Tony Blair — Why political leaders keep failing at major change

**Dwarkesh Patel** (0:00)
Today, I have the pleasure of speaking with Tony Blair, who was, of course, Prime Minister of the UK from 1997 to 2007, and now leads the Tony Blair Institute, which advises dozens of governments on improving governance, reform, adding technology. My first question, I want to go back to your time in office. And when you first got in, you had these large majorities.
What are the constraints on a prime minister, despite the fact that they have these large majorities? Is it the other members of your party are fighting against you? Is it the deep state? Like what part was constraining you at that point?

**Tony Blair** (0:34)
The biggest constraint is that politics and in particular political leadership's probably the only walk of life in which someone is put into an immensely powerful and important position with absolutely zero qualifications or experience. I mean, I never had a ministerial appointment before. My one and only was being prime minister, which is great if you want to start at the top, but it's that that's most difficult. So you come in and you often come in as, when you're running for office, you have to be the great persuader. The moment you get into office, you really have to be the great chief executive. And those two skillsets are completely different. And a lot of political leaders fail because they failed to make the transition.
And those executive skills, which are about focus, prioritization, good policy, building the right team of people who can actually help you govern, because the moment you become the government, you end up leaving aside the saying, becomes less important than the doing. Whereas when you're in opposition, you're running for office, it's all about saying. So all of these things mean that it's a much more difficult, much more focused, and it's suddenly, you're thrust into this completely new environment when you come in. And that's what makes it, that's the hardest thing. And then of course, you do have a situation in which the system, as a system, it's not that it's a, I'm not a believer that this is great deep state theory. We can talk about that, but that's not the problem with government. The problem with government is that it's not a conspiracy, either left wing or right wing. It's a conspiracy for inertia. The thing about government systems is that they always think we're permanent. You've come in as the elected politician, you're temporary.
And we know how to do this.
And if you only just let us alone, we would carry on managing the status quo in the right way.
And so that's the toughest thing. It's making that transition.

**Dwarkesh Patel** (2:47)
Okay, so that's really interesting. Now, if we take you back everything you knew, let's say in 2007, but you have the majorities and maybe the popularity you had in 1997, what fundamentally, you said you have these executive skills now, what fundamentally is it that you know what a time waster, what kinds of things are time waster? So you say, I'm not gonna do these PMQs, they're total theatrics. I'm not gonna meet the queen or something.
Is it the time? Is it that you're gonna be going against the bureaucracy and say, I think you're wrong about your inertia? What fundamentally changes?

**Tony Blair** (3:18)
Well, it wouldn't be that you wouldn't do prime minister's question because the parliament will insist on that. And you certainly wouldn't want to offend, well, it was the queen in my time. No, but you're right. What you would do is have a much clearer idea of how to give direction to the bureaucracy and how to bring in outside skilled people who can help you deliver change.
And so, I always split my premiership into the first five years, which in some ways were the easiest. We were doing things that were important, like a minimum wage. We did big devolution. We did the Good Friday Peace Agreement in Northern Ireland.
But it was only really in the second half of my premiership that we started to reform health care, education, criminal justice. And those systemic reforms require, that's when your skill set as a chief executive really comes into play.

**Dwarkesh Patel** (4:10)
There's a perception that many people have that if you could get a successful CEO or businessperson into office, these executive skills would actually transfer over pretty well into becoming a head of state. Is that true? And if not, what is it that they'd be lacking, that you need to be an electable leader?

**Tony Blair** (4:27)
Yeah, so this is really interesting. And I think a lot about this. The truth is those skills would transfer to being a political leader, but they're not the only skills you need because you still got to be a political leader.