Political leaders can learn from Sir Tony Blair’s advice

Whatever The Independent’s disagreements with Sir Tony Blair in the past, we applaud his efforts to play the role of experienced adviser in a new way. In the old days, a former prime minister might have stayed in the House of Commons, or moved up the corridor to the House of Lords, to offer the nation the benefit of their wisdom and experience from those benches.

Sir Tony offers these traditional values in a modern setting, creating an extra-parliamentary model, a foundation to exploit and build on his insight and understanding of government. Some of his advice has been offered, occasionally controversially, to foreign leaders keen to learn the lessons of public service reform. But in recent years his most striking contribution has been to the policy debate in this country.

Throughout the Brexit agonies, his was the most articulate and persuasive case for membership of the European Union, and after the referendum for pausing long and hard to consider the implications of the decision to leave. Then, during the pandemic, he repurposed his institute to work on the policy response to the public health emergency. He led the argument – in an article in The Independent – for “first doses first”, which was quickly accepted as the right way to get the greatest protection to the greatest number.

In a fumbling way, before he was driven completely off course by largely self-inflicted crises, Boris Johnson sought to learn the lessons of Sir Tony’s time as prime minister, bringing in Sir Michael Barber to advise on reconstituting a Blair-style No 10 delivery unit. But, as Sir Tony says in his interview with The Independent, “without getting into the wrongs and rights of what has happened, the thing that’s missing is a plan for the future”.

With his distinctive clarity, the former prime minister identifies three main challenges for a government of any party today: Brexit, the technology revolution and an ambitious target for climate action. Those are different from the policy priorities of New Labour times, and yet it seems that Sir Tony has a better grasp of them, and a better thought-out set of policy options for addressing them, than the actual prime minister at the head of the actual government.

It may be too late for Mr Johnson to benefit much from the advice Sir Tony and his freelance think tank can offer, because the other skill the former Labour prime minister retains is an acute understanding of British politics, and he thinks the ground is shifting under Mr Johnson’s feet.

“There’s a group of people who maybe backed the Tories for the first time who are having second thoughts,” he tells us. “Has politics shifted? Yes. There’s disaffection with the government and there’s interest in Labour. Will that result in a fundamental change in politics, in the government? That depends as much on Labour, but the signs are much better than they’ve been for a long, long time.”

He maintains a respectful distance from Sir Keir Starmer, but is enthusiastically supportive of him. Any political leader in Britain today – whether it is Mr Johnson plotting his fightback; Rishi Sunak or Liz Truss plotting to succeed him; or Sir Keir, preparing to offer the British people an alternative government in two years’ time – should listen to and learn from someone who not only won three elections but who significantly changed the country, on balance for the better, during his decade in power.