Sophy Ridge on Sunday Interview with Tony Blair, former Prime Minister, 16.07.17

ANY QUOTES USED MUST BE ATTRIBUTED TO SOPHY RIDGE ON SUNDAY, SKY NEWS

SOPHY RIDGE: It feels like the first question to you after the election result has to be are you still convinced that Brexit is going to happen?

TONY BLAIR: I think it’s possible now that Brexit doesn’t happen, I think it’s absolutely necessary that it doesn’t happen because I think every day is bringing us fresh evidence that it’s doing us damage economically, certainly doing us damage politically and I think that when people really reflect on why we wanted to do Brexit and why the country voted for it, then they can see that in respect of the immigration issue, the overwhelming majority of these European migrants who come into our country are people we actually need for various reasons so I think as this thing goes on, the cost benefit analysis of leaving becomes very clear and then the question really is, have we got the political leadership in this country to try and explain to people what the different options are and guide us in a different direction.

SR: So how would it come to a halt then? Would there be another referendum?

TONY BLAIR: That’s a really good question because you can obviously … I think public opinion is moving on it. This time last year we were the fastest growing economy in the G7, we’re now the slowest. Our savings ratio is the lowest for 50 years, the investment community internationally has now gone really negative on us, our currency is down 10, 12%, investment in the motor car industry for example is down 30%, living standards are stagnating, this is causing us real damage, that’s beyond doubt. So the question is, in circumstances where the party leadership in both main parties is still committed to Brexit, how does it happen? I think it happens if there is a strong movement for change out in the country that starts to impact on MPs and how that happens, second referendum, votes in parliament and so on, I think in a sense you get to that later. The question is, can you get a clear sense from the people in the country that the will that they expressed last June is shifting?

SR: That is the key question. As part of the programme we are quite keen to go out and talk to people in different parts of the country and as part of that I’ve spoken to voters in places like Boston who feel furious that immigration they believe has changed their communities, in Barnsley they feel globalisation has robbed them of the prospect of a stable career. They’ll listen to what politicians like you are saying, people that they believe are members of the Establishment and they’ll feel pretty angry won’t they?

TONY BLAIR: Well I think you’ve got to distinguish the different reasons why people voted for Brexit. I think there are situations where in particular parts of the country the influx of European migration has been a problem, it’s one of the reasons why we had that whole debate about could we get a compromise on freedom of movement principles.

SR: Do you take responsibility for that because a lot of that happened under your government?

TONY BLAIR: Yes, but you know it happened for very good reasons in 2004 in a completely different economic situation and we can come back and argue about that in a minute by the way but in respect of globalisation, yes I think there are real anxieties that people have culturally on immigration and economically because they see the world changing around them and there are communities and people who feel left behind, but the key point is this – Brexit is not the answer. Part of the damage that Brexit does again every day is it distracts us as a country from dealing with what are the real issues of globalisation. If we want to control immigration by the way, half the immigration comes from outside of Europe, we could control it now. The immigration that comes in from Europe, once you start to break down those numbers you see that we need the high skilled people. There are people working in the financial sector or in the technology sector, people working in our health service, we need these people. The lower paid people, the low skilled people who come in as seasonal workers, there aren’t masses of British people queuing up for these jobs. The companies that employ these people need to employ these people. Students, we want foreign students to come in, it’s income for the country and it also establishes relations with other countries so when you break down the EU immigration it turns out that – I mean my Institute reckons that probably two-thirds of the people that come in are people in any event we actively want to come so what I would say to people whether it’s in Barnsley or Boston or wherever it is, is yes, we’ve got to provide answers to your problems and your challenges but this is not the answer, this is actually going to distract us from dealing with the real problems of the country and it’s going to make us poorer.

SR: Is it patronising though to suggest that you know better than them what the answer is?

TONY BLAIR: It’s not a question of me knowing better, it’s a question of having an honest and open exchange of views so that people understand the difference between being part of Europe, for example in the single market and being outside of it. People say you’re patronising people if you point these things out, I think it’s to patronise people to suggest they won’t listen to an argument. It’s not as if the result last June was like 75/25, it was 52/48. I think the sensible thing, because now we’re seeing what Brexit really means, what does Brexit mean and as we see that and as the argument develops, if we had the right political leadership we’d be explaining to people the options. You take when people say they want a soft Brexit and even if people in parliament, people who should really know about this, saying we want a soft Brexit but we’re going to leave the single market. You leave the single market, it’s not a soft Brexit. A free trade agreement which we would have as a third country negotiating with Europe is not the same as the single market. The single market is a unique construct, it’s allowed massive intra-Europe trade, it was actually a construct initiated by the British under Mrs Thatcher, carried on by John Major and myself. We benefit from the single market.

SR: You see you could be talking there about Jeremy Corbyn who has argued again for leaving the single market and then trying to get the best possible tariff free access, so you think he’s wrong?

TONY BLAIR: Well I’m talking about anyone who is engaged in this position. If you say you want a jobs first Brexit but we’re going to leave the single market, it’s a contradiction in terms. There isn’t a jobs first Brexit that means taking ourselves out of this unique trading area involving 50% of our trade and if you add in leaving the customs union at the same time you are talking about literally having to reshape the trading patterns of this country in a way that no modern developed country has ever been able to do.

SR: Do you think the Labour party, with its current position of having a jobs first Brexit, of having the best tariff free access to the single market, to retain the benefits – is that deliberately deceptive?

TONY BLAIR: No, no, I don't think it’s deliberately deceptive but I think for example when people talk about tariff free access which is on the goods side, so you’ve got goods and services, tariff free access on goods. Okay, you probably could negotiate that but it’s the non-tariff barriers that are the biggest problem. You are going to have to have customs checks, you’re going to have to have rules of origin requirements. They’re talking about multiplying by five times the number of customs checks and border checks we’re going to have to have if we get out of the single market. Think of the cost and the bureaucracy. And on the service side, if you’re out of the single market – and by the way in services we’ve got a huge surplus in trade with the European Union – if you’re out of the single market you’re not going to get the same terms as you have in the single market unless you actually agree to abide by all the European rules, in which case you might as well stay in it.

SR: So is Jeremy Corbyn providing an effective opposition then on Brexit?

TONY BLAIR: Well I think the problem for the Labour leadership, both for Jeremy Corbyn and John McDonnell is very, very simple: that I think a lot of people supported us at this last election on the basis that voting Labour was a way of stopping Brexit or limiting the mandate of Theresa May on Brexit and I think if we end up in a position where we are also carrying forward Brexit and leaving the single market, I think a lot of those people will say I voted Labour because I thought I was going to stop these things and actually the Labour leadership’s in favour of them. This is again a debate that’s going to go on in the Labour party as in the Conservative party, my bigger anxiety is just what’s happening to the country.

SR: So is Labour providing that opposition then?

TONY BLAIR: Well I think Labour is providing the opposition up to a point but I would like to see it go further.

SR: The issue is of course that Labour’s position on Brexit seemed to work quite well in that general election, were you surprised by the result?

TONY BLAIR: Yes, I was surprised by the result. I think on Labour’s position working well on the election, I’m a little dubious on that but okay, let’s accept that for the purpose of argument but the point is it can’t last. At some point we are going to have to take a definitive position: are we in favour of staying in the single market, which a large part of business and the trade union movement want us to do, or are we in favour of getting out? The reason by the way that people hesitate in staying in the single market is if we agreed to stay in the single market, there’s a very obvious next step in the argument isn’t there? Because then people say well in that case why are we leaving Europe? That’s precisely why the question of changing Brexit, removing this distraction from our politics, concentrating on the big questions that are coming down the pipe at us, would be the best solution.

SR: I’m keen to talk a bit more about that election result because it does seem as though you got Jeremy Corbyn pretty much completely wrong. Just to look at some of the things you said about him previously – ‘If Jeremy Corbyn becomes leader it won’t be a defeat like 1983 or 2015 at the next election, it will mean rout, possibly annihilation’. I mean he won the biggest swing to Labour since 1945, you weren’t just a bit off there, you were way off.

TONY BLAIR: Yes, that’s absolutely correct. So I think this election by the way was held in very unique circumstances, I actually think at the beginning of the election campaign we were going to be routed. I think what happened was as much to do with the Tory campaign as our campaign, however and I say this absolutely up front in the essay I’ve written, I’ve got to pay tribute to his temperament during the campaign, to their mobilisation particularly of younger voters, the way they fought the campaign and they generated a lot of enthusiasm, I completely buy that. What I don’t buy is two things: first of all I think a lot of people voted Labour not because they thought he was about to be Prime Minister and Labour was about to win, but because they were horrified at the Tory campaign and they wanted to put the brakes on it. Secondly, I think although significant numbers of people for sure voted for him with enthusiasm, I think there were an awful lot of people voted for him because they couldn’t stomach the Tories and wanted to make a point and I’m sceptical myself that this is a coalition that’s capable of holding, particularly if it becomes clear that we are really in the same position as the Tories on Brexit.

SR: Do you think he’d be a good Prime Minister?

TONY BLAIR: The doubts, you know, I expressed before and I haven’t changed my mind on that. I think the problem with that old left programme is that it just doesn’t meet the needs of the times and the danger for the country and look, all I do when I speak on these things is get a shedload of abuse so why am I doing? I am actually really worried about the country at the moment. I think if you follow up Brexit with a hard left economic programme, this country is going to be in real trouble. The fact is they aren’t solutions, they are two different visions of the 1960s when this country needs to work out an agenda for the future. You just take one very simple thing which is the influence of automation, artificial intelligence, big data. This is going to transform the economy. If you take the Germans, they’ve had this programme that they have been running for some time now on the digitalisation of industry, it sounds very ethereal and who the hell cares but it’s going to change their ability to operate in this modern world that technology is revolutionising. We’re not even debating these things, they’re not even part of our agenda. How do you redefine a welfare and retirement system and things like social care but for today’s world? We are still debating those in terms of do we spend more money, do we not spend more money? We are nowhere near, in my view, in this country at the moment articulating an agenda for the future and that’s because we’re stuck with one political party that’s defined by Brexit and an attitude in immigration that again in my point of view is just out of date and the other with an old style leftist programme which is, okay I understand why it generate enthusiasm but it isn’t an answer.

SR: So you think Jeremy Corbyn’s agenda is one of the 1960s?

TONY BLAIR: Well it’s, look to be fair to Jeremy he has never changed his position, not since the first time I came across him in the late 70s, early 80s but it’s not an answer to the country’s problems.

SR: The thing is though in this election it was Jeremy Corbyn’s unashamedly left wing manifesto that won people over so surely that was right and you were wrong.

TONY BLAIR: You are absolutely right that it did have an impact, that’s true but unfortunately it doesn’t make the policies right. People say to me that centrism, the type of centre left type of politics that I represent or centre right, that’s had its day, it’s gone. It wasn’t on offer and I do point out that neither party won a majority and I still believe that provided the centre becomes the place to advocate change because people do want change, they need change, in a world that’s changing we’ve got to change – provided the centre becomes the place where you can start answering some of these questions then I think that politics still has tremendous validity and tremendous support in the country and it’s better to provide the answers than just ride the anger.

SR: You talk about populism quite a lot in the article you wrote about riding the anger, do you think there are similarities between Donald Trump on the right and Jeremy Corbyn on the left?

TONY BLAIR: Well I think the populism of the left and right is essentially two different facets of the same phenomenon, which is that people do feel angry, they feel insecure, this generation I think does not feel that the next generation will do better than them so that generational promise that’s always been at the heart of Western politics is absent but the fact is, neither’s an answer. Sure, we should have controls on immigration, it’s important to control immigration. When I was Prime Minister I fought a whole election campaign around immigration and the need to control it actually but being anti-immigrant in today’s world is ridiculous, it’s not going to improve our country, it’s not going to give us a bigger stake in the future and likewise, if you go back down the path of unrestricted spending, nationalisation, more trade union power – come on, this is the 21st century. When people say to me these policies are popular, I guess in the end what I’m saying is okay, I’m not sure they are quite as popular as you think they are but let’s assume you’re right and they are popular, it doesn’t make them correct I’m afraid.

SR: A little earlier in the interview you said why do you do all this because you just get subjected to this torrent of abuse. There’s been lots of talk about social media abuse in recent days and I know you’re not on social media …

TONY BLAIR: It’s probably wise!

SR: … but do you ever read any of it or is it water off a duck’s back?

TONY BLAIR: No, it’s never water off a duck’s back or that would make you frankly insensitive but it’s, look, I think nowadays you have to be prepared, if you are going to step outside the door you’re going to get a lot of abuse. I do think that’s a whole other topic for debate, I think there is a huge issue today in how information is traded and exchanged in a democracy and I think the interaction of conventional media that’s become fragmented, much more partisan with social media, is creating part of this polarisation of politics and the sense that you have got two bits of the country really not talking to each other at all. I think that’s dangerous for democracy long-term.

SR: Does your family get affected by some of the abuse you get?

TONY BLAIR: Not particularly, I mean they’re pretty robust because they’ve lived with it for a long time but you’re in a situation today, Leo is 17 now believe it or not so they’ve got access to so much stuff so I guess they can’t help but read it from time to time, but they seem to manage.

SR: Another politician who is having certainly a bit of a hard time at the moment is Theresa May, do you feel any sympathy towards her?

TONY BLAIR: Yes, I do, of course because I know what it’s like to do the job and I think it’s a very unsatisfactory situation where you’ve got the Prime Minister surrounded by people who are just waiting for the moment they decide to throw her off the ledge. I think there’s something a little bit unseemly about all of it really and I do feel sorry for her. I think she is somebody who has got the best interests of the country at heart, it’s just that I profoundly disagree with her about Brexit. I understand why she thinks the people have spoken, it’s my job to deliver that verdict but I would just like to see more leadership and less followership.

SR: But you can perhaps empathise with the sharks circling.

TONY BLAIR: When you’ve done the job, it’s a small club of people that have done the job, you realise it is very tough. It’s a great privilege to do it of course but you are taking decisions all the time, every day and you are under enormous pressure and sure, the sharks are always circling.

SR: I’m keen to end by talking about your legacy because to two of the fundamental parts of your legacy are now effectively being unpicked which is the UK being at the forefront of the EU project and also your reforms to the Labour party. Have you failed?

TONY BLAIR: I don’t know if it’s so much whether I’ve failed, has opinion moved against those two positions? I’m not sure about that. One of the things I think is very important right now is to be aware enough to say look, politics has taken a turn in these last two or three years that I didn’t really anticipate and one thing for me is I’m back almost like a student of politics, I’m studying it and thinking about it and trying to work it out but I think if Britain carries through Brexit, if we really do this, we are going to diminish ourselves and relegate ourselves as a country. If we decide to do that, okay we decide to do it but I still hope that that part of the legacy will be retrieved and we understand in today’s world to separate yourself from the largest commercial market and biggest political union right on your doorstep, in this world where you are going to have China and India and all these massive powers emerging, it’s just not sensible. So I still think Brexit is a work in progress and as for the Labour party? Well I still think in the end you win best from the centre and you govern best from the centre because today’s world doesn’t really lend itself to ideological solutions, they are much more practical. I was talking about the technological revolution and how it’s going to change the workplace – how you respond to that, okay it’s about values, it’s about making sure everyone has access to the best technology can give, you make sure that people are protected through a process of change, that’s where the values matter but a lot of it is just going to be about understanding the way the world is changing and shaping policy to take advantage of the opportunities and mitigate the risks. So maybe it looks like these two parts of my legacy have been damaged but let’s wait and see.

SR: Very optimistic. Another part of your legacy of course, like it or not, is Iraq. Sir John Chilcot last week said you weren’t straight with the nation.

TONY BLAIR: Look, I’ve learned over time there is no point trying to [relitigate??] this with people. If you want to know what I received as the information you can go and read it online and I think that’s what people should do and then they can make their own judgement.

SR: Fair enough. You are someone who always comes across as being remarkably self-assured, very self-confident in your own opinions and beliefs but it is hard to escape the thought that you have been on the losing argument in most of the big political debates of recent years – Donald Trump, Brexit, Jeremy Corbyn. Does it ever cross your mind, do you ever have that moment of self-doubt and think maybe I got all this wrong, maybe I’m not right on this?

TONY BLAIR: First of all by the way, I’ve got continual self-doubt which is what you should have if you are at all sensible about your politics but I just point out, my politics hasn’t been on offer for the last ten years. I know it often seems as if…

SR: So you think if it had been you’d have been on the winning side?

TONY BLAIR: No, what I think is this, I think the type of politics that I represented which was a strong commitment to social justice and to social change – remember we introduced the minimum wage, the Good Friday Agreement, we made massive investments in health and education. When I left office health service satisfaction ratings were at the highest level for years and years and years but we were in favour of dynamic business and enterprise. I still think that has got real appeal. Now I agree with you, if you look back over these last years, particularly post the financial crisis then you can say, look that politics has had its day and now what people want is the populism of the left or the populism of the right but then you look at France and see the victory of Macron and you realise it’s not as simple as that.

SR: So could that happen in the UK do you think, a new centre ground party?

TONY BLAIR: Well I’m not advocating new parties but could it be that politicians from either of the two main parties who was in that position, could they win? Yes, they could win. One thing people forget is that two years ago we had a general election in Britain which David Cameron won pretty much from a centre right position so I agree with you, I think the politics that I represent is definitely under real challenge, the conventional wisdom is that at the moment centrism has had its day and is passé but I don’t really believe that and in any event, by the way, even if it is what people want to do, it doesn’t stop me from believing in it and believing it’s sensible and I do think that if we end up in British politics, as I say with these two competing visions of the past, they are visions of the past and not of the future, we’ll just do damage to ourselves.

SR: Okay, Tony Blair, thank you very much.

TONY BLAIR: Thank you.