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00:00:04Some say you were his Lady Macbeth.
00:00:07If anyone thinks Tony's my puppet,
00:00:09they just don't understand the nature of the man.
00:00:15Right.
00:00:17He could always, as we say at home,
00:00:19he could always talk an owl out of a tree.
00:00:25When you think of Tony Blair,
00:00:27what words spring to mind?
00:00:30I think he's a man in denial, actually.
00:00:35Tony Blair, a Prime Minister who never lost a general election.
00:00:40He is, without doubt, both one of the most successful
00:00:44and one of the most controversial leaders Britain has ever had.
00:00:50One way of looking at him is of thinking of him as an explorer.
00:00:56His whole story, the life story of Tony Blair,
00:01:00is one of exploration of the world to see how far he can get.
00:01:34He can be learned by Tony Blair,
00:02:02Transcription by CastingWords
00:02:34Transcription by CastingWords
00:03:03Transcription by CastingWords
00:03:04He was born the son of travelling performers
00:03:07and put into the foster care of a Mr and Mrs Blair
00:03:11in a poor part of Glasgow.
00:03:16Tony's father joined the army and then the Conservative Party.
00:03:20He had dreams of becoming Prime Minister.
00:03:26My dad was a remarkable man.
00:03:29He was chairman of the local Conservative Party.
00:03:31He was a very successful barrister, great speaker.
00:03:35By the way, I think he could have been a Prime Minister, but...
00:03:45Tony's father sent his son to this boarding school
00:03:50at the age of 13.
00:04:03We were inside those railings, and we were pretty well cut off.
00:04:09At Fetty's, there was fagging, there was beating, there was the church.
00:04:18There was still that feeling you were being prepared to run an empire,
00:04:23to be sent off to Burma or to India or somewhere to run a tea plantation.
00:04:32Tony was very self-confident.
00:04:35He was very clever, too, and I think he knew he was clever.
00:04:39Tony arrived at Fetty's on the back of a family tragedy.
00:04:44His father had a massive stroke, from which he never fully recovered.
00:04:49And any dreams his father had of being Prime Minister were over.
00:04:55I want to take you back to July 1964.
00:04:59You will remember that that's when your dad had a stroke.
00:05:03Tell me what happened.
00:05:06Well, I guess I was 10, 11 years old.
00:05:08How did it impact you, do you think?
00:05:12I don't spend a lot of time psychoanalysing myself,
00:05:15but I think when I look back on it,
00:05:19it must have had an impact on my thinking about the world and life.
00:05:22You know, it was such a traumatic event.
00:05:25I remember the event of that night and that day and the next day
00:05:29and the days that followed so vividly that I get...
00:05:32Of course, it makes an impact on your life,
00:05:35and I guess it teaches you that life is fragile.
00:05:42Tony's father's speech never fully recovered.
00:05:46But at school, Tony kept this to himself.
00:05:51You never had any sense of how his father's stroke might have affected him?
00:05:57No, not really. No, no, we never really discussed it.
00:06:00No, it's bizarre, yeah.
00:06:03What do you think Fetis taught Tony Blair about himself?
00:06:08The school teaches you to survive.
00:06:11It knocks a lot of the emotion out of you.
00:06:14You become very insular.
00:06:16He was strong.
00:06:18And didn't really show much in the way of emotion.
00:06:21I never saw it.
00:06:22It was a bad thing to show emotion when you were at these schools.
00:06:40After Fetis, Blair goes up to Oxford.
00:06:45He studies law and sings in a rock band.
00:06:50Also in Oxford is his childhood friend, Angie Hunter,
00:06:54who would go on to become one of his closest political advisers.
00:07:03So he arrived, fresh-faced, fun.
00:07:06He was good-looking.
00:07:08He was fun to be with, articulate.
00:07:13And he looked like every other guy that came to Oxford in 1972,
00:07:17which basically was long hair and he had a big fur coat.
00:07:22We just became great friends.
00:07:27I want to touch on something else that happened while you were at university,
00:07:31which is a good friend of yours took his own life.
00:07:35Ewan.
00:07:43Ewan had been my dearest friend at school.
00:07:49There was a group of us.
00:07:50And he was a great guy.
00:07:51He was a wonderful, wonderful young man.
00:07:54And, unfortunately, he got into drugs, I think.
00:08:04And he became sort of mentally unstable and then took his own life.
00:08:08And it had a big impact on me.
00:08:10Because he, first of all, because obviously he was a very, very dear friend.
00:08:14And secondly, because I, you know, I just felt what a waste it was
00:08:22because he had such talent.
00:08:24He was such a clever young man with such a strong personality.
00:08:30And he would have done great things.
00:08:33And when my first son was born, you know, I named him after him.
00:08:44Ewan's suicide had a big impact on Tony.
00:08:47And he came back, it was at the end of the summer term,
00:08:50and I remember he came back the following term with his hair cut.
00:08:54And he wasn't wearing the fur coat.
00:08:58He straightened up a lot after that.
00:09:08Tony makes his way at Oxford,
00:09:10doing well enough to plan for a career as a lawyer.
00:09:18In those days, of course, you made a telephone call
00:09:21from a telephone box with putting the coins in the box,
00:09:24and therefore you weren't every day in contact
00:09:26with your family as you are today.
00:09:29My mother had been ill, and I knew she had cancer,
00:09:33and the family didn't want to tell me
00:09:34because I was doing my final exams at Oxford.
00:09:37They didn't want to tell me how serious it was.
00:09:43But I remember when I got off the train
00:09:45and my dad picked me up at the station,
00:09:48he said to me,
00:09:49look, you know, you should just prepare yourself for this.
00:09:53And I said, but you're not seriously telling me she's going to die.
00:09:56And he said, well, no, I'm telling you that.
00:09:58She is.
00:09:59She's in hospital, and she's going to die soon.
00:10:01So that was, you know, yeah, of course.
00:10:07The thing that experience teaches you
00:10:09when you have an experience like this
00:10:11and your parent dies when you're very young
00:10:14is you just realise, well,
00:10:15if you've got something to do with your life,
00:10:17you'd better get on and do it
00:10:18because who knows what happens.
00:10:47It's 1982.
00:10:52Mrs. Thatcher is in power
00:10:58and the Falklands War is raging.
00:11:04The Conservatives have captured the mood of the 80s.
00:11:10Meanwhile, the Labour Party is in the doldrums.
00:11:14We've had a very long day.
00:11:19OK, you get annoyed if you like,
00:11:22but I need a credential to get to the conference.
00:11:27And this is their leader.
00:11:31How have you found your day here at the Begginsfield by-election?
00:11:34Well, I think it's been a pretty good day.
00:11:36First of all, we've got a wonderful candidate.
00:11:38Everybody agrees that Tony Blair
00:11:40is one of the very best possible candidates there could be.
00:11:44Rather a large majority, isn't it, against us, unfortunately?
00:11:46Well, it's quite a job, you know.
00:11:48After leaving Oxford, Blair became a barrister.
00:11:52But now he has political ambitions.
00:11:56Running to be a Labour MP in a seat he can't win.
00:12:01Oh, that's good.
00:12:02Nice smile, isn't it?
00:12:06Anthony Charles Linton.
00:12:093,886.
00:12:15As expected, Blair loses.
00:12:28When I first met Tony,
00:12:30we were co-publes and rivals.
00:12:33We then became friends
00:12:35and we were vaguely flirting with each other.
00:12:38It was about 18 months after his mother had died
00:12:42and I think he was still very much coming to terms with that.
00:12:47The first thing we really sort of talked about was religion.
00:12:51Both of us, in different ways, had a religious faith.
00:12:57Was he romantic in his courtship?
00:13:00No, not very.
00:13:02Tony's not very romantic.
00:13:03Really?
00:13:05He's never bought me flowers, for example.
00:13:07And now he says, well, if I bought you flowers,
00:13:09you'd be very suspicious, which is.
00:13:11Probably true.
00:13:14So...
00:13:16Tony is desperate to become a Labour MP,
00:13:19but first he has to be chosen as a candidate
00:13:21by a constituency Labour Party.
00:13:25He travels up and down the country,
00:13:28telling them all what they don't want to hear,
00:13:31that the Labour Party needs radical reform.
00:13:36He tries ten constituencies, all say no,
00:13:40and Tony's on the brink of giving up.
00:13:45I've always been interested in politics.
00:13:47I was interested in politics when I was 14 and, uh, in class.
00:13:52I'd announced that I was going to be the first female Prime Minister.
00:13:57Cherie does get selected to fight a seat for Labour.
00:14:00So how did he cope with that?
00:14:02Uh, badly.
00:14:05He felt that he had missed his chance.
00:14:08I was going to go and fight a hopeless seat,
00:14:10but at least I was fighting a seat.
00:14:13And there was one seat left in the country.
00:14:22With just four weeks to go before the general election,
00:14:26Sedgefield in County Durham
00:14:28is the only seat not yet to have selected its Labour candidate.
00:14:37I remember sitting in my house in Hackney
00:14:40and Cherie saying to me,
00:14:43I mean, you might as well go.
00:14:44I mean, why not?
00:14:46There's nothing you can lose.
00:14:59The members of the Sedgefield Labour Party
00:15:01will have to be convinced.
00:15:18I was very nervous.
00:15:21But by then, you know,
00:15:23I got quite used to the process of rejection.
00:15:28I'd been in many constituencies,
00:15:30tried many different things.
00:15:31You know, usually I'd get a long way
00:15:33and the moment I showed my colours,
00:15:35I would be out.
00:15:43John said, oh, there's a guy from London coming up.
00:15:46He wants to be our next MP.
00:15:48Yeah, our champion,
00:15:49but we'll be watching the football.
00:15:51Of course, there's a long, long way to go yet,
00:15:54but it is a night where there will be a positive result
00:15:57because at the end of 90 minutes of its level,
00:16:00we have extra time.
00:16:02Well, of course, the trouble was this match went on forever.
00:16:07Extra time was paid.
00:16:08It was a draw.
00:16:09By which time, we were quite happy and merry, you know.
00:16:16So after that, we said,
00:16:18right, we're going to ask you some questions.
00:16:19We gave him the best grilling that we could.
00:16:22He spoke with an awfully posh voice.
00:16:25I mean, we'd always had a miners' union MP.
00:16:30And here we had this public school boy
00:16:33who went to Oxford and was a barrister.
00:16:39But we knew that night.
00:16:41I said to the lads, I said,
00:16:42you know, you can never say somebody will be prime minister,
00:16:47but you can say somebody is cabinet material.
00:16:50And I said, he's cabinet material.
00:16:53And Paul agreed.
00:16:54They all agreed.
00:16:56Well, I saw he was different.
00:16:58You know, I was young.
00:16:59I wanted someone younger than your average Labour MP.
00:17:02I wanted someone with a bit of go about them.
00:17:04And there he was sitting on the set A.
00:17:06So why not give the young lad a go?
00:17:09Wow.
00:17:11Tony jumped up.
00:17:14And, you know, had a couple more drinks.
00:17:16Ha, ha, ha, ha.
00:17:20Blair successfully charms the Sedgefield Labour Party
00:17:24and becomes their MP.
00:17:32But nationally, Labour suffer a devastating defeat.
00:17:39Still, by entering Parliament,
00:17:41Blair fulfills his father's dream.
00:17:49Westminster's best-known watering places
00:17:50were opening up for some new customers this evening.
00:17:53At one of them, I met some of the 150 new Commons faces.
00:17:57The image of the Labour Party's got to be an image
00:18:00that's more dynamic, more modern, more suited to the 1980s.
00:18:04I don't actually think it's nearly so much
00:18:06a matter of right and left as people make it out.
00:18:09What I do think is that it's a matter of style.
00:18:12The truth is we live in a different world now.
00:18:14We live in a world where over 50% of the population
00:18:18in this country are owner-occupies.
00:18:21We live in a population where there are large numbers of people
00:18:25now employed for service industries
00:18:27rather than manufacturing industries.
00:18:29And that means a change in attitude
00:18:30and a change in attitude that we've got to catch up to.
00:18:36The party elects a new leader, Neil Kinnock.
00:18:39OK, thanks for coming in.
00:18:42Who spots the potential of the new backbench MP for Sedgefield.
00:18:48I asked him if he would fulfil this role in the Treasury team.
00:18:53He was ecstatically pleased and made no secret of it.
00:18:59Do you really mean it? Do you really mean it?
00:19:01I don't think I'd ever encountered, before or afterwards,
00:19:08anyone who was so manifestly delighted
00:19:11at what he saw as a promotion.
00:19:20Blair befriends Gordon Brown.
00:19:22They share a room at the House of Commons.
00:19:25Tony Blair and Gordon Brown, didn't they do well?
00:19:28He did even better.
00:19:29You also got 50,000 votes more, didn't you, than he got.
00:19:32But both of you did extremely well indeed.
00:19:34They become a pair with contrasting personalities.
00:19:38I want to see a wider membership.
00:19:39I want to see better attention to the regional organisation.
00:19:42And I want to give more attention to the policy-making process.
00:19:45So these are things that we want to see happen.
00:19:47Gordon, did you have to, he talked of a platform once he stood,
00:19:51made it sound like a real election.
00:19:52Did you have to scheme, organise, assemble votes for this?
00:19:55No, because it's done in a fairly democratic way.
00:19:58Well, a fairly democratic way.
00:20:00I mean, very democratic.
00:20:01I'm just being unusually modest.
00:20:06Gordon made a huge impression on Tony because he was a much more experienced political creature.
00:20:17And I think Gordon got used to the idea that Tony was there to support him by bouncing ideas off
00:20:28him,
00:20:29by discussing ideas, yes, helping him develop.
00:20:31But at the same time, the fact was that Tony was also learning from Gordon and developing his ideas.
00:20:42And they weren't always the same as Gordon's ideas.
00:20:56By 1992, almost everyone expects Labour to win the upcoming election.
00:21:16Of course, like everyone, I was overwhelmed by his charm.
00:21:19I think it's the only time I think that a politician's actually asked to see me.
00:21:24So I booked a restaurant and we met.
00:21:26Of course, like everyone, I was overwhelmed by his charm.
00:21:32Blair was a radical, transformative politician.
00:21:35There's no doubt about that.
00:21:37The Labour equivalent of Margaret Thatcher and his determination to pull the Labour Party into a completely different mode of
00:21:43thinking.
00:21:44I said, well, anyway, it looks like you'll be in government in a couple of months because that's what everyone
00:21:48thought.
00:21:48And he said, oh, no, no, no, no, no, no, we're going to lose.
00:21:54Labour do, in fact, lose.
00:21:56And Tony now hopes that Gordon will put his hat into the ring to be the new leader.
00:22:01But Gordon throws his support behind his fellow Scot, John Smith.
00:22:08I therefore declare that John Smith is elected the leader of the Labour Party.
00:22:16And Tony's hopes that he and Gordon will transform the party are derailed.
00:22:22That was a crucial moment for Blair.
00:22:25That was the moment when the iron entered his soul.
00:22:29John Smith looks like a Labour leader who can win power.
00:22:32He's a popular and skilled political operator.
00:22:35But he has a heart condition.
00:22:41In April 1994, Tony and his wife Cherie go for a weekend in Paris.
00:22:51And it's here that Blair wakes suddenly with a premonition that John Smith is about to die.
00:23:08Well, it was a rather extraordinary thing.
00:23:11I actually did wake up in the morning.
00:23:15And I remember I woke up and I thought, you've got to prepare yourself for this.
00:23:19I think it's going to happen.
00:23:21I remember saying to Cherie, I feel it's possible this heart condition could come back.
00:23:28And I've got to think then about what happens if it does.
00:23:36And whether it really is the moment that I would go for the leadership, that did happen.
00:23:42And that was the first time we'd really properly discussed it.
00:23:45You said to her, if John dies, I will be leader, not Gordon.
00:23:51And somehow I think this will happen. I just think it will.
00:23:57Yeah, I felt this strong premonition.
00:24:01And I don't quite know, who knows how these things come into your mind like that.
00:24:05But it came into my mind with a degree of certainty that both surprised me and made me think,
00:24:11OK, who knows whether it's right or wrong, but you're going to have to think now.
00:24:16And you're going to have to think about the decision because you know in your own mind you want to
00:24:20do it.
00:24:21And you're going to have to think how you handle Gordon because it's going to be, you know, a huge
00:24:24problem for you and your relationship.
00:24:26And I hadn't really discussed it with him because I was thinking, well, what's the point?
00:24:31You know, it may never happen.
00:24:33And therefore, there's no point in ending up because I knew it would be a difficult conversation
00:24:38because it had always been assumed that he would be the leader.
00:24:41But I thought, no, you've got to prepare yourself for this and for the conversation that will come.
00:24:59Good evening.
00:25:01The leader of the Labour Party, John Smith, died this morning in hospital
00:25:04after suffering a massive heart attack at his London home.
00:25:18It was a very extraordinary situation at the funeral because you got the absolute grief of his family
00:25:28and then the grief of the party.
00:25:31And then on the other hand, there was the inevitable thoughts of, well, what's going to happen to the party
00:25:37now?
00:25:37.
00:25:41.
00:25:53ORCHESTRA PLAYS
00:26:15It was an incredibly intense day.
00:26:20Everybody was thinking about the succession.
00:26:33Everybody's looking around thinking, is he going to run for it?
00:26:37Who's going to support him?
00:26:39Is it going to be Gordon?
00:26:40Or is it going to be Tony?
00:26:50I was determined that he wasn't going to let his decency,
00:26:57thinking that he should defer to Gordon,
00:27:00get in the way of what I thought was best for him
00:27:03and best for the country.
00:27:05I said, Tim, you've got to go for it.
00:27:09It's got to be you.
00:27:15When I met Tony, I said, of course, we'd have to think about this very carefully
00:27:20and work out which of them would gather the most support.
00:27:23You know, who would be the best modernisers candidate?
00:27:27He just looked at me and said, Peter, I'm going to do this.
00:27:32I said, oh, yes, yes, yes, yes, but we'll consider how, you know.
00:27:35No, he said, I'm going to do this.
00:27:39It really was as if his time had come.
00:27:44He had a sense of destiny.
00:27:52Blair and Brown engage in a series of fraught negotiations
00:27:56over which one of them will run for leader.
00:28:01They were such close, good, intimate friends.
00:28:05It was like a married couple deciding whose career should come first.
00:28:10I mean, Gordon would have been thinking I've been betrayed by my best friend.
00:28:15I was always going to be the leader.
00:28:17I thought that was the deal.
00:28:19I'm only talking about the European...
00:28:20Okay.
00:28:21Is that okay?
00:28:22Can I just put one question to you about the leadership?
00:28:24Not at all.
00:28:24We're talking about the European elections today.
00:28:26Okay.
00:28:27What are you planning to do today, sir?
00:28:28Thanks.
00:28:31Tony was feeling absolutely 100% determined.
00:28:34I'm going to persuade him.
00:28:38I'm going to persuade him.
00:28:43As they try to thrash out a deal,
00:28:46they have at least 10 secret meetings
00:28:49that culminate in a dinner
00:28:50at a North London restaurant called Granita.
00:28:57What's your understanding of his agreement with Gordon?
00:29:02Well, first of all, there was never an agreement.
00:29:08And there were a number of meetings.
00:29:10Some of them were in my sister's house.
00:29:11And really, the deed was done before they had that meal in the granola.
00:29:17It was called Granita.
00:29:18Yes, Granita.
00:29:20That's right.
00:29:20It became a thing of legends.
00:29:22It was all sorted out there.
00:29:23But it was much more drawn out than that.
00:29:28But what was it, in essence?
00:29:31That Gordon would stand down for Tony,
00:29:34that Gordon would be Chancellor,
00:29:36and he would have control over the economic policy.
00:29:43And that at some point,
00:29:47when Tony stood down,
00:29:49he would support Gordon to be his successor.
00:29:54The details of what was agreed are contested to this day.
00:29:59Many in Brown's camp claim Blair set a limit
00:30:02on the time he would serve as leader.
00:30:08But there was never, to my mind, in fact,
00:30:11I said to him before he went,
00:30:15don't promise to set any kind of date.
00:30:19But Tony, being a very charming person,
00:30:22I think can often make people
00:30:25think they hear what they want to hear.
00:30:28So I think that Gordon may well have spoken of a time limit,
00:30:35and Tony may not have strongly disabused him of that.
00:30:39Did any part of you feel a little bit sorry for Gordon?
00:30:43No.
00:30:46It's...
00:30:48that in politics,
00:30:50there comes a point
00:30:53when you have to make a choice.
00:30:59I don't love having a confrontation.
00:31:02It's not my natural way.
00:31:03Contrary to, I think, sometimes the image of sort of,
00:31:07you know, he's messianic and all of that.
00:31:08No, I'm not like that.
00:31:10If I can avoid having a big fight and row,
00:31:13I'll happily avoid it.
00:31:14But I always know there comes a point
00:31:17when, you know,
00:31:18if it's something that really, really matters,
00:31:19you're going to have to...
00:31:21You know, you've got to confront it.
00:31:24If I thought he was going to do the things
00:31:26I thought were necessary for the Labour Party,
00:31:27I really would have been happy to have been number two.
00:31:31But I think he found that incredibly difficult
00:31:34for understandable reasons.
00:31:37And we resolved it in the end.
00:31:40But when something like that happens,
00:31:42it changes the nature of the relationship.
00:31:45And, you know, to be honest,
00:31:46you never fully resolve it.
00:31:47So, it had to be done.
00:31:59This morning, I'm announcing my candidature
00:32:02for the position of leader of the Labour Party.
00:32:16Well, Tony was always a smoothie.
00:32:20His weakness was the lack of deep thinking,
00:32:23knowledge of history.
00:32:26And I think he wants to be a big thinker.
00:32:30But that's not what he is.
00:32:32I mean, maybe we're all the same, you know,
00:32:34whatever our strength is,
00:32:35we want the other strength.
00:32:37His strength was certainly the personal charm
00:32:39and the communications.
00:32:41I don't think he's a great leader.
00:32:47Mr Blair, good morning.
00:32:48Good morning.
00:32:49The other two contenders for the leadership
00:32:51are prepared to serve as deputy.
00:32:53Why aren't you?
00:32:54Because I don't wish to be deputy.
00:32:55Why not?
00:32:56You're the youngest of the three
00:32:57with the least experience.
00:32:59Because I don't desire to be deputy leader.
00:33:01It's a very, very good post.
00:33:03I think that both of my colleagues
00:33:05will make excellent deputy leaders,
00:33:07but it's not a post I desire for myself.
00:33:09Have you really thought through
00:33:11the effect of the job you're about to take on,
00:33:14assuming you get it,
00:33:15upon yourself and your family?
00:33:17I've reflected upon it a great deal.
00:33:20And you've decided that
00:33:21the effect is worth living with,
00:33:23assuming that you can become prime minister?
00:33:26Yes, I have.
00:33:29It is not an easy decision,
00:33:30and I am well aware of what is about to fall upon me.
00:33:36He was steely, clear.
00:33:39He had real energy and restlessness.
00:33:42It was, you know, politically exciting.
00:33:44I do remember asking him
00:33:47whether he thought he was really tough enough
00:33:50for what was coming.
00:33:51Do you think you were tough enough
00:33:52to cope with the sort of media onslaught
00:33:54that Neil Kinnock, for example, had to endure?
00:33:56I think it comes with the territory,
00:33:58and I am entirely prepared for it,
00:34:00indeed expect it.
00:34:06Blair wins,
00:34:08and now he's leader of the Labour Party.
00:34:14The blueprint for new Labour,
00:34:16he had it in his head right from the start.
00:34:18The idea that he was just some sort of, you know,
00:34:21line of least resistance, pretty front guy,
00:34:24could not be further from the truth.
00:34:28He assembles a formidable team
00:34:31of political operators and spin doctors.
00:34:34Well, this curious combination
00:34:36of Tony being Mr. Good Guy,
00:34:39and then around him,
00:34:41you have these absolutely ruthless bastards.
00:34:44Richard, you want anything tomorrow,
00:34:46any other day?
00:34:47Come on.
00:34:47Come on.
00:34:49I was being quite robust,
00:34:53and I remember Tony looking,
00:34:56ooh.
00:34:57And I think part of him thinking,
00:35:00am I going over the top?
00:35:02But part of him thinking,
00:35:04that's what we need to do from time to time.
00:35:09Tony was quite smart
00:35:10in leaving the brutality to others.
00:35:13Together, they set about rebranding the party.
00:35:17Let me do it.
00:35:17Tony Blair.
00:35:19And in the face of staunch resistance,
00:35:21they rip up decades of Labour Party convention.
00:35:25The historic goal of another Labour government.
00:35:28Our party, New Labour.
00:35:30Our mission, New Britain.
00:35:32New Labour, New Britain.
00:35:37Blair was the revolution in his own person.
00:35:40It was like he was laying the party at his father's feet.
00:35:44He'd changed it so much
00:35:45that his father would now vote for it.
00:35:49APPLAUSE
00:35:51to order a new story.
00:35:51They bring the party at his father obwohl!
00:35:57It was really cool.
00:35:59concentrate.
00:36:00emotional terror.eniz
00:36:09The
00:36:10his own person. It's
00:36:16July 1995.
00:36:17and Blair's just flown 10,000 miles to a tropical island in Australia
00:36:22to meet the most powerful man in the British media,
00:36:26Rupert Murdoch.
00:36:33We knew there would be terrible controversy.
00:36:35We were accused of supping with the devil.
00:36:39You take a long spoon with you.
00:36:41That was the general gist from our colleagues.
00:36:44We're having friends from ABC television.
00:36:46How are you going?
00:36:47You've come halfway around the world to talk to Rupert Murdoch and his men.
00:36:51Why is that?
00:36:52You're impersonating Dame Edna, aren't you?
00:36:55Do you expect Mr Rupert Murdoch's papers to support you in the upcoming election?
00:37:00No, I mean, I've made it clear right from the very start.
00:37:03I'm not here to trade policy for an editorial support.
00:37:06What Mr Murdoch's papers do is up to him.
00:37:08What the Labour Party does is up to us.
00:37:10Okay, thank you.
00:37:11Okay.
00:37:11Thank you very much.
00:37:12Thank you very much.
00:37:13Okay, thanks.
00:37:14Nice to meet you.
00:37:15Bye-bye.
00:37:17Bye-bye.
00:37:17Bye-bye.
00:37:19Bye-bye.
00:37:21Bye-bye.
00:37:22Bye-bye.
00:37:22Bye-bye.
00:37:22Quite a lot of people, Jeremy Corbyn, in the Labour Party, I mean, people like Roy Hattersley
00:37:25would say this is the move of a shrewd political operator.
00:37:29I think this smacks too much to me of an endorsement, and almost a craved endorsement, of the Murdoch
00:37:35Empire.
00:37:36I think it's a great mistake.
00:37:37My point was that he was therefore accepting the way in which Murdoch ran his papers.
00:37:45There was no sense of standing up to what Murdoch was doing to our media.
00:37:50Blair had this ability to separate himself from the political philosophical debate around
00:38:01an issue and go into it in a totally transactional way.
00:38:10Tony Blair said to me, how we treat Rupert Murdoch in power will depend on how he treats Labour
00:38:19in the run-up to the election.
00:38:20It's pretty simple, you know.
00:38:23You scratch my back, I'll scratch yours.
00:38:26That's what it came down to.
00:38:31Having charmed the media mogul, Blair seems equally at ease getting gushing endorsements
00:38:37from rock stars.
00:38:40There are seven people in this room tonight who are giving a little bit of hope to young
00:38:46people in this country.
00:38:47That is me, our kid, Bonehead, Quigsey, Alan White, Alan McGee and Tony Blair.
00:38:55And if you'd all got anything about you, you'd get up there and you'd take Tony Blair's hand,
00:38:58man.
00:38:59He's a man.
00:39:00Power to the people!
00:39:03I like you, Tony.
00:39:04And I like you for a very specific reason, which is that you seem to me to be like a
00:39:09real
00:39:09person.
00:39:10But if it's not an overly pretentious question, I mean, are you as real as you appear?
00:39:14Because it seems to me that people worry.
00:39:16They see you surrounded by what they call spin doctors and they think that perhaps this
00:39:21realness is kind of manufactured.
00:39:24What do you think?
00:39:25Well, you can't manufacture the realness in the end.
00:39:27I mean, people have got to make a judgment on it.
00:39:29But we run a professional show in the Labour Party today.
00:39:33Yeah.
00:39:34We do things in a professional way, but it doesn't mean to say you're not real or you can't
00:39:37be a human being at the same time.
00:39:41Dad!
00:39:44Dad!
00:39:45Dad!
00:39:45Dad!
00:39:48If you don't make the time for your family, then I think your politics actually becomes
00:39:53much less effective because they keep your feet in the ground.
00:39:56They may drive you mad, but they keep you sane.
00:39:58The first time I went to see Tony Blair at his home, it was almost like arriving on a film
00:40:04set.
00:40:05You felt that everybody, whether it was Sheree Blair and the children and the coffee maker
00:40:10and all the rest of it, you felt you were seeing a brilliantly orchestrated performance
00:40:16of what they thought that a new Labour leader, how he ought to live and what his children ought to
00:40:21look like
00:40:21and what his wife ought to look like.
00:40:36Tony and the family, they did a brilliant imposture of being normal human beings.
00:40:41Now, actually, anybody who was on his way to becoming Prime Minister is not a normal human being,
00:40:45but they played the game brilliantly.
00:40:47You have obviously also had to think through the possibility of being in Number 10 Downing Street.
00:40:51Both of you.
00:40:53You take it stage by stage, actually.
00:40:55I'm a great believer in the old Mrs. Beaton recipe for rabbit stew, first catch your rabbit.
00:41:03Sheree, do you have daunting feelings about that?
00:41:06I've never even been near Downing Street, so I've got no idea.
00:41:11I've never even stood outside the door.
00:41:13Well, it's got to cross your mind that it might end that way.
00:41:17Well, I'm sure that there will be space somewhere for the children and mates.
00:41:21The thing you have to understand about Sheree is that she had strong political views,
00:41:28strong sense of ambition.
00:41:32If not Tony, it could have been Sheree.
00:41:34It was Sheree who was, in a sense, the sort of Labour Party animal,
00:41:38the person, you know, who wanted to run as a candidate
00:41:42and to join the leadership of the Labour Party.
00:41:45And she took a very profound, and it must have been quite a difficult personal decision,
00:41:51in a sense, to step back and to be his support.
00:41:55There was about a six-month period, no more, when I was a candidate
00:41:59and Tony was still looking for a seat, and so he had to trail behind me.
00:42:04Probably didn't do him any harm, did it?
00:42:06Probably didn't do any harm, but I certainly at the time felt it didn't do me any good.
00:42:11The marriage was so strong, not smooth, not easy, lots of gyrations,
00:42:21lots of sort of shouting in the background, but my word, it was the rock.
00:42:27That marriage was the rock on which Tony's political career was made.
00:42:51There was an idea that I would write one of those sort of campaign diaries,
00:42:55or the story of an election campaign, and Tony Blair was keen that I did it.
00:43:00And I really got an astonishing first-hand insight into that whole election.
00:43:07And really witnessed a politician at the top of their game.
00:43:13He loved campaigning.
00:43:16I can change a note.
00:43:20On the battle bus, he'd go and sit at the front next to the driver
00:43:23so that he could see cars coming towards him or people on the street.
00:43:28He sought a connection.
00:43:30Hello, Northampton!
00:43:36I think that he just grew in confidence as the campaign went on.
00:43:41And the crowds became much bigger, and the enthusiasm for him was much greater.
00:43:46And it was like watching a flower blossom in the sunlight.
00:43:52Can we give him a kiss again?
00:43:53Can we give him a kiss again?
00:43:55Oh, I'm coming back to Basildon.
00:43:56Definitely.
00:43:58It was very interesting to me during the 97 election that he wore a lot of makeup.
00:44:06There were not one but two makeup people travelling with him.
00:44:11And he liked that.
00:44:15It was like he was putting on the war paint every day before he went out.
00:44:28I got the impression, talking to people who knew him, like his old housemaster at school,
00:44:35that he was quite a difficult, rebellious, long-haired, tricky boy to have in the house.
00:44:42And this all changed when the house put on a production of Julius Caesar,
00:44:48and he played Mark Antony.
00:44:50And he said to me,
00:44:51I saw him visibly swell when he went on stage for the first time,
00:44:56as if he had found his calling.
00:45:11It's a clue to Tony's character that he saw being a party leader as a 24-hour-a-day performance.
00:45:19He always needed to perform.
00:45:21Please welcome the Leader of the Opposition, the Right Honourable Tony Blair.
00:45:33It was on television, really, that politicians meet their electorate.
00:45:39And he has this ability to separate his inner self from the public persona.
00:45:45Sitting on that couch last week were the Spice Girls.
00:45:49Right, right.
00:45:51Mrs Thatcher, they thought, was the first Spice Girl.
00:45:54No, no, you were...
00:45:55You did, you said that, didn't they, Tony?
00:45:58Well, I've actually, I did meet the Spice Girls.
00:46:00They have sort of bare midriffs, short skirts,
00:46:04sort of earrings and through various parts, pins and things, and tattoos.
00:46:10I can't really see Margaret Thatcher like that.
00:46:14You did go on Chris Evans' show, apparently, and said that Bowie,
00:46:17this is David Bowie, his wife, Eamon, was your dream girl.
00:46:21Did you actually say that?
00:46:23I did.
00:46:24Well, he asked me the question, and I broke the first rule of politics
00:46:27and lapsed into total honesty.
00:46:28There's nothing wrong without politics.
00:46:30We don't get enough, do we?
00:46:34Tony Blair!
00:46:37Tony Blair!
00:46:42Tony Blair!
00:46:43On the 1st of May, 1997, after 18 years of Tory rule, Britain goes to the polls.
00:46:54My parents were very superstitious.
00:46:56We could not say, Dad's going to win the election, because it might not happen.
00:47:00And I was only nine, so I didn't know what an election meant.
00:47:03I didn't know what him being Prime Minister meant.
00:47:05And so I did not know, and we hadn't packed anything.
00:47:18It was exciting and a little bit scary.
00:47:21Press are not very child-friendly.
00:47:24This way, everybody this way, all right.
00:47:30There were just so many press there, and a hundred cameras in your face,
00:47:33shouting your name, wanting me to look at them and smile, smile, do this.
00:47:37And we were just like, what is going on?
00:47:39I remember it being very terrifying.
00:47:40And I was just holding my Dad's hand, thinking,
00:47:42what are we doing?
00:47:43Why are all these people here?
00:47:46Mr. Blair, this way, please.
00:47:49Nothing this way, please.
00:48:02There it is, ten o'clock, and we say Tony Blair is to be Prime Minister,
00:48:06and a landslide is likely.
00:48:20On election night, I arrived at his house, and the first thing I noticed, of course,
00:48:24was there were now men with machine guns standing around in the garden.
00:48:28You know, he was about to become Prime Minister, clearly.
00:48:33Anthony Charles Linton Blair, the Labour Party candidate, 33,000.
00:48:52At the count, I was a few miles from where I'd been brought up.
00:48:57My Dad was there, my Mum wasn't.
00:49:01My Dad had really, all his ambitions in the end had failed because of his illness,
00:49:08but here was his son about to become the British Prime Minister,
00:49:12and he was so proud and happy, and I was happy for him.
00:49:18And, yeah, it was...
00:49:21And I also, I missed my Mum.
00:49:33So, off goes Tony Blair, the engines of his jet will soon be starting,
00:49:39the door will close, and he will be down amongst even more admirers.
00:49:52We went on the plane, and everyone was very excited,
00:49:59and Alistair was constantly saying, you know,
00:50:01we've just won this, and we've just won that.
00:50:03And Tony was just very still, and very quiet, and sat up at the front.
00:50:10And I was just holding his hand.
00:50:14And, you know, he did say,
00:50:18what have we done?
00:50:19I think it was more about...
00:50:26The weight of it.
00:50:41There's Tony Blair smiling.
00:50:43Again, greeting, shaking hands with party workers.
00:50:46They all want to shake his hand.
00:50:47He'll take one or two of them...
00:50:54Everyone was sort of cheering and shouting.
00:50:56You know, people saying to me,
00:50:58well, it's all fantastic.
00:50:59And I was just sitting there thinking,
00:51:01yeah, well, we're now going to be running the country,
00:51:04so, you know, no more words.
00:51:07We're not going to do it anymore.
00:51:08What about fear?
00:51:10Yeah, some fear, yeah, some fear, I think.
00:51:14Because are you going to be up to it?
00:51:15Can you do it?
00:51:16What's going to happen?
00:51:17Did you enjoy it a bit?
00:51:20Those first 24 hours?
00:51:23You know, if I'm really honest about it,
00:51:26I'm not sure I did enjoy it that much,
00:51:28just because I was...
00:51:30I was just thinking, you know, here you are.
00:51:32You know, you're in your early 40s.
00:51:33You're Prime Minister.
00:51:35And rather than thinking, you're Prime Minister?
00:51:37Wow.
00:51:37I was like, you're Prime Minister,
00:51:39so you better do a good job.
00:51:43Because now, what happens to this country
00:51:47and its people depends on you.
00:52:10You better believe it!
00:52:15I remember it being stunned
00:52:19the amount of people there were there were all these flags everywhere everyone seemed really happy
00:52:31even as a 13 year old and right in the middle there was a genuine sense of excitement
00:52:36it was kind of nice to think wow people really like dad of course then as it as it developed
00:52:42and you'd read the papers and everything else you'd realize that not everyone liked it
00:52:50no nothing i believe in you
00:52:58blair comes to power with uncharted levels of popularity he pushes through a blizzard of
00:53:04bold new policies that change the way britain works this is a government in a hurry the bank
00:53:11of england is to be made independent scotland and wales are to have their own parliaments
00:53:17for the first time there'll be a minimum wage
00:53:22and to improve education class sizes will be reduced one of the things i think he was drawn to
00:53:30as it were almost irresistibly with his belief to solve problems which had defeated everybody else
00:53:37he was drawn to making labor electable by inventing new labor and then delivering it
00:53:42and i think he was drawn to northern ireland it had defeated everyone else he could do it
00:53:58northern ireland's catholic and protestant communities have been deeply divided for decades
00:54:04and are caught in a seemingly never-ending cycle of sectarian violence
00:54:13tony came back from checkers and he came in monday morning sort of you know all
00:54:20bouncy and what have you and he said i've worked out in normal ireland
00:54:24i worked it out oh okay you've worked it out yeah have you have you done that and
00:54:32he did become pretty obsessed with it
00:54:39blair sets the goal of getting a peace agreement within a year
00:54:44the stakes were enormous on northern ireland and i was alarmed that he would be out of his depth
00:54:50and i said to him prime minister i've got to say to you i am worried you're going to be
00:54:56moving in
00:54:57with people who have huge sensitive issues a lot of history a lot of anger are you going to be
00:55:05ready
00:55:06for it and he said look richard i don't need to know about the history i'm better off if i
00:55:13don't know
00:55:13the history i'm going to focus on the people you watch it'll work he takes the highly controversial
00:55:21step of inviting the irish republican leaders of shin fein to downing street tony invested a huge
00:55:29amount of time in meeting jerry adams and martin mcginnis and ian paisley and other northern
00:55:33irish politicians uh and we we bring them into downing street and particularly when we had the dup
00:55:40in paisley's party involved they would not meet shin fein they would not be in the same building
00:55:44as shin fein but when i was with paisley in in the cabinet office i noticed looking out of the
00:55:49window
00:55:49to my horror that adams and mcginnis had escaped from number 10 into the rose garden and were playing
00:55:54with blair children with their skateboard they go out for a break right through these very intense
00:55:59sessions and they see me and my brother skateboarding in the garden and we sort of said to them hey
00:56:04do you want to do you want to try because they were sort of watching us and so you're in
00:56:08the farcical
00:56:08situation of kind of trying to teach jerry adams and martin mcginnis how to skateboard against the
00:56:14backdrop of something incredibly serious and solemn and historic um and i remember telling dad afterwards
00:56:20and he was just thank god they didn't injure themselves it's the 7th of april 1998 blair arrives
00:56:32in belfast with most of the key players around the negotiating table but the talks are on the
00:56:38brink of collapse and there's a deadline looming just days away morning we're here to do a job work
00:56:46and we've uh got to get it done and uh we've got complete determination to do it we were in
00:56:52this
00:56:52awful building and he could get incredibly frustrated he would say like you know if this if we could just
00:56:59sort this out without all the other people we could do it right now right but we're having to deal
00:57:03with all this this and that he's not a table slammer but i saw him at one point slamming the
00:57:10table and
00:57:11he just went like that like that teddy below is one of the most successful and most skillful
00:57:18negotiators i ever came across he can play with a whole range of emotions but he's always in control
00:57:24and i do remember one negotiation we had he said to me never lose your temper except on purpose
00:57:29and it came home to me quite how he managed negotiations the problem is now you're into this
00:57:34day is is not that you can't reach it it's just making sure that you you drive the thing forward
00:57:41as
00:57:42quickly as possible machiavelli talks about needing the skill of the fox but also the courage of the lion
00:57:47and tony had both he had the ability on issues of principle to be really brave really firm but he
00:57:54also had
00:57:55a very sinuous way to charm people into things roy jenkins said that tony blair had a second-class
00:58:03intellect but a first-class temperament and actually there's something in that there's really a
00:58:07compliment which is that he had the most remarkable eq his ability to understand people to relate to
00:58:12people to empathize was his superpower well ladies and gentlemen you will have heard that senator mitchell's
00:58:20announcement has been made that an agreement has been reached mrs thatcher didn't believe
00:58:25northern ireland could be solved john major believed northern ireland could be solved but he couldn't do
00:58:29it tony blair believed both that it could be done and he could do it and he really drove it
00:58:34through
00:58:34today we have just a sense of the prize that is before us he believed it was kind of his
00:58:40destiny
00:58:40to fulfill this somewhere written in the stars was for him to achieve this great thing for the country
00:58:47the work to win that prize goes on we cannot we must not let it slip from our grasp thank
00:58:55you
00:58:56but mo mollum said to me that tony succeeded because he thought he was jesus
00:59:13less than two years into blair's time as prime minister
00:59:17a war is escalating on the edge of europe
00:59:21you're not looking bad for a man who doesn't sleep
00:59:31serbian forces led by slobodan milosevic have driven 800 000 people from their homes in kosovo
00:59:39ethnic cleansing is taking place blair is under pressure to act
00:59:46i went in to see tony and i said it looks like war in kosovo because the the diplomatic process
00:59:52has completely failed and we've got this commitment to to to intervene and i was surprised at how
00:59:59calmly he took it because i could see this was going to be the dominant issue over the next few
01:00:03months
01:00:04when a prime minister sends his forces into military action nothing else competes with it for attention
01:00:13it was obvious to me that what was happening in in kosovo was effectively ethnic cleansing
01:00:18you know there was murder there was rape there was a displacement of a civilian population
01:00:22and i felt this was happening right on the doorstep of europe
01:00:27we should act and we can act and therefore we're going to
01:00:33on the 24th of march 1999 blair takes a leading role as nato planes are scrambled to bomb targets in
01:00:43serbia
01:00:57you are fighting a just war and a just cause and i believe we are fighting for the values of
01:01:02civilization
01:01:06blair becomes convinced that the only way to beat milosevic is to threaten boots on the ground
01:01:13but other world leaders are set against it and blair is isolated this was the one
01:01:20situation i remember tony saying if this is the last thing i do as prime minister if i'm hounded out
01:01:25as a result of this if if it somehow goes belly up so be it i'm going for it blair
01:01:32starts a campaign
01:01:33to persuade a reluctant u.s president bill clinton to back his plans
01:01:42first of all it was the only real
01:01:45policy disagreement i think we had of any magnitude the whole time we worked together
01:01:50i argued that we would have fewer casualties
01:01:55and that
01:01:58we might be able to win with their power i said i think we are morally obliged to win and
01:02:03to win it by
01:02:04killing the fewest number of people
01:02:11the new york times splashed with a headline saying that tony blair was trying to
01:02:15toughen up uh clinton and make him agree to ground troops
01:02:20and clinton went absolutely ape he called tony from air force one
01:02:25i remember being on the call and he was so angry he really lost it he really shouted and yelled
01:02:30i know
01:02:31what you're doing you're trying to make me look weak and you're trying to make yourself look strong
01:02:34and tony said no no no honestly it wasn't that wasn't us we didn't do that it's not in our
01:02:37interest to do that
01:02:39i believe there was a phone call between the two of you and it got a little bit heated
01:02:44it did i was mad because his guys were trying to make him look good in the new york times
01:02:49at my expense when we should have been united in fighting this war i was always totally honest with him
01:02:56i didn't ever pull any punches how did the prime minister bring the president down from that anger
01:03:04the method was to stay calm not to sort of panic as people sometimes do when you face anger like
01:03:08that but to calmly say no it honestly wasn't us we don't want to that's not an interest to do
01:03:12that
01:03:12and gradually talked him down until they're able to end the call he could always as we say at home
01:03:18he
01:03:18could always talk an owl out of a tree under pressure from blair clinton softens his stance on ground
01:03:27troops and in the face of a united front milosevic backs down the logic of the campaign came through
01:03:38to tony much quicker than it did to other leaders and i don't think we would have got anything like
01:03:43the outcome had it not been for that personal commitment that he made blair's standing up to
01:03:52milosevic helped end the conflict in kosovo saving thousands of lives
01:04:23the termites are at work on the base that is a sort of cyclical almost natural rule of politics
01:04:30and people that i've spoken to who know him very well they all point to kosovo at that point
01:04:37for the first time maybe a slight parting from reality began to take place
01:04:48the moment that he appeared rather like you know christ walking through uh the holy land with people
01:04:56hailing him as if he had worked a miracle a friend of mine a friend of tony's said to me
01:05:02he thought he
01:05:02could walk on water and in that uh triumph uh the the seeds of tragedy were so
01:05:19this is not a battle for nato this is not a battle for territory this is a battle for humanity
01:05:28it is a just cause it is a rightful cause and we will make sure that these people here
01:05:35are returned to their homes that is our commitment to them practical help practical commitment and above
01:05:42all else a determination that all this suffering and all this misery and everything that has been
01:05:50created by the brutality of milosevic shall not last but shall be reversed shall be defeated so these
01:05:57people can once again become symbols of hope humanity and peace thank you
01:06:07he was at his best
01:06:10he really felt deeply it had to be done we had a moral responsibility to act the international
01:06:19politics were difficult but he showed genuine leadership in in moving the dollar
01:06:28my concerns were the alacrity with which he wanted to take military action
01:06:33his very quick decision we'll go in we're going to get involved we're going to do this militarily
01:06:39it had been in those terms successful but i think he then realized that he had the power to do
01:06:47this
01:06:47and we then descended in my view into the horrors of the post-2001 situation
01:06:58what one things you learn in politics is they could be chanting your name one day and in praise and
01:07:03they
01:07:03could be chanting it the next day in condemnation you're going to be strong enough both to withstand
01:07:08the praise and the condemnation once you come to the view that what you should do is what you think
01:07:13is
01:07:13right then you've got to stand by that some people will hate it some people will love it and that
01:07:19you
01:07:20shouldn't it shouldn't it shouldn't propel you one way or the other
01:07:24so
01:07:51so
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