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 and 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 had these large majorities?
Is it your other members, your party are fighting against you? Is it the Deep State? Like what part is constraining you at that point? The biggest constraint is that politics and a particular political leaderships, 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've 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're 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 skill sets are completely different.
And a lot of political leaders fail because they failed to make the transition. And you know, 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, that's all about saying.
So all of these things mean that it's a much more difficult, much more focused and, you know, 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 know, you do have a situation in which the system as a system. It's not that it's a con I'm not believe 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 you've come in as the elected politician, your temporary. And you know, 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. Yeah. And so that's the that's the toughest thing. It's it's making that transition.
Okay. So that 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 waste, what kinds of things are time waste or so you say I'm not going to do these PMQ.
Is there a total theatrics? I'm not going to you know, I'm not going to meet the queen or something. But is it the time is it that you're going to be going against a bureaucracy and say I think you're wrong about your inertia. What fundamentally changes? Well, it wouldn't be that you wouldn't do primers discretion, because 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 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, you know, I always split my premiership into the first five years, which in some ways with a with an easiest, we were doing things that were important like a minimum wage.
We did big evolution. 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 healthcare education, criminal justice. And those systemic reforms require that's when you're your skill set as a chief executive really comes into play.
There's a perception that many people have that if you could get a successful CEO or business person 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 the what is it that they be lacking that you need to be a electable leader? Yes, 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. And therefore, you've got to know how to manage your party. You've got to know how you frame certain things. You got to know, frankly, as a CEO of a company, you're the person in charge, right? You can more or less lay down the law. Politics is more complicated than that. So when when you get highly skilled CEOs come into politics, oftentimes they don't succeed.
But that's not because their executive skill set is the problem. It's because they haven't developed a political skill set. Interesting. I was reading your memoir and one thing I thought was interesting is there were a couple of times you said that you realize later on that you had more leverage or you were able to do things in retrospect that you did into at the time.
And is that one of the things that would change? And like if you go back to 1997, you realize actually can fire this entire team. If I think don't think they're doing a good job, I actually can cancel my meetings with ambassadors. How much of that would be like, did you have more leverage than you realize at the time? Well, in terms of running the system, yes, you definitely with the benefit of experience. I would have given much clearer directions. I would have moved people much faster.
I would have probably done, you know, because in politics, again, this is where it's different from from running a company. In a company by and large, right, you can put the people in the places you want them. Right. And they're, you know, except in exceptional circumstances, I think this is true, except in exceptional circumstances, if you're running a company, you know, you've got no one in the senior management who you don't want to be in the senior management.
Right. Politicians isn't like that because you've got you've got elements, political elements, you may have to pacify. There may be people that you don't particularly want because they're not made, not particularly good at being ministers, but they may be very good at managing your party or your government in order to get things through. And what I learned over time is the important thing is to put in the core positions that really matter to you, you can't don't fall short on quality.
And, you know, it's something, it's one of the really interesting things, you know, because I think being a political leader is the same as leading a company or a community center or a, you know, or a football team. It's all comes to the same thing, but you realize it's such an obvious thing to say that it's all about the people, but it's all about the people.
You know, if you get really good, strong, determined people who are prepared to, who share your vision and are prepared to get behind and really push, then, you know, you don't need that many of them actually to change your country, but they do need to be there. That's really interesting. So when I think about this is not particularly even to the UK, but even in Western governments, people are often frustrated that they elect somebody they think is a change maker.
Things don't necessarily change that much. The system feels an inertia. If this is the case, is it because they didn't have the right team around them? If you think of like, I don't know Obama or Trump or Biden, at the very top, I assume they can recruit like top people to the extent that they weren't able to exact the change they wanted. Is it because, you know, what must not have been because they didn't get the right to chief of staff, right? They can probably get the right chief of staff.
You know, absolutely. And they can get really good people. And you know, one of the things you actually learn about being being at the top of a government is, you know, pretty much if you pick up the phone to someone and say, I need you to come and to help that they will come.
I think the problems, not not that the problem is that number one, and I say this often to the leaders that I work with because, you know, we work in roughly 40 different countries in the world today and that's only growing. And we have teams of people that go and live and work alongside the president's team and and I kind of talk and exchange views with the president or the prime minister.
And very often that the two problems of these number one, people confuse ambitions with policies, right? So often I will speak to you and I say, so what are your policies? And he'll give me a list of things. And they actually, I say to them, those aren't really policies. They're just ambitions and ambitions and politics are very easy to have because they're just general expressions of good intention.
The problem comes with the second challenge, which is that though politics at one level is very crude, right? You're shaking hands, kissing babies, making speeches, devising slogans, attacking your opponents. Right, it's got a crude business. When it comes to policy, it's a really intellectual business politics. And that's why, you know, people often, if they've only got ambitions, then they haven't really undertaken the intellectual exercise to turn those into policies.
And policies are hard, you know, it's hard to work out what the right policy is. If you take this, you know, AI revolution, and I think we're living through a period of massive change, right? This is the biggest technological changes in just a revolution for sure.
For political leaders to date, to understand that, to work out what the right policy is, to access the opportunities, mitigate the risks, regulate it. This is really difficult work. And so what happens a lot of the time is that people are elected on the basis they are change makers, because they've articulated a general vision for change.
But when you then come to, okay, what does that really mean in specific terms? That's where the hard work hasn't been done. And if you don't do that hard work and really dig deep, then you, you know, what you end up with as I say, or just their ambitions and they just remain ambitions.
Okay, so now that you've got a AI, I want to ask about this. I do a lot of episodes on AI. And to the people who are in the industry, it seems plausible, the potentially unlikely that in the next three years, you could have, you know, like a huge sort of July 1914 type moment, but for AI, there's a big crisis, something major is happened in terms of misuse or a warning shot.
And then the next day's governments, given how they function, either in the West or how you see them function with the other leaders you advise, how well would they deal with this? Like so they get this news about some AI that's escaped or some bio up and that's been made because of AI, would it immediately kick off sort of a race dynamic from the West to China? Would they do the technical competence to deal with this? How would that shape out?
Right now definitely not. And one of the things that we do as an institute, one of the reasons I'm here actually in Silicon Valley is to try and bridge the gap between what I call the change makers and the policy makers, because the policy makers, a lot of the time just fear the change makers and the change makers, a lot of the time don't want really anything to do with the policy makers because they just think they get in the way.
So you don't have a dialogue, but if what you're describing, do I catch what to happen? And by the way, I think it's possible at some point it does happen. If it happened right now, I think political leaders wouldn't have the, they wouldn't, they wouldn't know where to begin solving that problem or what it might mean. So I think this is why I keep saying to the political leaders I'm talking to today, and you know, we're likely to have a change of government in the UK.
And I'm constantly saying to my own party, like buddy, which will probably win this election. You've got to focus on this technology revolution. It's not a, it's not an afterthought. It's the single biggest thing that's happening in the world today of a real world nature that is going to change everything.
And the geopolitics and the conflicts and war and America, China or all the rest of it, this revolution is going to change everything about our society, our economy, the way we live, the way we interact with each other. And if you don't get across it, then when there is a crisis like the one your, your positive could happen, you're going to find you've got no idea how to deal with it.
So I think COVID is maybe a good case study to analyze how these systems function and Tony Blair Institute made, I think what we're very sensible recommendations to governments, many of which went unheated. And what I thought was especially alarming about COVID was not only that governments made these mistakes with vaccine roll out and testing and so forth, but that these mistakes were so correlated across major governments, no Western government basically got COVID right.
Maybe no government got COVID right. What is a fundamental source of that correlation in the way that governments are bad at dealing with crises. They seem in some correlated way bad with crisis. Is it because the same people are running these governments? Is it because the apparatus is the same? Why is that? Well, first of all, to be fair to people who are in government at the time of COVID, it's, it was a difficult thing to deal with.
You know, I said the problem with COVID was it was plainly more serious than your average flu, but it wasn't the bribonic play. Right. So to begin with, there was one very difficult question, which is to what degree do you try and shut the place down in order to get rid of the disease. Right. And you had various approaches to that. But that's one very difficult question. And most governments kind of tried to strike a middle course.
Right. Right to do restrictions, but then ease them up over time. And then you have the issue of vaccination. Now normally with drugs, you take you years to trial a drug right, you had to accelerate all that. And that was done to be fair. But then you have to distribute it. And that is also a major challenge. So I think part of the problem was that governments weren't sure where to go to for advice.
You know, they have scientific advice. They had medical advice. But then they had to balance that with the needs of their economy. And the anxiety a lot of people had that when they that you are having a large shutdown, that they were going to be hugely disadvantaged as indeed people were. And I think one of the things that COVID did was was for the developing world. I think there's an argument for saying for the developing world that lockdowns probably did more harm than good.
Right. But so it's it sounds like you're saying that they made the trade off which are describing in the wrong way where they could have gone heavier on the testing and vaccination roll out. So that the lockdowns could have been avoided and fundamentally more relies would could have been saved. I still don't understand so I mean in some fundamental sense of pandemic is a simpler problem to deal with than an AI crisis in a technical sense.
Like yes, you had to fast track the vaccines, but it's a thing we've double before right there's vaccines you rolled them out. If the government can't get that right, how would we be about the ability to do with a iris and should we then just be fundamentally a verse to a government led answer to the solution. Should we hope the private sector can solve this because the government was about to COVID?
Well, what the private sector can do is to input into the public sector. And so you know in COVID, I mean the countries that handed vaccine and procurement. Well, so much vaccine procurement, vaccine production, if the handed it to the private sector and said, run with it. Right. Those are the countries that did best frankly.
And I think especially with something as technically complex as AI, you know, you are going to rely on the private sector for the the facts of what is happening and to be able to establish the options about what you do. But in the end, the government or the public sector will have to decide which option to take.
And the thing that makes governing difficult is I will say to people, when you decide you divide, you know, the moment you take a decision on a public policy question, there are always two ways you can go. Right with COVID, you could have decided to do what Sweden didn't let the disease run.
And pretty much you could have decided to do what China did lock down completely, but then what happened with China was once you got the Omicron variant and it became obvious you weren't going to be able to keep COVID out. They they didn't have the facility or the agility to go and change policy. But you know these policy questions are hard. And it's very easy with hindsight, you know, to say, yeah, you should have done this should have done that.
But I think if this happened in relation to AI, you would absolutely depend on the people who were developing AI to be able to know what decision you should take. Right. What what not necessarily not necessarily how you decided, but what is the decision. Yeah, I still don't fundamentally understand the answer to, okay, so you had before COVID, we had these bureaucracies and we hope they function health bureaucracies. We hope they function well.
It turns out many of them didn't to the we probably have equivalents in terms of AI where we have government departments, the deal with technology and commerce and so forth. And if they're as potentially broken as we found out that much of our health bureaucracy is what if you were prime minister now or the next government, what would you do other than we're going to have a task force we're going to like make sure we're making good decisions.
But you know, I'm sure like when people were trying to make sure the CDC was functional and like it wasn't like what would you just like fire everybody there and like make a new department. How would you go about like making sure it's really ready for the AI crisis. Yeah, so I think you've got to distinguish between two separate things one is making making the system have the skills and the sensitivity to know the different contours of the of the crisis that you've got.
And to be able to produce potential solutions right for what you do. So we needed to rely upon the scientific community to say this is how we think the disease is going to run. We would relied on the private sectors say this is how we could develop vaccines. We had to rely on different agencies in order to say well, I think you could you could concertina the the trial period to get the drugs.
But in the end, the decision where you lock down or you don't lock down you can't really leave it to those people because that's not there. Yeah, it's so you see what I mean it's so in the end as with AI. Okay, if you look at it at the moment. So some people want to regulate AI now and regulated on the basis that it's going to cause enormous dangers and problems right.
And because it's general purpose technology, yeah, there are real risks and problems associated with it. So Europe is already moving in quite a, you know, frankly, an adverse regulatory way. On the other hand, there would be people say well, if you do that, you're going to stifle innovation and we're going to lose the opportunities that come with this new technology.
But balancing those two things, I mean, that's what politics is about. Now, you need the experts that people know what they're talking about. To tell you, this is how AI is going to be. This is what it can do. This is what it can't do. Okay, we are explaining the technicality to you. But ultimately what your policy is, you've got to decide that. And by the way, whichever way you decide it, someone's going to attack you for it.
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That obviously means higher conversion rates and as a result, more revenue for you. So thanks to Stripe for sponsoring this episode and also for making it possible for me to earn a living doing what I love. And now back to Tony Blair. Okay, so let's go back to the topics you discussed with Foreign Leaders at TBI.
If you were, you know, take Lee Kwan you in a position in the 1960s and the Singapore he inherited. If you're advising Lee Kwan you in the 60s with the advice you would likely give to a developing country now, would Singapore have been even more successful than ended up? Would it have been less successful? What would you the effect of your advice now have been on Singapore in the 60s?
I would would Lee Kwan you in Singapore I would I mean it's the wrong way round. I mean I learned so much from him. And I went to see him first in back in the 1990s when I was leader of the Labour Party. And I went to see him in Singapore and the Labour Party been really critical of Singapore.
And so the first thing he said to me when I came in the room was why you seeing me, you know, your party's always hated me. And so I said I want to see you because I've watched what you do in government. I want to learn from it. So I don't think there's anything I could have told Lee Kwan you but the interesting thing is he's a fascinating leader.
And this is so interesting about government and why what I what I say is that you can look upon government like don't look upon it as a branch of politics. Look upon it as its own discipline professional discipline. And you can learn lessons of what's worked and what doesn't work.
And so the fascinating thing about Lee Kwan you is he took three decisions really three important decisions right at the beginning for Singapore each one of them now seems obvious each one at the time was deeply contested. Number one. He said everyone's going to speak English in Singapore now there are lots of people who said to him at the time no no we we've been thrown out of Malaysia effectively we're now a fledgling country a city state country.
We need to have our own local language you know we need to be true to our roots and everything he said earlier English is the language of the world and we're all going to speak English today that's what happens in Singapore. Secondly he said we're going to get the best intellectual capital and management capital from whatever it exists in the world and we're going to bring it to Singapore.
And again people said no we should send on our own to feed we were white white and you're also bringing the British we just you know we've got all these disputes with and he said no I'm going to bring in the best from wherever they are and they're going to come to Singapore today Singapore exports intellectual capital right.
And the third thing he did was he said there's going to be no corruption and one of the ways we're going to do that is we're going to make sure our political leaders are well paid which the Singapore leaders are the best paid in the world by factor about 10 for the next the next person and there's going to be zero tolerance of corruption zero tolerance of corruption and those are the three decisions that were instrumental in building Singapore today to the extent that Western governments have.
You know you could go to the UK right now or the US and fundamentally if you had to narrow down the list of the three key priorities and what would somebody who is in power to do so what could they do to fix that.
Do Western leaders if you know the Starmer is elected in the UK or whoever becomes president of the US would they have the power to enact what the equivalent would be for their societies right now because or is it just sort of like your there's all there's you have this all this inertia.
You can't start fresh I think I'm working start in the 60s no you definitely can I mean the American systems different because it's a federal system and there's probably in many ways is good thing that the the limits to what the federal government can do in the US.
But if you take the UK or most governments where there's a lot of power at the center I mean what we just been talking about which is the technology revolution how do you use it to transform healthcare education the way government functions how do you help educate.
The private sector as to how they can embrace a iron or to improve productivity I mean this is a huge agenda for a government and a really exciting one I mean I key say to people that were in politics today sometimes when they get a bit you know people get a bit depressed about being in politics because you all this criticism.
People certainly in the West field society's not changing fast enough and well enough and I say no it's a really exciting time to be in politics because you've got this massive revolution that you've got to come to terms with.
So speaking of federalism do worry that so you advise these dozens of governments and for any one leader you're probably giving very sensible advice for their country it's positive expected value but to the extent that that limits the variance and experimentation across countries of different ways to govern or different policies are we losing the ability to discover a new Singapore because there's you know western NGOs or whatever you're going to do.
Global institutions we have we will give you good recommendations and maybe there's like some missing thing we don't understand that an experimentation would reveal.
Yeah so we really don't do that with that with our governments because by the way one of the things governments should be able to do is experiment to a degree and part of the problem with systems is there's always a bias towards caution that that's what I mean by saying the systems if they're a conspiracy for anything it's very inertia.
But there are some things so what we do we concentrate with governments on what a true no matter what government you're in so there I describe four piece of government when you get into power right number one you've got to prioritize because we tried to do everything you'll do nothing.
Number two you've got to get the right policy what we were talking about before you know and that means going deep and getting the right answer and that means often bringing people in from the outside you can tell you what the right answer is.
Which is nothing to do with left right is usually do with practicality number three you've got to have the right personnel and number four you've got a performance manage you know once you've decided something and you've got a policy you've got to focus on the implementation now whether you're running the United States for America you're running. You know a small African country those things are always true.
Okay let's talk about foreign policy first second every this is not just you but every sort of administration has to deal especially Western administration that deal with these erasable dictatorial regimes and they're like right on the brink of w mds and they make all these demands in order to put off their path towards w mds obviously you had to deal with the dumb today we have to deal with Iran and North Korea.
It seems like sanctions don't seem to work regime change is really expensive is there any fundamental solution to this kind of dilemma that we keep being put into a decade after decade can we just buy them a nice mansion in Costa Rica. Or what can we do about these kinds of regimes yeah it's it's very difficult. I think you can do I mean if you take Iran today yeah I don't think there's any appetite in in the west certainly to go in and force regime change.
But I think you could do two things that are really important because Iran is basically the the origin of most of the destabilization across across the Middle East region and beyond.
First of all you can constrain it as much as possible and secondly you can build alliances which mean that their ability to impact is reduced but it's it's a constant problem because you know they they they're determined to acquire new weapons capability we want to stop them doing that we don't want to engage in regime change on the other hand all the other things that you do will be limited in their in their effect.
So it's difficult it's very difficult particularly now where you have a an alliance that has grown up where China Russia Iran to the green North Korea work closely together as a leader how do you distinguish cases when the intelligence communities come to you and say how do you distinguish a case like a rock were potentially they got a wrong versus Ukraine where it seems like they were on the ball how do you know which which intelligence to trust and how good is it.
And how good is Western intelligence generally how good are the five eyes generally is extremely good and the five eyes is extremely good and how do you distinguish the cases where they're not well it's it's difficult and with with the experience you know benefit of hindsight particularly in relation to to Iraq you've got to go much deeper and you've got to not take the fact that there was all these problems in the past as an indication what's happening now but or in the future.
But I think on the whole Western intelligence is is reasonably good and of course we'll get much better now with the tools is God it is disposal how much situation awareness do they have about the topics you're talking about whether it's AI or the next pandemic.
This forward looking kinds of problems rather than who's doing an invasion when which to maybe they have a lot of expertise and decades of experience with but we're like predicting who's got the data center where and so those kinds of things are going to be a day.
I think that they're all over this stuff now that the intelligence services here in America in the UK and yeah now it's it's it but you also got a whole new category of a threat to deal with because the cyber threats are real and potentially devastating in their impact and you can see from you can see from Ukraine I mean war is going to be fought in a completely different way in the future as well.
When you look at the different leaders you're advising and maybe just your experience talking to them while you're in office and seeing how their countries progressed how much of the variance and outcomes of countries is explained by the quality of the leadership versus other endogenous factors human capital geography whatever else.
Right so I think I mean my the whole reason I started this institute was was because I think the quality of governance of which the leadership is a big part I think it is the determinant in today's world where capital's mobile technologies mobile. Any country with good leadership. It can make a success and you know if you take you can take two countries side by side.
Same resources same opportunities same potential therefore one succeeds one fails if you look at it it's always about the quality of decision making so if you take for example before the Ukraine war if you take Poland and Ukraine when both came out of the Soviet Union in the early 1990s.
I think people would have given Ukraine as much chance as Poland of doing well Poland today is doing really well yeah right why is that because they joined the European Union they've had to make huge changes and reforms and therefore there is successful country you look at Rwanda and Brundi was Rwanda the suffer the genocide.
But Rwanda today I mean it's it's you know one of the most respected countries in Africa so and then you look at the Korean peninsula which is the biggest experiment in human governance is ever being North Korea South Korea South Korea South Korea had the same GDP per head as Sierra Leone in the 1960s.
And now it's one of the top countries and you think that's a fundamentally a question of who the leadership was like Park in South Korea or there are other factors are obviously different between these countries right and also you mentioned. Leadership determines governance but I guess in the if you look at a system like the United States or the UK.
We've had good and bad leaders fundamentally the quality of the governance doesn't seem to shift that much between who the leader is is the is a quality of governance sort of in the quality institutions. I saw sort of separate and dodging this variable from the leadership well the institutions matter and good leaders should should be able to build good institutions but you know we were talking about liquid and Singapore.
We would Singapore be Singapore would without those decisions they took no and if you look at if you look at the take for example China and don't show pink no I mean when he decided to switch after the death amounts switch policy completely to open China up that China opening up I mean that made the difference if you look if you track back India's development over the past 25 years.
You can see the points at which decisions were taken that that gave India the chance it has today so I actually think the interesting thing about this is how much it really does matter who the leader is and and the governance of the country and I think the interesting thing today.
Which is what I say to people engaged in this this groundbreaking revolution of artificial intelligence is we need your help in changing government and changing countries because we could do things what when I say when I'm in in talking to people in the developing world today and leaders that we're working with.
We need them don't try and replicate the systems of the West you don't need to do that you you can teach your children better and differently without building the same type of system we have in the West. I wouldn't design the health care system in the UK today as it is now if we had the benefit of of of generator of AI so this is the leaders that are going to succeed in these next years will be the people that can understand what is happening in places like this.
And the frustrating thing from our perspective of leaders is that there's very few people in the technology sector who really even though they would be probably very well intention towards the developing world they they sort of think well I don't know what I can do in order to help but actually is massive months they can do in order to help.
You know you talk about improving public services with AI but when you look at the IT revolution and how much it's improved let's say market services versus how much it's improved public sector services there's clearly been a big difference.
Should it would it if you go back to it you would it is better to privatize the things that I could have enabled more of like education and more lessons that have for AI where should we just you know the public sector didn't seem that good at integrating it will be bad integrating AI led just privatize health care education as possible because all the productivity gains will come from the private sector in those things anyways yeah nice a great question and it's the single most difficult thing because.
You can't just hand everything over to the private sector because the public will expect the public interest to be taken account of by government and you know you may say well government's useless protecting the public interest that's another matter but people were people. No people on the whole people in America people in the UK they're not going to say okay just hand it over to these tech giants and let them run everything however.
I do think what what should happen and we have a whole program in my institute now which we call the reimagined state right and I think if you look at there was a minimalist state. In the 18th century and in the first part of the 19th century that grew in the last part of the 19th century in the first part of the 20th century into a maximum state right where you look for for government to do a lot of things for you and the state grows large.
I think we should re imagine the state today as a result of this technology revolution and make it much more strategic it's much more about setting of framework and then allowing much more diversity competition and the hardest thing about the public sector in those circumstances is to create.
Self perpetuating innovation you know if you if you don't innovate in the private sector you got a business right if you don't innovate in the public sector I mean you're still there right it's just the services God was. And so I think this is this is the really tough intellectual task how do you for example in education today I mean how many kids in America actually you have a significant Taylor kids that taught really badly right okay saying probably in any western country.
No one today should be taught badly right everyone should be taught by the way also on an individual basis on a personalized basis and if you look at you look take what because we work with them what's all can's doing for example the Khan Academy.
And there are other people doing great things in education using technology we should be able to create a situation in which young people today are able to learn at the pace that that is good for them and no young person should be without opportunity but how you reform the system to allow that happen that's the that's the big challenge yeah but you know in time and like with the health care system you know you will end up with an AI doctor you end up with an AI tutor the question will be what's the framework within which those.
Things operate and how do we how do we use them to allow a better service and probably to allow a lot of the people within the health care or education systems concentrate on the most important part of their learning rather than for example if you're a doctor having to write up a whole lot of notes after a consultation or do less and planning if you're a teacher going back to TBI for a second when you give a leader some sense of what you're doing.
A leader some sensible advice and then they don't follow through on it what usually is the reason that happens is because it's not politically palatable in their country is it because they don't get it why why is it to the extent that you have good advice that's ignored why does that happen happens usually for two reasons and number one it's really hard to make change you know I what I learned about.
Making changes that this is a certain rhythm to it you know when you first propose a reform people tell you it's a terrible idea when you're doing it is absolute hell and after you've done it you wish you done more of it and you know that is so sometimes people just find the system to resist and they might be vested interests.
They get in the way of it may I sometimes come across countries that are island states with warm weather but they get all their their electricity from heavy fuel oil you know when they got limitless amounts of solar and wind that they can be using but it's vested interest the other thing is
government is a conspiracy of distraction because you got events and crises and scandals and the most difficult thing is to keep focused when you've got so many things that are diverting you from that core task and what what often happens with leaders I you know you know sometimes what we do with the lead is this we say to them okay we're going to do an analysis of your
priorities here your priorities here's how much time you spend on them and you're not literally with people spending 4% of their time on their priorities and you say well no one do not succeed in my recent chat with Mark Zuckerberg you mentioned how cybercrime is a huge concern with these new AI models where criminals can use these models to increase the volume and complexity of their tax.
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prelude security dot com slash speed all right back to Tony Blair so you look back at your time as prime minister or I'm not necessarily picking on your time just any any head of state and western government or any government
how much of the time they spend is fundamentally wasted in the sense of the three key priorities you would have say identified for Singapore in the 1960s or something it's not fundamentally moving the ball forward on things like that you know it's like meeting people ambassadors press whatever how much of the time is just that
a lot I mean I don't really need a percent 90 percent no that would be too I think that but a lot and a lot more today because people are expected so I this this thing that I often say to to leaders and I think this is the single biggest problem with western politics today
you know sometimes when I when I used to my kids were younger and I used to speak with them and I would say to them you know work hard play hard right if you work hard play hard equals possibility of success play hard work hard is certainly right because your place of hard you never end up working hard right
the equivalent in politics is policy first politics second in other words work out what the right answer is and then work out how you shape the politics around that but actually what happens to a lot of systems today is its politics first and policy second so people end up with a political position they've they've chosen for political reasons
and then they're trying to shape a policy around that politics and it never works because the most important thing and this is why I said you about policy makers and intellectual business is you go get the right answer and there is a right answer by the way it's and often you know the reason why it's so difficult to govern today is there so much political noise it's hard to get out of that zone of noise and sit in in a room with some people
really know what they're talking about and go into the detail of what is the solution to a problem and you know sometimes when I talk to leaders about this and I find that they they just say to my I don't have the time to do that and I say if you don't have the time to do that you are going to fail because in the end you won't have the right answer right and you've got to believe over time that the best policy is the best politics over time
yeah how so structurally how would you change the it's not just a time you had to spend for example talking the press but also the kinds of topics that draws attention to which are what statement your cabinet minister made on the BBC and some latest scandal
is that fundamentally like the 30 minutes of the PMQ is not the big deal is a two days to spend an anxiety preparation that you're talking about in the book is that fundamentally the attention distraction is the bigger issue than the actual time you spend on these events yeah I think I think it is to a degree I mean I think the other thing is you you you undergo a lot of attack today in politics and
you know you at a certain level what happens I mean it could happen to celebrities but they tend to have a at least some sort of fan base that are constantly supporting them but with politics day you can often be in a situation where
you know you're you're almost dehumanized right your subject to attacks on your integrity your character you know what your your intentions you know it's possible if you're not careful that you're just sitting there I think it is really unfair and you get distracted from focusing on the business and that's why I was say to people
one part of being a political leader or any leader I think is to be able to have a certain sort of what I call a kind of a bit of a zen like attitude to all the criticism and the you know disputatiousness that will go on around you because it's just going to happen and today with social media it happens to an even greater degree and you know one
of the things I often say to leaders is you cannot pay attention to this stuff I mean okay get someone to summarize it for you in half the page and you reach every now yeah but honestly you start going in you go down that rabbit you'll never re emerge going back a little bit to your type of office there is there's a find there's a unique unipolar moment that happens very rarely in history where the
leader had much more power in the 90s and early 2000s than the rest of the world is there okay so how what and what way did that feel different from today's world and is there something you wish in the way the institutions were set up at the time and we're cared for now that you would maybe change or I mean we had there was like a key opportunity in the unipolar moment how should that have been used how well was
used yeah it's difficult is that I mean we did try a lot you know contrary to what sometimes written for example with Russia and I you know I dealt with with president Putin a lot when I was prime minister and we know we also took the because myself and president Clinton took the crucial decision to bring China into the world's trading
framework and you know the g seven at the time was the g eight with Russia there and you know China would always be invited I think we did try I honestly think we tried a lot to recognize that we were going to live in a new world the power was going to to not shift from the Western sense the West will become not powerful but the East was going to become also powerful right and I think we kind of did
understand that and worked towards that the problem is that and particularly in these last few years certainly China Russia have come to a position that is in terms of fundamental values and systems seemingly hostile to to Western democracy and that's difficult and I think what we underestimated was probably how fast India would rise because at the time it didn't seem
India was still going to be quite constrained you we live in a multipolar world today and personally I think that's a good thing and I think it's in any event is an inevitable thing and you know I think it's really important always to give this message to to China for example that China as a right is one of the big powers in the world and as a right should have a huge influence and I don't
believe in trying to constrain or contain China but we do have to accept that the Chinese system as it presently is is run on different lines to our own and you know is overtly in some degree hostile which is why it's
important for us to retain military and technological superiority even though I am believe passionately that it's important that we leave space for cooperation and engagement with China and now how much could we have for seen of all of this back in those days I'm not sure but I think the world
is sometimes one of the problems of the West is that we always think we always see it through our own lens and we always think well we could have done something different to change the world but actually the rest of the world operates on its own principles as well so sometimes the change happens not because we didn't do something but because the rest of the world did
have shown change that's what could happen as well and 역시 the leaders do something the very important aspect they are you don't like to think about the대�ther especially with what support if Spain has helped people with the process of success country or anything, given the debt to them and who's best. You see, do I have to say one of the things you must never ever do in politics is say who's your favorite leader who's done well because you will you will make one friend and many, many enemies.
And so I'm just going to answer it in this way that if you look at the countries that have succeeded today, if you look, for example, as any country that was third world become first world, was second world become first world. There are certain things that stand out and are clear. Right. Number one, they have stable macroeconomic policy. Number two, they allow business and enterprise to flourish. Number three, they have the rule of law. Number four, they educate their people well.
And wherever you look around the world and you see those things in place, you will find success. And whenever you find their absence, you will find the either the fact or the possibility of failure. The one thing, however, that any country leader should focus on today is the possibility of all of these rules being rewritten by the importance of technology.
And the single most important thing today, if I was back in the front line of politics, would be, as I say, to engage with this revolution, to understand it, to bring in the people into the into the discussions and the councils of government who also get it. And to take the key decisions that allow us to access the opportunities and mitigate the risks. That's a wonderful place to close. Mr. Relair, thank you so much for coming on the podcast. Thank you for having me.
I hope you enjoyed this episode with Tony Blair. If you did, I appreciate you sharing it with people who you think might enjoy it. As always, Twitter or group chats wherever else is extremely helpful. And I'm doing ads on the podcast now. So if you're interested in advertising, please reach the form and link in the description below. Other than that, I guess I'll see you next time. Cheers.