Labour Party
needs radical reform.
He tries ten constituencies.
All say no, and Tony is
on the brink of giving up.
I've always been interested
in politics.
I was interested in politics
when I was 14,
and in class, I'd announced
that I was going to be
the first female Prime Minister.
Cherie does get selected
to fight a seat for Labour.
So how did he cope with that?
Er, badly.
SHE LAUGHS
He felt that he had missed
his chance.
I was going to go and fight
a hopeless seat,
but at least I was fighting a seat.
There was one seat left
in the country.
With just four weeks to go
before the general election,
Sedgefield in County Durham
is the only seat not yet to have
selected its Labour candidate.
I remember sitting
in my house in Hackney
and Cherie saying to me,
"I mean, you might as well go.
I mean, why not?
"There's nothing you can lose."
The members of the Sedgefield Labour
Party will have to be convinced.
I was very nervous.
But by then, you know,
I'd got quite used to
the process of rejection.
I'd been in many constituencies,
tried many different things.
You know, usually
I'd get a long way,
and the moment I showed my colours,
I would be out.
John had said, "Oh, there's a guy
from London coming up.
"He wants to be our next MP."
"Yeah, champion,
but we're watching the football."
COMMENTATOR ON TV: Of course,
there's a long, long way to go yet,
but it is a night where
there will be a positive result
because at the end of 90 minutes,
if it's level, we have extra time.
Well, of course, the trouble was
this match went on forever.
Extra time was played -
it was a draw -
by which time, we were quite
happy and merry, you know?
So, after that, we said,
"Right, we're going to ask you
some questions."
We gave him the best grilling
that we could.
He spoke with an awfully posh voice.
I mean, we'd always had
a miner's union MP
and here we had
this public-school boy
who went to Oxford
and was a barrister.
But we knew that night.
I said to them, the lads, I said,
"You know, you can never say
somebody will be Prime Minister,
"but you can say somebody is
Cabinet material."
And I said, "He's Cabinet material."
And Paul agreed. They all agreed.
Well, I saw he was different.
You know, I was young.
I wanted someone younger
than your average Labour MP.
I wanted someone
with a bit of go about them
and there he was sitting
on the settee.
So why not give the young lad a go?
Wow!
Tony jumped up and, er
..you know,
we had a couple more drinks.
HE LAUGHS
Blair successfully charms
the Sedgefield Labour Party,
and becomes their MP.
But nationally, Labour suffer
a devastating defeat.
Still, by entering Parliament,
Blair fulfils his father's dream.
ARCHIVE: Westminster's best-known
watering places were opening up
for some new customers this evening.
At one of them, I met some of
the 150 new Commons faces.
The image of the Labour Party's
got to be an image
that's more dynamic, more modern,
more suited to the 1980s.
I don't actually think
it's nearly so much
a matter of right and left
as people make it out.
What I do think is,
that it's a matter of style.
The truth is, we live
in a different world now.
We live in a world where
over 50% of the population
in this country are owner-occupiers.
We live in a population
where there are
large numbers of people now employed
in the service industries
rather than manufacturing
industries,
and that means a change in attitude
and a change of attitude that
we've got to catch up to.
The party elects a new leader,
Neil Kinnock
OK. Thanks for coming in.
..who spots the potential
of the new backbench MP
for Sedgefield.
I asked him if he would fulfil
this role on the Treasury team.
He was ecstatically pleased
and made no secret of it.
"Do you really mean it?
Do you really mean it?"
I don't think I'd ever encountered,
before or afterwards,
anyone who was so
manifestly delighted
at what he saw as a promotion.
Blair befriends Gordon Brown.
They share a room
at the House of Commons.
Tony Blair and Gordon Brown.
Didn't they do well?
He did even better. He got 50,000
votes more, didn't you, than he got?
But both of you did
extremely well indeed.
They become a pair with
contrasting personalities.
I want to see a wider membership,
I want to see better attention
to the regional organisation,
and I want to give more attention
to the policy-making process,
so these are things that
we want to see happen.
Did you have to?
He talked of a platform
once he stood,
made it sound like a real election.
Did you have to scheme, organise,
assemble votes for this?
No, because it's done in
a fairly democratic way with
A fairly democratic way?
I mean very democratic,
I'm just being unusually modest.
Gordon made
a huge impression on Tony
because he was a much more
experienced political creature.
And I think Gordon
got used to the idea
that Tony was there to support him
by bouncing ideas off him,
by discussing ideas,
helping him develop.
But at the same time, the fact was
that Tony was also
learning from Gordon
and developing HIS ideas,
and they weren't always
the same as Gordon's ideas.
APPLAUSE
By 1992, almost everyone
expects Labour to win
the upcoming election of that year.
Well, all right.
Well, all right!
I first met Tony Blair
in March 1992,
just before the general election
of that year.
I got a call from his office saying,
"Tony would like to meet you."
It's the only time I think that
a politician's
actually asked to see me.
So, I booked a restaurant,
and we met.
Of course, like everyone,
I was overwhelmed by his charm.
Blair was a radical,
transformative politician.
There's no doubt about that.
The Labour equivalent
of Margaret Thatcher
in his determination
to pull the Labour Party
into a completely different mode
of thinking.
I said, "Well, anyway, looks like
you'll be in government
"in a couple of months," because
that's what everyone thought,
and he said, "Oh, no, no, no.
We're going to lose."
Labour do in fact lose,
and Tony now hopes that Gordon
will put his hat into the ring
to be the new leader.
But Gordon throws his support
behind his fellow Scot,
John Smith.
I therefore declare
that John Smith is elected
the leader of the Labour Party.
APPLAUSE
And Tony's hopes that
he and Gordon will transform
the party are derailed.
That was a crucial moment for Blair.
That was the moment when
the iron entered his soul.
John Smith looks like
a Labour leader who can win power.
He's a popular and skilled
political operator,
but he has a heart condition.
In April 1994,
Tony and his wife, Cherie,
go for a weekend in Paris.
And it's here that Blair wakes
suddenly with a premonition
that John Smith is about to die.
Well
..it was a rather
extraordinary thing.
I actually did wake up
in the morning,
and I remember,
I woke up and I thought,
"You've got to prepare
yourself for this.
"I think it's going to happen."
I remember saying to Cherie,
"I feel it's possible that this
heart condition could come back,
"and I've got to think then about
what happens if it does."
Erm, and
..whether
..whether it really is
the moment that I would go for
the leadership if that did happen.
And that was the first time
we'd really properly discussed it.
You said to her,
"If John dies, I will be leader,
"not Gordon, and somehow,
I think this will happen.
"I just think it will."
Yeah, I just,
I felt this strong premonition
and I don't quite know,
who knows how these things come
into your mind like that,
but it came into my mind
with a degree of certainty
that both surprised me
and made me think, OK
Who knows whether
it's right or wrong,
but you're going to have
to think now
and you're going to have
to think about the decision
because you know in your own mind
you want to do it,
and you're going to have
to think how you handle Gordon
because it's going to be
a huge problem for you
and your relationship, and I hadn't
really discussed it with him
because I was thinking,
"Well, what's the point?"
You know, it may never happen
and therefore there's
no point in ending up
Because I knew it would be
a difficult conversation,
because it had always been assumed
that he would be the leader.
But I thought, "No, you've got
to prepare yourself for this
"and for the conversation
that will come."
Good evening.
The leader of the Labour Party,
John Smith, died this morning
in hospital after suffering
a massive heart attack
at his London home.
It was a very extraordinary
situation at the funeral
because you've got the absolute
grief of his family
and then the grief of the party.
And then, on the other hand,
there was the inevitable
thoughts of,
"Well, what's going to happen
to the party now?"
It was an incredibly intense day.
Everybody was thinking about
the succession.
Everybody's looking around,
thinking,
"Is he going to run for it?"
"Who's going to support him?"
"Is it going to be Gordon
or is it going to be Tony?"
SINGING
I was determined that he wasn't
going to let his decency,
thinking that
he should defer to Gordon,
get in the way of what
I thought was best for him
and best for the country.
I said to him,
"You've got to go for it.
"It's got to be you."
When I met Tony,
I said of course we'd have to think
about this very carefully
and work out which of them
would gather the most support.
You know, who would be the best
modernisers candidate?
He just looked at me.
He said,
"Peter, I'm going to do this."
I said, "Well, yes, yes, yes,
but we'll consider how"
You know? "No," he said.
"I'm going to do this."
It really was as if
his time had come.
He had a sense of destiny.
Blair and Brown engage
in a series of fraught negotiations
over which one of them
will run for leader.
They were such close,
good, intimate friends.
It was like a married couple
deciding whose career
should come first.
I mean,
Gordon would have been thinking,
"I've been betrayed by
my best friend.
"I was always going to be
the leader.
"I thought that was the deal."
I'm only talking about the
European elections. Is that OK?
Can I just put one question to you
about the leadership?
Not at all. We're talking about
the European elections today. OK.
What are you planning
to do today, sir? Thanks.
Tony was feeling absolutely
100% determined
"I'm going to persuade him.
"I'm going to persuade him.
I'm going to persuade him."
As they try to thrash out a deal,
they have at least ten secret
meetings that culminate in a dinner
at a north London
restaurant called Granita.
What's your understanding
of his agreement with Gordon?
Well, first of all,
there was never an agreement
and there were a number of meetings,
some of them were in
my sister's house, and, really,
the deed was done before
they had that meal in
..the Granola or whatever
it was called. Granita. Granita.
Yes. Granita, that's right.
It became a thing of legend
that it was all sorted out there,
but it was much more drawn out
than that.
But what was it, in essence?
That Gordon would stand down
for Tony,
but Gordon would be Chancellor,
and he would have control
over the economic policy.
And that, at some point,
when Tony stood down,
he would support Gordon
to be his successor.
The details of what was agreed
are contested to this day.
Many in Brown's camp claim
Blair set a limit on the time
he would serve as leader.
But there was never, to my mind
In fact, I said to him
before he went
.."Don't promise to set
any kind of date."
But Tony,
being a very charming person,
I think can often make people think
they hear what they want to hear.
So, I think that Gordon may well
have spoken of a time limit
and Tony may not have strongly
disabused him of that.
Did any part of you feel
a little bit sorry for Gordon?
No.
It's
In politics, there comes a point
..when you have to make a choice.
I don't love having a confrontation,
it's not my natural way,
contrary to, I think,
sometimes the image of sort of,
you know,
he's messianic and all of that.
No, I'm not like that.
If I can avoid having a big fight
and row, I'll happily avoid it,
but I always know there comes
a point when,
you know, if it's something that
really, really matters,
you're going to have to
You've got to confront it.
If I thought
he was going to do the things
I thought were necessary
for the Labour Party,
I really would have been happy
to have been number two.
But I think he found that
incredibly difficult,
for understandable reasons,
and we resolved it in the end.
But when something like
that happens,
it changes the nature
of the relationship and,
you know, to be honest,
you never fully resolve it, so
It had to be done.
This morning,
I am announcing my candidature
for the position of leader
of the Labour Party.
CHEERING AND APPLAUSE
Well, Tony was always a smoothie.
His weakness was
the lack of deep thinking,
knowledge of history.
And I think he wants
to be a big thinker,
but that's not what he is.
I mean, maybe we're all the same,
you know,
whatever our strength is,
we want the other strength.
His strength was certainly
the personal charm
and the communications.
I don't think he's a great leader.
Mr Blair, good morning.
Good morning.
The other two contenders
for the leadership are prepared
to serve as deputy. Why aren't you?
Because I don't wish to be deputy.
Why not?
You're the youngest of the three
with the least experience.
Because I don't desire
to be deputy leader.
It's a very, very good post.
I think that both of my colleagues
would make excellent deputy leaders,
but it's not a post
I desire for myself.
Have you really thought through
the effect of the job
you're about to take on,
assuming you get it,
upon yourself and your family?
I've reflected upon it
a great deal.
And you've decided that
the effect is worth living with,
assuming that you can become
Prime Minister?
Yes, I have.
It is not an easy decision,
and I am well aware of
what is about to fall upon me.
He was steely, clear,
he had real energy and restlessness,
that was, you, know,
politically exciting.
I do remember asking him whether
he thought he was really
tough enough
for what was coming.
Do you think
you're tough enough to cope
with the sort of media
onslaught that Neil Kinnock,
for example, had to endure?
I think it comes with the territory,
and I'm entirely prepared for it
and, indeed, expect it.
APPLAUSE
Blair wins and now
he's leader of the Labour Party.
CHEERS AND APPLAUSE
The blueprint for New Labour,
he had it in his head
right from the start.
The idea that he was just
some sort of, you know,
line of least resistance,
pretty, front guy
could not be further from the truth.
He assembles a formidable team
of political operators
and spin doctors.
They were this curious combination
of Tony being Mr Good Guy
and then around him, you had these
absolutely ruthless bastards.
Sorry Richard, if you want
anything, tomorrow, any other day,
get out. Get out.
I was being quite robust.
And I remember Tony looking, ooh
And I think part of him thinking,
"Am I going over the top?"
But part of him thinking,
"That's what we need to do
from time to time."
Tony was quite smart in leaving
the brutality to others.
Together, they set about
rebranding the party.
Tony Blair.
APPLAUSE
And in the face
of staunch resistance,
they rip up decades
of Labour Party convention.
The historic goal
of another Labour government.
Our party, New Labour.
Our mission, new Britain.
New Labour, new Britain.
APPLAUSE
Blair was the revolution -
in his own person.
It was like he was laying
the party at his father's feet.
He'd changed it so much that
his father would now vote for it.
It's July 1995, and Blair's
just flown 10,000 miles
to a tropical island in Australia
to meet the most powerful man
in the British media,
Rupert Murdoch.
We knew there would be
terrible controversy.
We were accused of supping
with the devil.
Take a long spoon with you -
that was the sort of general gist
from our colleagues.
..from ABC television.
How're you going? Nice to see you.
You've come halfway around
the world to talk to Rupert Murdoch
and his men, why is that?
You're impersonating Dame Edna,
aren't you?
THEY LAUGH
Do you expect Mr Rupert Murdoch's
papers to support you
in the upcoming election?
No, I mean, I've made it clear
right from the very start,
I'm not here to trade policy
for editorial support.
What Mr Murdoch's papers do
is up to him,
what the Labour Party does
is up to us.
Great. Thank you. OK?
Thank you very much.
Thank you very much. Thanks.
Thank you. Nice to meet you.
See you. Bye-bye.
Quite a lot of people,
Jeremy Corbyn, in the Labour Party,
I mean, people like Roy Hattersley,
would say this is the move
of a shrewd political operator.
I think this smacks too much
to me of an endorsement,
and almost a craven endorsement,
of the Murdoch empire.
I think it's a great mistake.
My point was that he was
therefore accepting
the way in which Murdoch
ran his papers.
There was no sense of standing up to
what Murdoch was doing to our media.
Blair had this ability
to separate himself
from the political,
philosophical debate
around an issue and go into it
in a totally transactional way.
Tony Blair said to me,
how we treat Rupert Murdoch
in power will depend on
how he treats Labour
in the run up to the election.
It's pretty simple,
you know, you scratch my back,
I'll scratch yours.
That's what it came down to.
Having charmed the media mogul,
Blair seems equally at ease
getting gushing endorsements
from rockstars.
There are seven people
in this room tonight
who are giving a little bit of hope
to young people in this country.
That is me, our kid,
Bonehead, Guigsy,
Alan White, Alan McGee,
and Tony Blair.
And if you've all
got anything about you,
you get up there and you shake
Tony Blair's hand, man.
He's the man.
Power to the people!
I like you, Tony,
and I like you
for a very specific reason,
which is that you seem to me
to be like a real person.
But if it's not an overly
pretentious question,
I mean, are you
as real as you appear?
Because it seems to me
that people worry,
they see you surrounded by what
they call spin doctors,
and they think that perhaps this
realness is kind of manufactured.
What do you think?
Well, you can't manufacture
the realness in the end.
I mean, people have got to make
a judgment on it.
But we run a professional show
in the Labour Party today.
Yeah. We do things in a professional
way, but it doesn't mean to say
you're not real or you can't be
a human being at the same time.
Dad Dad!
Dad! Dad!
If you don't make the time
for your family,
then I think your politics actually
becomes much less effective
because they keep your feet
on the ground,
they may drive you mad,
but they keep you sane.
The first time I went
to see Tony Blair at his home,
it was almost like arriving
on a film set.
You felt that everybody,
whether it was Cherie Blair
and the children and the coffee
maker and all the rest of it,
you felt you were seeing
a brilliantly orchestrated
performance of what they thought
that a new Labour leader,
how he ought to live and what
his children ought to look like
and what his wife ought
to look like.
PIANO PLAYS
Tony and the family,
they did a brilliant imposture
of being normal human beings.
Now, actually anybody
who is on his way to becoming
Prime Minister is not
a normal human being,
but they played
the game brilliantly.
You have obviously also had
to think through the possibility
of being in Number Ten Downing
Street, both of you.
You take it stage by stage,
actually.
I'm a great believer
in the old Mrs Beeton recipe
for rabbit stew -
first, catch your rabbit.
THEY CHUCKLE
Cherie, do you have sort
of daunting feelings about it?
I've never even been near
Downing Street, so I've got no idea.
I've never even
stood outside the door.
Well, it's got to cross your mind
that it might end that way.
Well, I'm sure that there will
be space somewhere
for the children and me.
The thing you have
to understand about Cherie
is that she had strong
political views,
a strong sense of ambition.
If not, Tony,
it could have been Cherie.
It was Cherie who was sort of,
in a sense,
the Labour Party animal,
the person, you know,
who wanted to run as a candidate
and to join the leadership
of the Labour Party.
And she took a very profound,
and it must have been quite
a difficult personal decision,
in a sense, to step back
and to be his support.
There was about
a six-month period, no more Yeah.
..when I was the candidate and
Tony was still looking for a seat,
and so he had to trail behind me.
TONY CHUCKLES
Probably didn't do
any harm, did it? No
Probably didn't do any harm
but I certainly at the time felt
it didn't do me any good!
THEY LAUGH
The marriage was so strong,
not smooth,
not easy, lots of gyrations,
lots of, sort of,
shouting in the background,
but, my word, it was the rock.
That marriage was the rock on which
Tony's political career was made.
CHEERING AND APPLAUSE
There was an idea that
I would write one of those sort of
campaign diaries or
the story of an election campaign,
and Tony Blair was keen
that I did it and I really got
an astonishing first-hand insight
into that whole election.
And really witnessed a politician
at the top of their game.
BABY GRIZZLES
He loved campaigning.
I can change a note. There you go.
On the battle bus, he'd go and sit
at the front next to the driver,
so that he could see
cars coming towards him
or people on the street.
He sought a connection.
Hello, Northampton.
CHEERING AND APPLAUSE
I think that he just grew in
confidence as the campaign went on.
And the crowds became much bigger
and the enthusiasm
for him was much greater.
And it was like watching a flower
blossom in the sunlight.
Can we have a kiss again?
Will you give him a kiss, again?
I'm coming back to Basildon.
Definitely, definitely.
It was very interesting to me
during the '97 election
that he wore a lot of make-up.
There were not one, but two make-up
people travelling with him,
and he liked that.
It was like he was putting on
the war paint every day
before he went out.
I got the impression,
talking to people who knew him,
like his old housemaster at school,
that he was quite
a difficult, rebellious,
long-haired, tricky boy
to have in the house.
And that this all changed
when the house put on
a production of Julius Caesar,
and he played Mark Antony.
And he said to me,
"I saw him visibly swell
"when he went onstage
for the first time,
"as if he had found his calling."
CHEERING AND APPLAUSE
It's a clue to Tony's character
that he saw being a party leader
as a 24-hour a day performance.
He always needed to perform.
Please welcome
the Leader of the Opposition,
the right honourable Tony Blair.
CHEERING AND APPLAUSE
It was on television, really,
that politicians meet
their electorate,
and he has this ability
to separate his inner self
from the public persona.
Sitting on that couch last week
were the Spice Girls.
CHUCKLING
Right. Right.
Mrs Thatcher, they thought,
was the first Spice Girl.
They did! They said that,
didn't they, Tony?
Well, I've actually,
I did meet the Spice Girls.
They had sort of bare midriffs,
short skirts Mm-hm.
..sort of earrings through
various parts. Pins and things.
Pins and things and tattoos.
I can't really see
Margaret Thatcher like that.
LAUGHTER
You did go on Chris Evans' show,
apparently, and said that Bowie -
this is David Bowie -
his wife, Iman, was your dream girl.
Did you actually say that?
I did. Well, he asked me
the question,
and I broke the first rule
of politics
and lapsed into total honesty.
There's nothing wrong
with that in politics!
We don't get enough, do we?
APPLAUSE
Tony Blair!
Well done. Tony Blair!
On the 1st of May 1997,
after 18 years of Tory rule,
Britain goes to the polls.
My parents were very superstitious.
We could not say,
"Dad's going to win the election"
because it might not happen.
And I was only nine, so I didn't
know what an election meant,
I didn't know what him being
Prime Minister meant
and so, I did not know
And we hadn't packed anything.
BUSY CHATTER
CAMERA SHUTTERS CLICKING
REPORTERS SHOUTING QUESTIONS
Mr Blair, look this way, please.
Tony, this way, please. Thank you.
It was exciting
and a little bit scary.
Press are not very child-friendly.
This way. Everybody this way.
All right?
OVERLAPPING QUESTIONS
This way, please. That's it.
There were just so many press there,
100 cameras in your face,
shouting your name, wanting you
to look at them and, smile,
smile, do this, and you're just
like, what is going on?
I remember it being very terrifying.
And I was just holding my dad's
hand thinking, "What are we doing?
"Why are all these people here?!"
REPORTERS SHOUTING
Mr Blair, this way, please.
To the middle.
This way, please. Thank you.
This way, Mrs Blair.
BELL STRIKES THE HOUR
There it is. Ten o'clock and we say,
Tony Blair is to be Prime Minister
and a landslide is likely.
CHEERING
On election night, I arrived at his
house and the first thing I noticed,
of course, was there were now
men with machineguns
standing around in the garden.
He was about to become
Prime Minister, clearly.
OVERLAPPING SPEECH
Anthony Charles Linton Blair,
the Labour Party candidate,
33,000
CHEERING AND APPLAUSE
At the count,
I was a few miles from where
I'd been brought up.
My dad was there.
My mum wasn't.
My dad had really
All his ambitions
in the end had failed
because of his illness,
but here was his son,
about to become the
British Prime Minister
and he was so proud and happy,
and I was happy for him and,
yeah, it was
And I also I missed my mum.
So, off goes Tony Blair.
The engines of his jet will
soon be starting,
the door will close,
and he will be down amongst
even more admirers.
Got my notes, sir? Got the notes.
OK, Tom? Could get used to this.
TONY CHUCKLES
We went on the plane,
and everyone was very excited,
and Alastair was constantly saying,
you know,
"We've just won this",
and "we've just won that".
And Tony was just very still
and very quiet
and we were sat up at the front.
And I was just holding his hand.
And, you know, he did say
"What have we done?"
And I think it was more about
..the weight of it.
There's Tony Blair smiling
again, greeting,
shaking hands with party workers
they all want to shake his hand.
He'll take one or two of them
Everyone was sort of cheering
and shouting.
You know, people were saying to me,
well, it's all fantastic,
and I was just sitting
there thinking,
"Yeah, well, we're now
going to be running the country,"
so, you know, no more words.
They're not going to do it any more.
What about fear?
Yeah, some fear,
yeah, some fear, I think.
Because are you going to be
up to it? Can you, do it?
What's going to happen?
Did you enjoy it a bit,
those first 24 hours?
You know,
if I'm really honest about it,
I'm not sure
I did enjoy it that much,
just because I was
just thinking, you know,
"Here you are - you're in your
early 40s, you're Prime Minister."
And rather than thinking,
"You're Prime Minister, wow!",
I was like,
"You're Prime Minister, so
"..you better do a good job
because now what happens
"to this country and its people
depends on you."
CHEERING AND APPLAUSE
MUSIC: Movin' On Up
by Primal Scream
# I was blind
# Now I can see
# You made a believer
# Out of me #
I remember being stunned at
the amount of people there were,
there were all these flags
everywhere.
Everyone seemed really happy.
# I'm movin' on up now #
Even as a 13-year-old,
and right in the middle of it,
there was a genuine sense
of excitement.
It was kind of nice to think,
"Wow, people really like Dad."
Of course, then. As it developed
and you'd read the papers
and everything else, you'd realise
that not everyone liked him.
# I was lost
# Now I'm found
# I believe in you
# I've got no bounds #
Blair comes to power
with uncharted levels of popularity.
He pushes through a blizzard
of bold new policies
that change the way Britain works.
This is a government in a hurry.
The Bank of England
is to be made independent.
Scotland and Wales are
to have their own parliaments.
For the first time,
there'll be a minimum wage.
Oh, yes!
And to improve education,
class sizes will be reduced.
One of the things
I think he was drawn to,
as it were, almost irresistibly,
was his belief to solve problems
which had defeated everybody else.
He was drawn to making
Labour electable by inventing
New Labour and then delivering it.
And I think he was drawn
to Northern Ireland,
it had defeated everyone else -
he could do it.
Northern Ireland's Catholic
and Protestant communities
have been deeply divided
for decades and are caught in
a seemingly never-ending cycle
of sectarian violence.
Tony came back from Chequers,
and he came in Monday morning,
sort of, you know,
all bouncy and what have you,
and he said,
"I've worked out how to do
Northern Ireland.
"I've worked it out."
"Oh, OK. You've worked it out?
"How have you done that?"
And he did become
pretty obsessed with it.
Blair sets the goal of getting
a peace agreement within a year.
The stakes were enormous
on Northern Ireland,
and I was alarmed that
he would be out of his depth.
And I said to him,
"Prime Minister, I've got to say
to you, I am worried.
"You are going to be moving in
with people who have huge,
"sensitive issues,
a lot of history, a lot of anger.
"Are you going to be ready for it?"
And he said, "Look, Richard,
"I don't need to know about
the history.
"I'm better off
if I don't know the history.
"I'm going to focus on the people.
"You watch, it'll work."
SHOUTING
He takes the highly controversial
step of inviting
the Irish Republican leaders
of Sinn Fein to Downing Street.
Tony invested a huge amount of time
in meeting Gerry Adams
and Martin McGuinness,
and Ian Paisley
and other Northern Irish
politicians.
And we'd bring them into
Downing Street and,
particularly when we had the DUP,
Ian Paisley's party, involved,
they would not meet Sinn Fein.
They would not be in the same
building as Sinn Fein.
But when I was with Paisley
in the Cabinet Office,
I noticed looking out of the window,
to my horror,
that Adams and McGuinness
had escaped from Number Ten
and into the Rose Garden
and were playing with the Blair
children with their skateboard.
They go out for a break, right,
from these very intense sessions,
and they see me and my brother
skateboarding in the garden.
And we sort of said to them,
"Hey, do you want to try?"
Cos they were sort of watching us.
And so you're in the
farcical situation of kind of
trying to teach Gerry Adams
and Martin McGuinness
how to skateboard against
the backdrop of something
incredibly serious and solemn
and historic.
And I remember telling
Dad afterwards, and he was just
"Thank God
they didn't injure themselves."
CAMERA SHUTTER CLICKS
It's 7th April 1998.
Blair arrives in Belfast
with most of the key players around
the negotiating table.
But the talks are on
the brink of collapse
and there's a deadline looming
just days away.
Morning.
We're here to do a job, work,
and we've got to get it done.
And we've got complete
determination to do it.
We were in this awful building,
and he could get
incredibly frustrated.
He was saying, like, you know,
"If this
"If we could just sort this out
without all the other people,
"we could do it right now, right?
"But we're having to deal
with all this
"fucking this and fucking that."
He's not a table slammer,
but I saw him at one point
slamming the table
and he just went,
"Fuck, fuck, fuck," like that.
Tony Blair was
one of the most successful
and most skilful negotiators
I ever came across.
He can play with
a whole range of emotions,
but he's always in control.
And I do remember one negotiation
we had, and he said to me,
"Never lose your temper
except on purpose."
And it came home to me quite
how he managed negotiations.
The problem is,
now you're into this day,
is not that you can't reach it,
it's just making sure that you drive
the thing forward
as quickly as possible.
Machiavelli talks about
needing the skill of the fox,
but also the courage of the lion,
and Tony had both - he had
the ability on issues of principle
to be really brave, really firm,
but he also had a very sinuous way
to charm people into things.
Roy Jenkins said that Tony Blair had
a second-class intellect,
but a first-class temperament,
and actually there's something
in that that's really a compliment,
which is that he had
the most remarkable EQ.
His ability to understand people,
to relate to people,
to empathise was his superpower.
Well, ladies and gentlemen,
you will have heard that
the Senator Mitchell's announcement
has been made that
an agreement has been reached.
Mrs Thatcher didn't believe
Northern Ireland could be solved.
John Major believed Northern Ireland
could be solved,
but he couldn't do it.
Tony Blair believed both -
that it could be done,
and he could do it,
and he really drove it through.
Today, we have just a sense
of the prize that is before us.
He believed it was kind
of his destiny to fulfil this.
Somewhere written
in the stars was for him
to achieve this great thing
for the country.
The work to win that prize goes on.
We cannot, we must not let it slip
from our grasp. Thank you.
But Mo Mowlam said
to me that, "Tony succeeded
"because he thought he was
fucking Jesus."
Less than two years into
Blair's time as Prime Minister,
a war is escalating
on the edge of Europe.
You're not looking bad
for a man who doesn't sleep.
Yes, God almighty.
It's hell the last few days
CHATTER CONTINUES
Right.
Serbian forces led by
Slobodan Milosevic have driven
800,000 people from their homes
in Kosovo.
Ethnic cleansing is taking place.
Blair is under pressure to act.
I went in to see Tony and I said
it looks like war in Kosovo
because the diplomatic process
has completely failed,
and we've got
this commitment to intervene.
And I was surprised at how
calmly he took it.
Because I could see
this was going to be
the dominant issue over
the next few months.
When a Prime Minister sends
his forces into military action,
nothing else competes with it
for attention.
It was obvious to me
that what was happening
in Kosovo was effectively
ethnic cleansing.
You know, there was murder,
there was rape,
there was a displacement
of the civilian population,
and I felt this was happening
right on the doorstep of Europe.
We should act and we can act,
and therefore we're going to.
On the 24th of March 1999,
Blair takes a leading role
as NATO planes are scrambled
to bomb targets in Serbia.
You are fighting a just war
and a just cause,
and I believe we are fighting
for the values of civilisation here.
Blair becomes convinced
that the only way
to beat Milosevic is
to threaten boots on the ground.
But other world leaders
are set against it,
and Blair is isolated.
This was the one situation
I remember Tony saying,
"If this is the last thing I do
as Prime Minister,
"if I'm hounded out
as a result of this,
"if it somehow goes belly up,
"so be it - I'm going for it."
Blair starts a campaign to persuade
a reluctant US President
Bill Clinton to back his plans.
First of all, it was
the only real policy disagreement
I think we had of any magnitude
the whole time we worked together.
I argued that we would have
fewer casualties.
And that
..we might be able to win
with air power.
I said, "I think we are
morally obliged to win
"and to win it by killing
the fewest number of people."
The New York Times splashed
a headline saying
that Tony Blair was trying
to toughen up Clinton
and make him agree to ground troops.
And Clinton went absolutely ape.
He called Tony from Air Force One.
And I remember being on the call,
and he was so angry.
He really lost it.
He really shouted and yelled.
"I know what you're doing!
You're trying to make me look weak
"and you're trying
to make yourself look strong."
And Tony was saying, "No, no, no.
Honestly, that wasn't us.
"We didn't do that. It's not in
our interest to do that."
I believe there was
a phone call between the two of you
and it got a little bit heated.
It did.
I was mad because his guys were
trying to make him look good
in the New York Times at my expense
when we should have been united
in fighting this war.
I was always
totally honest with him.
I didn't ever pull any punches.
How did the Prime Minister bring
the President down from that anger?
The method was to stay calm,
not to sort of panic
as people sometimes do
when you face anger like that,
but to calmly say,
"No, it honestly wasn't us,
"we don't want to do that, it's
not in our interest to do that."
And gradually talked him down
till they were able to end the call.
He could always, as we say at home,
he could always
talk an owl out of a tree.
Ha.
Under pressure from Blair,
Clinton softens his stance
on ground troops,
and in the face of a united front,
Milosevic backs down.
The logic of the campaign
came through to Tony
much quicker than it did
to other leaders,
and I don't think
we would have got anything like
the outcome had it not been
for that personal commitment
that he made.
Blair's standing up
to Milosevic helped end
the conflict in Kosovo,
saving thousands of lives.
CHANTING: Tony, Tony, Tony
Whenever something in politics
looks at its zenith,
the termites are at work
on the base.
That is a sort of, cyclical,
almost natural rule of politics.
And people that I've spoken to
who know him very well,
they all point to Kosovo.
At that point, for the first time,
maybe a slight parting from reality
began to take place.
CHANTING: Tony, Tony, Tony
The moment that he appeared
rather like, you know,
Christ walking through the Holy Land
with people hailing him
as if he had worked a miracle,
a friend of mine,
a friend of Tony's,
said to me
he thought he could walk on water.
And in that triumph,
the seeds of tragedy were sown.
WHISTLING
This is not a battle for NATO.
CHANTING CONTINUES
This is not a battle for territory.
This is a battle for humanity.
It is a just cause.
It is a rightful cause.
And we will make sure that
these people here are returned
to their homes.
That is our commitment to them -
practical help,
practical commitment.
And, above all else,
a determination that
all this suffering
and all this misery
and everything that has been
created by the brutality
of Milosevic shall not last,
but shall be reversed,
shall be defeated
so these people can once again
become symbols of hope,
humanity and peace.
Thank you.
APPLAUSE
He was at his best.
He really felt deeply
it had to be done.
We had a moral responsibility
to act.
The international politics
were difficult,
but he showed genuine leadership
in moving the dial on it.
My concerns were the alacrity
with which he wanted
to take military action.
His very quick decision -
we'll go in,
we're going to get involved,
we're going to do this militarily.
It had been, in those terms,
successful.
But I think he then realised
that he had the power to do this.
And we then descended, in my view,
into the horrors of
the post-2001 situation.
CHANTING: Tony, Tony, Tony
Well, one of the things
you learn in politics
is they can be chanting
your name one day in praise
and they could be chanting it
the next day in condemnation.
You've got to be strong enough
both to withstand the praise
and the condemnation.
Once you come to the view
that what you should do
is what you think is right,
then you've got to stand by that.
Some people will hate it,
some people will love it,
and that, you shouldn't
It shouldn't propel you
one way or the other.