Podcast: "United" Kingdom? Tony Blair on Truss, Charles, Brexit, and division in UK & beyond

Tony Blair:

The problem is the populism in the West. It succeeds when the center can't solve the problems. And I will say to people, populism doesn't invent grievances. By and large, it doesn't invent them, it exploits them.

Ian Bremmer:

Hello and welcome to the GZERO World Podcast. This is where you'll find extended interviews with the news makers I talk to every week on my public television show. I'm Ian Bremmer. Winston Churchill once said, "To improve is to change. To be perfect is to change often." Little did he know how much change would come to his nation or how quickly because in the span of just 48 hours in early September, the United Kingdom got a new prime minister, Liz Truss, and then a new monarch King Charles III. Both are facing big challenges in their new roles. For trust the Tory leader, it's a range of issues from inflation to the ongoing fallout of Brexit. And for Charles, it's the relevance of the monarchy itself. Now that it's longest serving and much beloved ruler is gone, I'm talking about all that and more with a man who occupied 10 Downing Street for more than a decade. Former prime minister Tony Black. Let's get to it.

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Ian Bremmer:

prime minister Tony Blair, welcome to GZERO World.

Tony Blair:

Thank you Ian.

Ian Bremmer:

So much to talk to you about right now, we're both here in New York, we're talking to a lot of global leaders, but I have to at least start given the events of the past weeks in your country and after 70 years of Queen Elizabeth and you've knew her so well. Tell us something personal, interesting, about your relationship with her.

Tony Blair:

Well, I grew up with the Queen and when I first met her as prime minister, she said to me, you're my 10th prime minister. The first one was Winston Churchill. That was before you were born. And I realized you were always talking with someone who had this vast historical experience, she was very gracious and actually kind, very empathetic towards her prime ministers. She knew the burden of responsibility you carried, and she was conscious of that and always helpful. I couldn't really tell you what her politics were. She was always above the politics, but she had this intense commitment to duty. I mean it really was her driving force and those characteristics of dignity, duty, decency. They defined her and I think they gave her this power of example, if you like. And she was just such a constant feature of British life through all the changes.

I mean if you go back to the 1950s, look at 1950s Britain, just go and watch the films of the coronation and just see the faces. Go fast forward to Britain 2022 and the huge difference in social makeup, in class, in society, and the way we live, work, think everything. And she managed to guide the monarchy through all of that. So she was a remarkable person. We used to meet every week and well obviously when I was prime minister and then I was actually with her about three months ago, we had lunch together when she bestowed this honor on they call the Knights of the Garter.

Ian Bremmer:

I remember that. You have to dress up for that really.

Tony Blair:

Well it was instigated in 1340 and-

Ian Bremmer:

It seems like the outfits haven't changed very much.

Tony Blair:

No, that's right. So if you want to see a really ridiculous picture of me, you can google it and see that. But she was grateful. She was very reflective and it seems an odd thing to say about a monarch, but she was actually very street wise. She kept her pulse firmly on where the British people were.

Ian Bremmer:

In 2022. For some, the monarchy feels like an anachronism. It is very different from the fifties in lots of ways. I mean the Labor Party in Australia today is a Republican party. Do you feel like there have to be changes in the monarchy?

Tony Blair:

Well, I think King Charles will instigate certain changes I think probably. Or so I read, I mean I don't know. But look, in the end, my generation, which was as it were, the first generation that grew up in a society, really doesn't have the same deference, didn't have the same attachment to class as traditional British society. We've come to our own settlement and our own minds of this issue, if you like, which is, you can have an elected president or you can have a monarch.

And we prefer that the tradition of the monarch, someone who's above politics, it gives you a certain point of unity as a country, even if your politics is quite divided, which us has been like yours in the past few years. And so we've come to not an historical or a traditional decision to keep the monarchy. We've come to what is a rational decision that we prefer it to the alternative system. And so I think provided, and I'm sure this will happen with King Charles by the way, because he's a decent and caring guy. I think if the monarchy keeps to this principle of duty to the country first, service to the country first, I think it's reasonably well supported in British society.

Ian Bremmer:

As a unifying factor for them.

Tony Blair:

Yes as a unifying factor. And Western politics is pretty ugly, and has been for several years. But with the Queen's passing, I mean even people I knew who were Republicans were moved by it and respected her and supported her. And I think Prince Charles as he was then, was for example on issues like the environment, on better relationships between the faiths, was well ahead of his time. The royal family because of the Commonwealth and the number of African countries within the Commonwealth, they were very ingrained in the monarchy, this head of the Commonwealth, the concept of that. So look who knows, but I think it's for the moment I would say the monarchy's pretty safe.

Ian Bremmer:

So we also have a new prime minister. It's been a busy couple of weeks for the United Kingdom. She comes into power not only with the transition of your monarch, but also with massive challenges on her plate. I mean just the scandals every day under Boris Johnson, difficulty in terms of preparing for the inflation, particularly on the energy side that we presently see, the continued knock on effects of Brexit, which she initially voted against. But now as a flag carrier for. I know that she's not of your party but you want her to succeed of course. I mean, how do you think she is, it's almost too early to say how she's doing, but how do you feel about her priorities as she's so far addressed them?

Tony Blair:

I mean you've got short term challenge, which is the energy price rise because this is huge. And then you've got a longer term challenge on the short term challenge. The energy, the rise in energy costs is just important to understand what this means in Britain and across Europe. I mean household builds will literally treble, right? You're going to be talking about thousands of pounds more that people will be forced to pay. So the government's going to have to intervene because frankly a large part of the population literally won't be able to pay it. And also if you try and force them to pay it, you'll have a massive negative impact on the economy. So you've got a short term issue where government's going to have to subsidize effectively energy costs through this winter.

Ian Bremmer:

And the announcement that she's made on that front, the a hundred billion pounds plus, was that the right approach?

Tony Blair:

Well, I mean my institute put out a paper that was more targeted and with what would've been an incentive to use less energy. I think the problem with just a blanket subsidy, I can understand the reasons for it this winter, but if this carries on, the problem over time is that you are not giving people an incentive to reduce their energy bills by reducing energy demand. But whatever way you want to cut this particular cake, it's going to cost a lot of money. Okay? So that's the short term.

The long term question that she's identified is the right question, which is around growth. And because when I was prime minister, we had growth rates, well above 2% was the trend rate of growth. We've been growing well under 2% and you've got to get the growth rates up because if you don't, one of the first things you realize in government is if growth's strong, revenues are strong, if revenues are strong, you can spend money on public services.

If the growth rates are low or you are in recession, then suddenly everything looks worse and you're having to cut back on services. So she's right to target growth. Now she's going for a particular way to do that, which is a lot of tax cuts and so on. Personally, I think the big questions around growth long term for Britain are around the technology revolution, infrastructure and education. So whatever she's doing on tax cuts and so on, for me, the big three things are really those and it's too early to say whether she has plans for those or not.

Ian Bremmer:

You met with Ursula von der Leyen among others recently. How is the UK perceived today by the European Union? And I'm not just talking about its leadership, but generally speaking, how is it changing over the last few years since the Brexit referendum?

Tony Blair:

Well, I think there's a lot of frustration in Europe in the sense that the European Union didn't want Britain to leave. And people like Ursula von der Leyen, very anglophile in their outlook, close links with the UK. And so they want to have a good relationship with Britain going forward. Now we've got to resolve this Northern Island Protocol, which is a Brexit hangover because if you take the United Kingdom as a whole, which means Britain, the island Britain, and then Northern Island, if you take all of it out of the single market of the European Union, the external border of Europe becomes the border between Northern and Southern Ireland.

Ian Bremmer:

Correct.

Tony Blair:

And therefore, in theory, you should put border controls along that border, but-

Ian Bremmer:

Which is deeply unpopular.

Tony Blair:

Right.

Ian Bremmer:

And dysfunctional.

Tony Blair:

Exactly. And conflicts with the Good Friday Agreement, a part of which was to keep the border open.

Ian Bremmer:

Right.

Tony Blair:

Okay. So it's a problem which I think we could resolve practically. And my institute again suggested ways we can do that. We need to sort that out, and then we to need to look for how we build a more constructive relationship with our own continent. And I think there's a willingness in the European side to do that. And the only question is whether the very kind of anti-European politics of a part of the right in Britain get in the way of that. And it's a bit tragic if it did because as I say to people, you can change the political and legal relationship that Britain has with Europe. What you can't do is change our geography, you get from London to Paris quicker by train than you get from London to Scotland.

Ian Bremmer:

Now I am quite familiar as an American with playing politics with the border. And I want to ask you, given what you've seen of the prime minister, the new prime minister and given what you've seen of her cabinet, do you think that they will be able to avoid playing politics with the Ireland border or do you see this as kind of a train that is heading to wreck?

Tony Blair:

I think and hope that they're sensible enough to just settled the Northern Island Protocol issue and move on. I think they will. I hope they will. We'll see. But if you want a solution to it, there is a practical solution. If it becomes an ideological fight, with Britain effectively saying Europe's got to drop it's single market rules and so on to suit us, then the thing won't work. But I feel there are some indications that the new prime minister will try and take a pragmatic view.

Ian Bremmer:

Now you say that the Europeans of course didn't want the UK to leave the European Union. Of course it's also true that a lot of Britains didn't want the UK to leave. You were one of them.

Tony Blair:

Me, absolutely.

Ian Bremmer:

The Scots of course, a large majority didn't want to leave Northern Ireland. Of course this is a huge challenge for them. Does this make it more likely over time in your view that the United Kingdom ultimately disintegrates?

Tony Blair:

Well, I hope it doesn't and I think it won't, but it obviously adds a dimension to the case of the people arguing for independence.

Ian Bremmer:

What's the biggest tension point that we need to watch going forward?

Tony Blair:

I think it's that if you are in Scotland and especially with a younger generation, you want to be part of Europe, and you see particularly a conservative government that you haven't voted for because Scotland's not voting Conservative being anti-European, it's bound to fuel. And the nationalists are using this now. I think the reasons for Scotland remaining tied to the United Kingdom, economic reasons, are massively powerful. And I think in the end they'll outweigh anything else in the end, but it's given an extra dimension.

I'm as worried, if not more worried about Northern Ireland because they're, again, a majority voted to stay in the European Union. Northern Ireland will in effect remain to some degree a part of that single market in Europe. And for the first time very recently, the numbers of Catholics have outweighed the numbers of Protestants in Northern Ireland. Now, not everyone votes on that basis, but there are tensions. So, I think and hope that the UK stays together. But there's no doubt Brexit has given an impetus to the people arguing for either united Ireland or Scottish independence.

Ian Bremmer:

Is there any recognition among the Brexiteers, given what has happened, the trajectory of the UK economy, the tensions, the fact that the US-UK trade deal for the time being is not in the cards, that actually they were selling a bill of goods. Do you get any of that?

Tony Blair:

Not a lot. I mean, it's look-

Ian Bremmer:

Because you do have a new passport color for example, I mean I know that's a big deal.

Tony Blair:

Yeah, I mean, no, look, we were told there'll be more money for the National Health Service. There's obviously not because growth rates are down and therefore revenue are down. And we spent, in any event, billions of pounds on new border checks and all the rest of it. We were told there would've been easy UK-US trade deal, not only is it not easy, it is not even under discussion.

We were told that it was nonsense to suggest that Northern Ireland was going to become a problem when it was obviously going to become a problem if we did Brexit in a way that was being described. But if you read a lot of the right-wing commentary on Brexit, you'd think it was successful. And to the extent it wasn't the unreasonableness of the Europeans and the risk for the Conservative Party is they become, one of their former chairman the other day described it as an English Nationalist Party now.

I mean those of us who are passionately against Brexit, we've got to accept the argument's over, and what you've got to look at now is how you fix its problems and then move on. And that there are some opportunities that can come for Britain being outside that regulatory framework. You can see how we could act in a more nimble way and for example, financial services, life sciences and so on. But the most important thing for British politics right now is to realize we are living through a whole series of changes. I mean, you talked about these three crises and they're changes that have got, whether it's climate, health or artificial intelligence, these revolutions are changing our world in Britain as well as the world. And the whole question for government is not really an ideological question. Its how do you understand this world and harness its potential? And the sooner we get the political debate back to that, the better. So fix the Brexit problems and move on is what I would say.

Ian Bremmer:

I've been startlingly narrow in my questions with you so far as someone who wasn't just prime minister for a decade, but also was truly a global figure, and remain very involved in diplomacy around the world. So let me extend the aperture a little bit and talk first of course about what's happening with Russia. Boris Johnson has been seen, continues to be seen as a very strong supporter of the Ukrainian president. The United Kingdom is seen by Biden as the second most important military supporter of the Ukrainians. We've just seen that Putin continues to escalate. How do you think the Alliance is doing? How is Europe doing? How's the UK doing? And where do you think this goes?

Tony Blair:

Well, first of all, there'll be no change of UK policy under Liz Truss. That's clear. The UK will remain absolutely firmly in support of Ukraine and the defense of its democracy.

Secondly, I think the alliance has done well. I think the president of the United States has done well in bringing people together. I mean, a lot of people worry about whether Europe will hold its nerve through the winter. And subsequently at the moment, I would say it definitely will. I mean, you can never be sure about the politics of the whole set of different countries. And as we see from Italy, there's a certain amount of instability in the politics of Europe, of course. But I think Europe will hold together, and I think the alliance is strong and remember Ukraine, I mean Ukraine for America is important, but it's quite a long way away from you, right? Ukraine for Europe's on our doorstep and for Eastern Europe, and the Eastern Europe has a powerful voice within the European Union today. They are absolutely in no doubt at all, unless this aggression is not merely stopped, but is seen definitively not to have worked and to have rebounded on the aggressor. Then Europe itself will be at risk.

Ian Bremmer:

Turn to the Middle East briefly. Iran, of course, the nuclear deal, a lot of effort to bring it back into fruition, right now does not look like it's happening. And we see big demonstrations on the ground, a number of deaths in Iran after this woman was killed by the religious police. Where do you think the United States, the Europeans, what is the correct approach? Should there still be a lot of effort to try to get this deal together or are we past that timeframe?

Tony Blair:

The original deal done by the Obama Administration was a deal done with I think really good intentions and with a desire to make sure that you constrained the Iranians in their nuclear ambitions. The thing is, with the release of sanctions, it also gave them a lot of money to spend. And unfortunately they didn't spend it on the Iranian people. They spend it on exporting their destabilization tactics all around the Middle East.

My view of the Middle East, and I spent a lot of time there since leaving office, is that there's really one big battle going on. And it's around modernization. It's around whether the societies of the Middle East can develop into societies of what I would call religious tolerance and rule-based economies. Doesn't mean to say they're all going to become democracies, but it means that they put religion in its rightful place, don't let it become a political ideology, and that they get rid of the web of corruption that often suppresses the proper enterprise and entrepreneurial spirit within the Middle East.

That's the fight that's going on. And Iran is very clearly on the negative reactionary and regressive side. And the problem is, all over the Middle East, their impact is destabilizing, whether it's in Iraq or Lebanon or Syria or virtually anywhere you look. And so for me, the important thing for the West to do is to support those modernizing forces. And I think this is what it's all about. So I don't know whether it's possible to get this deal back in a shape that is justifiable or not, but I do know that the Middle East will not be stable until the Iranian regime changes. I'm not suggesting we go and change it, by the way, but I'm just saying, that is the single biggest destabilizing force in the Middle East.

Ian Bremmer:

I'm glad the caveat because we've had bad experiences with regime change for democracy.

Tony Blair:

Well, I know quite a lot about that.

Ian Bremmer:

Yeah. Final question. When you were prime minister, the world and governance and democracy looked very different in many ways, more stable than it does today. If you were prime minister today, if you were a leader on the global stage, a permanent member of the Security Council, a member of the G7, G20, what would you do differently as a consequence of that now than back in the days of cool Britannia?

Tony Blair:

So I would be doing two things because I think for the West to be... For me, it's all about the West being strong, able to defend its values and its interests in an era where the geopolitics of the 21st century is going to change dramatically because of China. So my view is, number one, the West has got to be a strong alliance. And if there is any benefit coming out of the ghastly events in Ukraine, it is that alliance has strengthened, and that means America and Europe and then our allies around the world, including in the Pacific, we stick together, we stay together, and we're more effective together. Because the second thing I would say is the biggest challenge to democracy is efficacy. When you follow a lot of the media debate, it's all about transparency or accountability. It's not, it's about effectiveness.

And this is where I come to the second thing, which is in my view, the big real world event is this technology revolution. And if you are looking at healthcare today, or education today, or how people are going to work, how government functions, it's all about understanding that revolution. And it's transformative potential. And what the West needs is not just a strong foreign policy, it needs a strong domestic mission. And that should be about this technology revolution and how you harness it. But to do that, the West politics have got to return to a strong center, because that's what we had when I was in office, and the center not as the split between Left and Right, which I think is the 20th century. Left-Right politics is so 20th century. The real issues today are really practical, not ideological, but the center should be the place where you make the changes that match the scale of the challenge.

Ian Bremmer:

So I'm telling you, if you were campaigning, I kind of feel 21st century, Third Way is what you're talking about.

Tony Blair:

Yeah, but this is correct in the end. I mean, this is why I often say to people in the Labor Party when they say to me, "Tony, we can't go back to 1997." And I say, "no, we can't. But the trouble is, you guys want to go backwards. You want to go pre-1997." I agree today, all the things we were talking about then have accelerated. They're not diminished or fallen away. I mean, when Bill Clinton and I were launching the initiative around the human genome, and I always remember him saying to me at the time, I think this is one of the most important things we'll ever do, which turned out to be true. Not that I really understood it fully at the time. But you fast forward today, it's even more important. So this is why I think that the problem is the populism in the West, it succeeds when the center can't solve the problems.

And I will say to people, "populism doesn't invent grievances," By and large it doesn't invent them, it exploits them. So if you take immigration for example, you've got to deal with immigration. If you don't have an immigration policy today, which provides controls over it, even if you're telling people immigrants do a great job in our economy, but you still need control. If you're not in that space, the Populist is going to come along and exploit that issue. So it's all about, in my view, the retrieval of that strong, clear center, and this is where politics has got to reach out beyond the ranks of professional politicians who have spent their whole life in doing nothing but politics and understand the world, embrace it, and then change it.

Ian Bremmer:

Prime minister Tony Blair, thanks so much for joining.

Tony Blair:

Thank you.

Ian Bremmer:

That's it for today's edition of the GZERO World Podcast. Like what you've heard? Come check us out at gzeromedia.com and sign up for our newsletter, Signal.

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