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Weakened by the Iraq war, Blair is forced out of office by his own party. He seeks to build a new legacy on a global scale but is repeatedly forced to defend his time in office.
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00:06I remember there was one time when I went up to the flat just before I was going home
00:11at 11 o'clock at night and said, right, I'm off now. And I wish I'd done dozens of times
00:16before,
00:16and I've got no idea why. But I walked to the door over here, and I got to the door,
00:23which was open. And I stood at the door, and I turned around, and I looked at him,
00:31and I think he thought I'd gone. And I can just remember thinking it was an absolute picture of
00:40isolation. And he just, he had a sense of burden and weight. And because at that stage, so many
00:52people saw him in the way that they did, Tony Blyer, all that stuff. I actually, it was one of
00:58those
00:59moments when I wished I could paint. It was an absolute portrait in the kind of isolation of power.
01:08Did you feel any urge to either say something or put an arm around him?
01:12No, I didn't. I just walked out.
01:27So
01:34what
01:35do
01:36do
01:51so
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14:26It was probably
14:59somewhat fractured with the
14:59Right, good morning everyone. You know the issues that are there, Africa and climate change.
15:06Thank you for your leadership. This is going to be a successful summit.
15:11Thousands of people have gathered in central London to hear the result of the 2012 Olympic bid.
15:17The Games of the 30th Olympiad in 2012 are awarded to the city of London.
15:32The Prime Minister, Trafalgar Square is listening right now. Is there anything you have to say to the people of
15:37London at this moment?
15:39Well done. Make 20-4 the greatest games the world's ever seen.
15:55Blair arrives to put the finishing touches to a deal that writes off the debt of the world's poorest countries
16:02and properly recognises climate change.
16:17Can you move away from this world, please? Thank you.
16:22We are out of here.
16:23We are out of here.
16:25We are out of here.
16:30Four Islamist terrorists have detonated suicide bombs in London, killing 52 people.
16:41I always remember he took a moment to go outside by himself and stand and reflect.
17:06There seems to be a link between the invasion of Iraq and a greater risk of terrorist activity in Britain.
17:13The fact is what they're doing is utterly evil and you can't compromise with it.
17:19You've got to pull it up by its roots.
17:23You could see that there were moments of extreme pressure, especially when he was making momentous decisions, especially ones involving
17:31human lives.
17:32Dad's always had this habit of you'd be talking to him about something and he'll zone out and think about
17:36something completely different.
17:37And you would see the kind of zone out moments ratchet up as more was on his shoulders.
17:44You know, he really cared if he saw it affecting us as well.
17:46So I think we were quite careful to make sure it didn't affect us.
17:50Or at least not show it.
17:51Right, right.
17:52There was almost this shared mutual understanding that we would never let him see it affect us too much and
17:58he would never let us see it affect him too much.
18:12Blair knows that there are Labour MPs who want him to stand down, but there's still fight left in him
18:19as he takes on a little known UKIP MEP.
18:23I thought, crikey, perhaps Blair's going to do it. Perhaps he really is going to reform and change.
18:29But no, under your presidency, there have been 3,350 new legislative acts. Total failure on economic reform.
18:38Let me just tell you, sir, and your colleagues, you sit with our country's flag. You do not represent our
18:47country's interests.
18:49APPLAUSE
18:53This...
18:55This is the year 2005, not 1945.
19:00We're not fighting each other any more.
19:02These are our partners, they're our colleagues and our future lies in Europe.
19:07APPLAUSE
19:13But Blair is finally about to lose power.
19:16And it's not the British electorate who forced him out. It's his own party.
19:22The polling was saying that, with Tony Blair as Prime Minister, we were in trouble.
19:30Gordon was the most popular politician in Britain for about a decade.
19:34People really respected him.
19:37And he had almost single-handedly turned around Labour's long-standing reputation for screwing up the economy.
19:46Many of those plotting Blair's downfall are allies of the Chancellor.
19:51I was saying to him, you need to make space for others than Gordon to come forward.
20:00And he would always say to me, I cannot choose my successor.
20:04And I would say, by not doing that, you are effectively choosing Gordon.
20:09Do you think he made a mistake?
20:12I do.
20:14What did you make of the accusation that you were a sort of Lady Macbeth figure?
20:23I think, really?
20:27I thought that was a joke.
20:30I thought it was Gordon who described me as Lady Macbeth.
20:33If anyone thinks Tony's my puppet, they just don't understand the nature of the man.
20:44He's on a visit to York when an advisor pulls him aside.
20:48They tell him that MPs are coming forward with letters calling for him to resign.
21:04He brought his closest people together and worked out what he needed to do to respond.
21:12Who were his allies?
21:13Where were the people that he could activate on his behalf?
21:17Who was going to do that?
21:18So it became a sort of a mini sort of war plan.
21:22There were people saying, ride it out.
21:25But in the end, there was a realization that he couldn't fight it anymore.
21:37His head recognized that he had run out of road.
21:44I'm not sure his heart ever accepted that.
21:48As for my timing and date of departure, I would have preferred to do this in my own way.
21:56But it has been pretty obvious, from what many of my cabinet colleagues have said earlier in the week.
22:06The next party conference in a couple of weeks will be my last party conference as party leader.
22:11Tell me a bit about you and Gordon Brown.
22:16You know, we were much more than just friends, right?
22:20We were deep political partners.
22:25And for the best part of 10 years, it was quite a long time.
22:30We would be talking several times a day.
22:33And then you put all the stresses and strains of government.
22:36I mean, if you think about it, it was a miracle we lasted 10 years.
22:39But we did.
22:40And I always say to people, because people often say to me, you know, would it not have been better
22:45to have got rid of Gordon and so on?
22:46And, you know, you can make an argument for that.
22:48But I think those three election victories, which were the only time Labour ever won, three consecutive election victories with
22:59a full functioning majority.
23:01I think they were because we were new Labour, but I also think in part they were because that partnership
23:07was there with him.
23:11Blair has overseen 10 years of economic prosperity, while at the same time transforming many aspects of British society.
23:20There's a huge legacy, and it covers many, many, many different areas.
23:25Bank of England independence, New Deal, schools and hospitals investment, gay rights, Scottish Parliament, minimum wage.
23:35Now, just as he leaves office, he is confronting the reality of life without power.
23:42By the time he was leaving Number 10, he really finally understood how to make the whole thing work.
23:49And at that point, when perhaps he felt he could do even more, he had to stand back.
23:56Prime Minister's private staff had organised a sort of do, which was meant as a sort of thank you stroke
24:05celebration.
24:08With Blair's leaving drinks underway upstairs, Blair and Brown meet downstairs in the corridor.
24:18It's finally time for Blair to hand over the role of Prime Minister,
24:22and he can't help but give Gordon's speech the once-over.
24:43It's been an honour to serve, a privilege to work in this building. Thank you very much indeed.
24:51It didn't really work. He suddenly realised, it's over. And that hurt.
25:12And then we made our way downstairs and we gathered our stuff as Gordon Bryan's people came in that way
25:20passing us.
25:21OK, I'll see you later. OK, I'll see you later.
25:23Matthew, come down.
25:27Ten years in power, your dad leaves office. Did you get a sense that that was difficult for him?
25:33Yes. Yes. And definitely a sense of unfinished business.
25:41There you are, a seven-year-old.
25:43Yeah.
25:44Do you remember anything about that day?
25:45I remember being very sad. I wasn't just leaving the house I was in.
25:49I was leaving everybody else who I'd grown up with who was there, right?
25:52All the people that worked there who had been like, you know, kind of raised me collectively.
25:56I don't know, it might sound a bit weird, but it is really like that when you see people every
25:59day from a very young age.
26:01Both my mum and I were trying to hold back tears. I think my mum made a sarcastic comment as
26:06she left, didn't she?
26:07To the press?
26:07To the press.
26:13What did you think of the press?
26:16I hated the press. They were particularly horrible to my mum.
26:20They obviously don't like strong women.
26:22Really, I think if someone today told me they worked for the Daily Mail, I'd probably turn around and walk
26:26in the other direction.
26:28Your skill as a politician is about knowing about the people and living with the people and understanding what the
26:35people want.
26:36Ten years of living in the goldfish bowl, you kind of lose contact with reality.
26:43He didn't really bring on a generation to carry on his revolution.
26:49He was singular in that sense.
26:51It was just him.
26:53And the way that he left gave one an impression that it had always really just been about him.
26:59That being Prime Minister was merely a stage on his career journey.
27:04And he left a void in politics that was never really filled.
27:10That is the problem with charismatic politicians.
27:15Once the charisma is gone, there's just a bit of smoke left and a faint memory of light.
27:23And the stage is empty.
27:33So, you were forced out, as you've put it, of the biggest job in your life when you were 54.
27:42How did that feel?
27:43You see, I knew I was going to go.
27:47I'd had more than ten years in the job.
27:52I was literally thinking about what's the future.
27:55I mean, some people said to me, you should take six months off.
27:57You should go and, you know, go and sit somewhere, read books and, you know, contemplate life.
28:03I was literally not interested in that for a moment.
28:14On his first afternoon, not being Prime Minister, he takes the train up to the northeast of England, back to
28:24Sedgefield.
28:26And he arrives back at Darlington train station.
28:31And there's no one there.
28:35So, the official car is gone.
28:39All of that he has got used to over the previous ten years.
28:43The British state just turns it off.
28:48He is left on Darlington train station, waiting.
29:00And I think that sort of certain jolting change to your power and status is sort of captured in that
29:07moment.
29:12It's quite a frightening thing to know that you're going from having one of the most important jobs in the
29:21country to walking out into the world and nothing.
29:33But no red box this morning.
29:35No red box, yes, that was strange.
29:45This will be a new government with new priorities.
29:49And now let the work of change begin.
30:01Not only has he given up being Prime Minister, he's giving up his seat in the House of Commons.
30:08It's time to pack up his constituency house.
30:11It's just, I mean, the thing is, it's one thing to change a job, but then you change a job,
30:18you move house at the same time.
30:19Those are apparently the two most stressful things you ever do.
30:24And I'm doing both at the same time.
30:26An American politician said that losing high office is like the end of a love affair.
30:32And the thing about a love affair is when you're out of one, you shouldn't go too quickly into the
30:36next one.
30:37And I think Tony was scared is the wrong word, but worried at the idea that he'd have an empty
30:44diary.
30:48With the help of the Americans, Blair gets the job as envoy to the Middle East.
30:54He wants to improve the situation between Israel and the Palestinians.
31:00So, Mr Blair, what does it feel like being pitched into one of the most intractable conflicts in the world?
31:06It's hugely challenging, but there's nothing more important in the world today than to get this issue sorted out in
31:15a different place.
31:16Hello there.
31:18He was a genuine statesman, which is more than can be said for most of his successors.
31:23But on the other hand, what he could not see was how grievously he was morally compromised by the Iraq
31:30War, about all the fallout from that.
31:33Hello, good to see you.
31:36Yeah, good to see you.
31:39He's never been good at seeing himself as others see him.
31:43Shall we sit down here? Do you want me to take my tie off then?
31:47If you were good and casual, yeah.
31:50But Blair is a statesman without a state.
31:53And alongside his role in the Middle East, he establishes several foundations for which he starts raising money.
32:01No previous Labour Prime Minister has ever gone after money like he did, and he went to some very disreputable
32:07countries.
32:08I think it was all because he wanted to be left with a big legacy and a big reputation.
32:12He didn't want to finish with Iraq.
32:15Iraq was failure, but then he wanted to build another story of him as a great leader and thinker, and
32:21that's why he threw himself into raising all this money.
32:28The amount of money that Prime Minister has paid is ludicrous in this country, to pay them quite so little.
32:33And if you had a political career as an MP, et cetera, by comparison with an ordinary person, yes, you're
32:38paid well.
32:38But by comparison with their contemporaries from university, the people they compare themselves with, they feel very poor.
32:44It's the same with civil servants.
32:45So when they come out, they want to make money.
32:47And that's, I think, Tony is just very competitive.
32:49He wants to make more money than us.
32:51In office, Blair tried to persuade some of the world's most controversial regimes to move closer to the West.
32:58And he still believes he can.
33:06Which takes him to Kazakhstan, advising President Nazarbayev, a dictator known to have repressed his own people.
33:15And he still believes he can.
33:20You advised some pretty unsavory characters.
33:24Do you think that was a mistake?
33:25So the advisory work we were doing, for example, in Kazakhstan, was advisory work that was completely in line with
33:33what the World Bank was doing there, other consultancies and foundations were doing there.
33:37But anyway, it was a complete mistake to do the for-profit in that way, because it looked like it
33:44was all to do with personal gain, when actually it really wasn't.
33:48It was to do with creating enough funding that we could start the Institute.
33:53And if you want to do something, you've got to raise money.
33:56But money is never pure.
33:59Well, money is money.
34:00It just allows you to do things.
34:02If you leave office in your early 50s, and many people will now, and you've got maybe, I don't know,
34:10maybe 20, 30 years of active life in front of you, what are you going to do?
34:13If you're the sort of person that became prime minister, you're not going to want to go off and play
34:17rounds of golf all day.
34:18And certainly that's not what I would ever want to do.
34:21So, you know, you're going to want to create something.
34:23But if you want to create something, I'm afraid you need money.
34:28When Blair publishes his autobiography, he donates the £4.6 million advance to the Royal British Legion.
34:36But even the launch of his book proves controversial.
34:40The first stop on his book tour is Dublin.
34:57He then cancels his book launch in London.
35:00And it looks like he may never shake off the legacy of the Iraq War.
35:09You will remember the portrait that was painted of you by Jonathan Yeo, I believe, where the only real bit
35:16of colour is the poppy.
35:18What did you think when you saw that?
35:21I thought it was a good painting.
35:25Significance of the poppy?
35:27Yeah, of course. I mean, it was bound to be seen in the context of the war and so on.
35:31But I thought it was a good picture.
35:34A portrait is in some ways meant to summarise someone.
35:37Did it do that with you?
35:39You decide whether, I mean, I'm not interested in that type of stuff.
35:44I mean, if people want to say that's all it was about, and there will be plenty of people on
35:49the right and plenty of people on the left who want to say that was all he ever did was
35:53take the country to war post 9-11.
35:55Fine, they can say that.
35:56It really doesn't worry me.
35:58You've got to understand.
36:00I have enough belief in what I've done and what I'm doing now that if people want to do that,
36:06which, by the way, is for political reasons, because I can't think of another British Prime Minister that wouldn't have
36:11also wanted to be with America post 9-11.
36:14But anyway, leave that to one side.
36:15If people want to make that the only thing they think about when they think about me, that's up to
36:20them.
36:20And you have to understand, it's not going to determine my view of what I've done or what I'm doing
36:27now.
36:27I will have that debate with people. I'm very happy to have it with people.
36:31But, you know, there's no point in keeping asking me the same thing around, you know, or someone paints a
36:37portrait of you, you know, what do you feel when you look at it?
36:41I actually felt it was a really good portrait was the most important thing, I thought.
36:45This series is going to reflect the successes of your project.
36:50But it has to touch these other things.
36:52Yeah, I understand that, Michael. I'm not, I'm not...
36:55The reason I push back hard is because, you know, I feel it's got to be pushed back hard against
37:03because, of course, it's what a lot of people say.
37:05And, you know, this is a programme about me and so I'm entitled to my view and I want to
37:11express my view.
37:12You know, you ask me a lot about Iraq and everything, but I always say to people that we did
37:16an immense amount of good things and this country, on the day I left in June 2007, was a strong,
37:22capable country.
37:23And in my view, and I'm entitled to it as people are entitled to their view, if we'd stuck with
37:28that strong centre ground government and we hadn't got into the mess we have got into as a country, we
37:36would be in a much more powerful position today.
37:48Ten years after losing power and Blair's aims for the Labour Party, Britain and the world seem to be collapsing.
37:58More criminal! More criminal! More criminal!
38:02Jeremy Corbyn, who campaigned against the Iraq War, is Labour leader.
38:07Don't let those people who wish us ill divide us. Stay together, strong and united for the kind of world
38:14we want to live in.
38:16Nigel Farage, the once minor MEP, helps take Britain out of Europe.
38:23Let June the 23rd go down in our history as our Independence Day!
38:30I mean, if you told me that Nigel Farage was going to be a key player in British politics and
38:34Jeremy Corbyn was going to lead the Labour Party, I would have said, that's never going to happen.
38:39But I was wrong. Both did happen.
38:46And the new world order is crumbling.
38:49Putin will later cite the Iraq War as one of the justifications for his invasion of Ukraine.
38:57Tell me about your perspective on Putin's character.
39:00The question you always ask yourself is, was he always as he became when I just didn't see it or
39:07did he change?
39:08And my view is that he did change, but, you know, who knows?
39:14A huge part of what you fought for has, frankly, crumbled since you left power.
39:21Has that been difficult to watch?
39:24Look, people in these last years have moved against some of the things I stood for, you know, belief that
39:31globalisation was basically a positive process that we needed to manage.
39:37Britain being in Europe, liberal interventionism, yeah, we should all just disengage.
39:44Yeah, people have moved against it.
39:49But, you know, I remain committed to those things. And I think, again, you've got to think, you know, history
39:55is not static, it changes.
39:57And people will, I think, come in time to realise there's, you know, there are merits in the position that
40:04I took.
40:12His sense of himself is that he is a man of the future.
40:17Yes.
40:18He believes that progress is real and that history is moving in a direction from bad to good, from dark
40:26to light.
40:27Do you mind just giving me some level, please?
40:29My name's Tony Blair, I'll speak round about this level.
40:32I think there is a sense of him being this kind of tragic character.
40:37But in the kind of original kind of Greek tragic sense of battling against a fate, trying to shape the
40:44world into the kind of world that he wants, into a liberal, international, democratic world order.
40:53And this was what the Lairite Britain represented.
40:55Britain was going to be the beacon of this world and it just kind of collapses into something that is
41:02completely different to that world that he imagined.
41:06But yet he still holds on to the idea that he can see the future.
41:11But just at that low point, things start to turn around for Blair.
41:16He sets up a new organisation, the Tony Blair Institute for Global Change.
41:22We speak every morning, sometime between half past five and half past six.
41:27We're trying to grow something that's going to outlive him.
41:31Blair personally advises world leaders and his institute pumps out policy papers coming to prominence during the pandemic.
41:39When Covid first hit, Tony and I decided we were going to pivot the entire organisation to work on Covid
41:46because we knew every single leader we worked with across the world was going to be grappling with this issue.
41:53Good morning. How are you doing?
41:54Blair becomes an early proponent of mass testing.
41:59And his strategy for vaccinations is adopted by governments across the world.
42:04It was the Tony Blair Institute which seemed to be ahead of the government.
42:08You suddenly started to see Prime Ministers going to see Tony Blair or asking Tony Blair to come in to
42:15Number 10.
42:16Liz Truss saw him. Boris Johnson saw him.
42:19Keir Starmer certainly saw him before he became Prime Minister.
42:23This is the kind of influence that he has managed to build for himself.
42:28Blair's institute employs over 900 people, working in more than 40 countries.
42:34Do you have as much power and influence now as you did in Number 10?
42:38So I don't have as much power as I did when I was Prime Minister, but influence to a degree.
42:46Many of Blair's old allies found their way back to power.
42:53His chief of staff, Jonathan Powell, is Britain's national security adviser.
43:00And, until recently, Peter Mandelson was Britain's ambassador to the United States.
43:07And thank you very much indeed also for that very typical 11th hour intervention by you
43:14with your phone call to the President.
43:16Do you think there's a small part of him that would rather like your job?
43:23I'm not sure that Tony Blair is quite ready to become a mere ambassador,
43:28but he'd certainly want to exercise influence over the person who was actually doing it.
43:41And Blair is still in the frame when it comes to trying to bring peace to the Middle East.
44:02Even 18 years after leaving power, Tony Blair still provokes a kaleidoscopic range of opinions.
44:13As we sit here with all that's going on, I look back, I think he was an integral part of
44:23a golden age in Britain,
44:24which I think a lot of people would wish we were now back on, because we sure ain't in a
44:30golden age today.
44:35There are still many people who hate him, often the people who used to love him most.
44:43He was a formidable figure brought down by some of the very qualities that had taken him to the top.
44:50The tragedy for Tony Blair, if there is to be one, may well be that his achievements are blotted out
44:57by the mistake that's unacknowledged.
45:00That is a tragedy.
45:06I know there are some people who absolutely despise the guy, there are some people who will celebrate the day
45:10he dies.
45:11But I think Northern Ireland alone puts him in the top rank of British Prime Ministers.
45:16He's a big historic figure.
45:18His strength is all the communication and charm, and he's brilliant, brilliant, brilliant at that.
45:23And he wants to be the big thinker, which he isn't.
45:26But that's what he's trying to play out.
45:32There will be those who will never forgive him for Iraq, but if you ask me, I think he did
45:39a good job.
45:42What would you say are his flaws?
45:44He is an amazing politician.
45:47As a husband and as a human being, that's a different matter, but that's really between me and him.
45:59He doesn't stop. I think he's busier than he was then.
46:03Why do you think that is?
46:06Because he's just not finished.
46:07He wants to do the work that he set out to do.
46:12And so he won't stop.
46:24And also, it's very important to understand about me, I'm not into psychoanalysis, right?
46:31I think there's far too much of it. I think people spend far too long constantly analysing themselves.
46:36I know why I do what I do, because I believe in it.
46:39If people want to accept that, they can accept it.
46:41If they don't accept it, I'll just get on with doing it.
47:08And I'm just standing here to the old man trying to achieve it so well.
47:22Even though, I think they're just two places to say and repeat all theseblocks and hide the CPR.
47:22And Shepard had perhaps some resistance to the people who see actually doing it.
47:22And almost everyone gets into the building network
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