Murnaghan Interview with Tony Blair, former Prime Minister, 3.07.16
ANY QUOTES USED MUST BE ATTRIBUTED TO MURNAGHAN, SKY NEWS
DERMOT MURNAGHAN: Well, our nation is in peril, those are the words of the former Prime Minister Tony Blair after last week’s vote to leave the European Union but is the party he led so successfully in any position to save the nation given Labour’s own turmoil? Well I’m joined now by the former Prime Minister, Tony Blair, and a very good morning to you. In that article you wrote some people are interpreting that as you putting yourself forward in some way to help with the Brexit negotiations.
TONY BLAIR: No, that’s got to be done by the government, not by me. The reason I’m concerned is this: the strange thing about the whole referendum is that we had a vote and the vote was 52 to 48 to leave the European Union but we have no idea what lies on the other side of that and there is a hugely complex negotiation that’s now got to take place in which we need to see exactly what is the offer, what does Brexit look like when we see the state of the negotiation, what happens to our business, to our jobs, to our investment, to our economy as a result of this negotiation? So my plea is very simple: right at this moment we have to keep absolutely fixed on trying to ensure that negotiation is set up in the right way for our interests and secondly, as a country we should keep all our options open because right now we don’t really know what lies on the other side.
DM: And given your concerns are for the nation, we in effect don’t have a government, we have a Prime Minister who is leading this, a so-called lame duck, what would you say to the Conservative party about the speed of its process for the good of the nation to get a Prime Minister in place who can undertake that task.
TONY BLAIR: I just hope the Conservative party puts the national interest first but the difficulty with having a leadership election within a political party is that very naturally what happens is that all the focus is within the party and the Conservative party I think has 150,000 or 200,000 members is it, let’s assume most of them apparently are pro-Brexit and the average age is probably towards the upper scale but you have got 48% in this country who I think feel quite politically disenfranchised. Young people particularly feel very angry about the result, they think they’ve been deprived of the future they wanted through our country and at this moment I still think David Cameron being the Prime Minister has got an important role in trying to shape how the rest of Europe is going to handle this negotiation because you’ve got 27 different countries, 27 governments, 27 parliaments, the European Parliament, each of these details has a thousand devils in it – it’s a very, very complicated negotiation and each one of them concerns a job or a sector or someone’s livelihood.
DM: Having just listened to the size of that task, we’re going to need tens of thousands of new bureaucrats aren’t we, negotiators just to get involved in that, negotiating everything from the fundamental trade deals to whether Melton Mowbray pork pies keeps its name.
TONY BLAIR: Well if we come out of the European Single Market which of course is the first big question, do you go to negotiate to get back into the single market but that in a sense invalidates your reason for Brexit – or do you leave that to a World Trade Organisation type negotiation, which for any of us who have experienced the World Trade Organisation, I mean this will be years before we get our position clarified. The most important thing right now, you’ve got a situation where okay, it’s clear there was a vote to leave but it wasn’t 70/30 or 60/40, it was 52/48. I mean let’s be very blunt about it, some of the claims made for the Brexit case have somewhat collapsed even in the week since we’ve been doing this and you find Conservative people who were campaigning for Brexit saying a few years ago actually it would be a disaster to leave the EU so you’ve got a very strange atmosphere round all this.
DM: Andrea Leadsom.
TONY BLAIR: Right and the most important thing right at this moment is to make sure we shape the psychology and the thinking of the other 27 countries in Europe.
DM: Within that analysis then Mr Blair, do you think then we ought to keep our options open? In particular triggering Article 50 which sets in train the formal process to leave the European Union, do you think that ought to be left alone for quite a while now while the nation and the political class absorb what has happened?
TONY BLAIR: Well there will be a limit for how long we can do that but absolutely I think we should keep all our options open.
DM: How long for?
TONY BLAIR: Frankly in my view for as long as it takes to get an idea of what the other side looks like. I mean what is it that we’re going to agree? What is the real impact on business? Just talking to people in different parts of the world in the last few days, look we’ve got to be under no doubt at all, Britain is a strong country, it’s a good country, a creative country, our economy in the end I’m sure can come through but round the world there is huge anxiety, people do think we have downgraded and diminished our standing and so there is a whole series of things that are going to become apparent over the next few months that aren’t apparent now.
DM: But there is a problem with that isn’t there? We hear from all branches of the European Union, from individual countries, from individual leaders as well within the European Union, that no negotiations can take place with the UK until Article 50 is triggered. Do you think there is a way round that?
TONY BLAIR: Well there is a negotiation in the formal sense of working out the details of exit, yes, that’s trigged by Article 50 but there’s a whole thing that can be done before then. I personally would have right now somebody very senior, I would even say the Prime Minister or the Chancellor, visiting every capital in Europe, seeing what the room for manoeuvre is, seeing what they might really want, understanding their politics. Each of these countries has a different politics and that politics will determine their attitude to us and okay, in the immediate aftermath of the vote there is a certain hostility but we’ve got to treat this like a vast campaign for our national interest. We’ve also got – and one of the reasons why we should keep our options open – is yes, the referendum expressed the will of the people but you know, the will of the people is entitled to change so we should keep an eye also, and Parliament has got a very important role here, MPs will be getting feedback from their constituencies, they’ve got to analyse the detail of what starts to emerge but right now over these next two months, even whilst this frankly psychodrama within the Conservative party is going on, we’ve got to have the national interest protected by trying to set the scene for any negotiations in …
DM: Are you saying then that this could be revisited, there could be a second referendum or that parliament could override the vote?
TONY BLAIR: I don't think you could override the settled will of the people but my point is very simple, it was 52 to 48, supposing some weeks or months down the line as it becomes clear what we are moving to because as I say, the odd thing about the referendum is we knew what we were getting out of but we don’t know what we’re getting into – as that become clear, if it’s clear that these terms are bad for us, if we have major parts of business and the financial sector saying this is not a good deal for us, if people start to worry about their jobs we should just keep our options open. I’m not saying we have another referendum, I’m not saying you can revisit this, I am simply saying there is no rule about this, we’re a sovereign people, we can do what we want to do and parliament, of course it shouldn’t override the will of the people but it is also the job of parliament to express the will of the people and to make sure that they scrutinise carefully what this new deal might be.
DM: In normal times this vacuum would be a great opportunity for a strong opposition to capitalise on it, what are your thoughts about what Jeremy Corbyn is doing to the party you used to lead? Should he go?
TONY BLAIR: So I have resolutely to intervene in this debate about whether Jeremy Corbyn should stay or go, it’s frankly – I don't know what’s happening right now within the Labour party, I’m not part of any move one way or another…
DM: But he lost that vote of no confidence. If that had happened to you – and you were told informally that was the situation – you went.
TONY BLAIR: I think most people can probably guess my views on this but I don’t want to intervene in it because I don't think it is helpful for me to do so but I do make this point …
DM: I’ve got to put it to you, Mr Blair, then: you are not disagreeing with me when I say you think Mr Corbyn should go?
TONY BLAIR: No, no, no one is putting words into my mouth. The point I want to make slightly different, and I think it is a more appropriate point for me to make, for a democracy to function you have got to have an opposition with a minimum level of credibility to challenge the government and to hold it to account especially at the moment when that 48% is feeling deeply disenfranchised and when there is this huge negotiation of national interest on the table. So you need to have that and if the opposition is incapacitated for any reason it allows frankly what has been happening within the Conservative party to happen because they can do whatever they want because they think they are going to be the government at the end of the day. So I’m not saying Jeremy Corbyn should stay or go, I’m not expressing an opinion on that, I am simply making one very simple point: right now at this moment of time this country needs an opposition that is capable of challenging the government, holding it to account and representing those millions of people out there who are thinking back on the last week and thinking our country’s been changed, we’ve got no one to represent us.
DM: So you are saying which it currently doesn’t have that opposition?
TONY BLAIR: Well it’s pretty obvious with everything that has been going on the last few days … Look, I’ve not known a time like this in British politics to be honest.
DM: One of the reasons we’re told, we’re hearing today, that Jeremy Corbyn is hanging on so resolutely is he wants to wait till Wednesday and the Chilcot report coming out and wants to crucify you, according to one of his aides, for being a war criminal.
TONY BLAIR: So Wednesday is the time the report’s published. I’ve said many times over these past years, I’ll wait for the report and then I will make my views known and express myself fully and properly. I just have taken the view, rightly or wrongly, we should wait for the report to be published and then I’ll express myself and I’m not getting into either the politics or the detail of it before we actually see it.
DM: But just to link it to the party, I mean there must be times when you wonder and other people wonder, why do sections of the very party that you devoted your political life and soul to, why do they hate you so fundamentally?
TONY BLAIR: I don't know, there may be lots of reasons for it but politics is a strange business. You’ve always got to think back and think that it’s a … I had also great times leading the Labour party and despite all the controversies over issues like Iraq there were many, many good things that we managed to do for the country so you’ve got to take a sort of long view of this and think in the end, whatever people say, and politics today is a pretty rough business, people say pretty unpleasant things about each other, there is still an important job to be done and a job which if you manage to get to it and do it as leader of the Labour party or Prime Minister, you should count yourself privileged.
DM: But it is this issue, isn’t it, of being called a war criminal – Alex Salmond of the SNP is coming along on the programme a bit later and I’m sure he is going to endorse that Corbynite view – and some people are saying there are grounds for you to be arrested and taken to the International Criminal Court, it’s been around for some time. How do you treat that?
TONY BLAIR: I think it’s best we wait for Wednesday and see what the report brings. When that comes, by the way, then I can respond properly but it is not possible and certainly not really appropriate I think for me to respond today.
DM: But you could tell us now because one of the key questions is what understanding did you come to with George W. Bush before 2003, the Crawford Ranch conversation, did you pledge that Britain would back the United States come what may?
TONY BLAIR: These are the very things that the report’s going to go into. We’re Sunday, we’ve got the report on Wednesday, let’s wait and see and then, as I say, there will be a very, very full debate that I will be, I can absolutely assure, you very fully participating in very fully.
DM: Can we just roll all these issues together then? It occurs to me looking at your political career of three big pillars on which you based it falling apart. You wanted to make the Labour party a progressive force, almost forever more and certainly keep it in power and allow it to make an influence. You wanted to, as one of the phrases during the campaign just gone, you wanted to make Britain lead not leave the European Union and in foreign policy terms you wanted to show the ability of nations like our own to intervene ethically in foreign affairs and make things better.
TONY BLAIR: Yes and these things are under challenge but politics goes in waves of sentiment and feeling and I think the most important thing in politics is to do what you think is right. In the end you may be right or wrong but ultimately leadership is about assessing the situation as you see it and doing what you think is right, even if it’s not always very popular and yes, I stood for those things when I was leader of the Labour party, I stand for them still but I am very confident over time these arguments can reassert themselves and politics today is a very rough business and it’s made particularly rough because politicians today operate with this kind of wall of noise around them created by conventional media interacting with social media so that you, I think sometimes politicians are quite disoriented and you have always got to go back to first principles – why is it important that Labour is a party of government and not a party of protest? So it can change the country for the better. Why is it important that we’re in Europe? Because in the 21st century being part of a major alliance and commercial market is in the interests of the country. Why is it important that we are engaged in the world and prepared to intervene? Because this is a world more integrated than ever before and a security problem in one part of the world is a security problem here. So these arguments have not gone away, they’re still there and I’ve no doubt at all that as a new generation comes through they will find advocates of it.
DM: Tony Blair, we must end it there, thank you very much indeed.