Tony Blair

That's good too. My mom used to make great apple crumbled mine too. This is a little no packed man, And I'm actually a foodie. I adore food. Oh dear, you're not very fat at all. You don't look like a foodie ever. Trust the thin cook. Hello, I'm mini driver and welcome to many questions. I've always loved prus questionnaire. It was originally an eighteenth century parlor game meant to reveal an individual's true nature. But with so many questions,

there wasn't really an opportunity to expand on anything. So I took the format of Proof's questionnaire and adapted. What I think are seven of the most important questions you could ever ask someone. They are when and where were you happiest? What is the quality you like least about yourself. What relationship, real or fictionalized, defines love for you? What question would you most like answered, What person, place, or experience has shaped you the most? What would be your

last meal? And can you tell me something in your life that has grown out of a personal disaster. The more people we ask, the more we begin to see what makes us similar and what makes us individual. I've gathered a group of really remarkable people who I am honored and humbled to have had a chance to engage with. My guest today is Tony Blair, the former Prime Minister for the UK. He is to date the longest serving Labor prime minister and broken eighteen year marathon of Conservative government.

When he came to power. He studied law at Oxford and told me he never intended to go into politics. I have to say I was very interested about having the opportunity to speak to a former world leader, and one of the things that really struck me was the starting point idea of commitment to service and social progress can't help but be altered by the actual machinations of politics.

Tony Blair is a Christian by faith, and I very much enjoyed discussing, amongst other things, the nexus between spirituality or organized religion and science and reason. Where and when were you happiest? So when people ask you whether you're happy or not, it can refer to a period or it can refer to a moment. The periods of my life which I were most happy, we're probably in my sort of early thirties, as I was really starting in politics and beginning of family, and and I had everything

to kind of look forward to when you're an MP. Yeah, I've become an MP. I was kind of climbing the political leader. Things were fascinating, but there weren't too pressured. You haven't got to the point where the politics started to really cut into your life. And we were starting a family, so that was great, and you know, that

was a very happy time in my life. Strangely, this last year, because I've been able to spend real time in one place, the longest time I've spent in one place for decades, it allowed me to focus on the work that I do with my institute, which is the not profit institute that does work in Africa, the Middle

East and other places. But even though I've not been able to travel there in the same way, you know, I found it actually quite a good way of working and it's given me some periods of reflection where normally I don't get any. So as a period of my life, it's not been unhappy. But then I think you can define happiest moments of your life and those for me, which is probably a bad thing, but they're all about fulfillment.

I mean, I could say it's the moment my first child was born and my first grandchild, and that's true. But when I think of, you know, things that gave me an immediate rush of happiness that they're usually around fulfillment, you know, getting a scholarship to school or getting into university. Winning the nomination for my constituency, which is a big moment. Yeah,

that must have been amazing. That was completely unexpected and was the last seat in the country to select a candidate and they three and never hadn't been selected, I would never have been leader in n been Prime minister in nine. You held that seat for a long time as well, because twenty five years Yeah, there's quite a long time. But then the particular moments, because with Prime Minister the highs and lows, but the highs are very high. The signing of the Good Friday Agreement on Ireland, the

winning of the Olympics. So this, this happiness is fulfillment. But if you want happiness as a period of your life in which you're experiencing just day to day, the nearest I would ever get to contentment it would probably be those two periods. Really is not When I was Primaris, like when people ask you whether you enjoyed being Prime minister, I was thinking, it's like asking if do you enjoy giving birth? You know, no, not not really, like I

really loved having a baby. But I think that's actually an excellent analogy, not having been prime minister by having given birth. Did you enjoy being on stage? I used to have a bucket at the side of the stage that I would throw up in when I was in the West End. I was so terrified. There's something great about it, though. But I'm interested about this premium that we put on happiness because I wonder if it becomes a catch or and rather like love, it's it's actually

made up of a lot of other different things. If love is made up of I don't know, respect, honesty, shared idea is communion, community. Because I was happy on the stage, but it was also awful. But I think that's what's what's interesting about it. But that's why you can define happiness as points of fulfillment. So when you came off the stage having given a great performance or of performance you were satisfied with, that's a form of happiness.

I'm an optimistic person, but I don't think I'm happy in that kind of relaxed sense of happy. That's so funny because I think I'm a happy pessimist. I think that I'm actually quite pessimistic, but really genuinely often surprised about how well things turn out. But I wonder if it's also like if it's a privilege from where we're born and where we grow up, and that the privileges that we have in our life. It's interesting about the

notion of what you grow out of. Think about that a lot and certain friends have had extremely different experiences in their life who happiness was really hard for ought, and they look at it differently. They look at it as this prize in a way that they want despite the hardships that they experienced, but that does give them a sense of fulfillment. And I think the best thing in life is to wake up with a sense of

purpose and go to bed counting your blessings. And I think you tend to be more happy when that there is that purpose. You know, you feel you're not just living, but you're living for something. And when you you've got to the stage where you're able despite all your challenges and you're mishaps to say, but I'm in fact blessed. Think of all the many blessings that have been bestowed

upon me. And I think one of the things you try to do is you get older, is you try to come to a more spiritually balanced place where you're you can accept the things in life that are really hard, um because you appreciate there are so many people who have it harder and you've in fact been generously gifted in many ways. Just the last thing on happiness, because

it's it's really interesting talking to you about that. Do you think that it was something when you were Prime Minister that in a way you couldn't expect it in any way, shape or form, So it becomes sort of collateral damage to the position that you're in that you can't really seek happiness when you're governing, like or are you trying to seek a greater happiness for a country, So that sort of fulfills that part of your psyche.

You know. The truth of the matter is the responsibility is so great and you're taking decisions the whole time that are extremely difficult, subject to an enormous amount of criticism. Now by the way, you know, as my wife always used to say to me, look it's pollantry and complain about it, you know, and that is actually very sensible attitude. But you know, the sense of responsibility and the harshness occasionally of the environment. You know, I found it hard

to be happy. But as I say the word, those moments because you do have such responsibility where thing actually worked, you know, where we were three or four days trying to negotiate that good Friday agreement in Ireland and after all those years and you actually get it, then that is that's something that must have been amazing. There are a very few moments though, which, as it were, whether joy is unalloyed, it's usually accompanied by a heavy downside.

What quality do you like least about yourself that I'm never satisfied that I'm always restless. I used to think for a long time that was a strength, and I think it's really weakness. Do you think that you've addressed that with COVID keeping you in one place and that restlessness actually being stopped. Do you think that maybe you've learned to like it? No, No, I haven't learned to

like it. I'm ambivalent about it because I think that to a certain degree, if you have an element of restlessness, it keeps you striving, and in the striving you can achieve more. But I think it makes you a difficult person to live with. I think if you missed dimensions of life by being constantly restless and in search. I mean,

it's the quality I've come to accept about myself. But whereas I used to think it was a great spur, and in some ways it is, I think you should be a big and strong enough character to be able to achieve without that. Well, it sounds like you did quite a lot during COVID. No, I felt that with our institute really took it to a new level. So I'm very pleased at that. I don't I don't think you need to be perpetually unsatisfied in order to succeed.

And I've subsequently in my life met a lot of people who have managed to succeed in their life goals by being very focused and determined and hard working and apply yourself and all of that is no one I've ever met, even if they make it look easy, it's never is, but they've managed to do that at the same time, as you know, just having a more relaxed

that tute to life. I know, it's how do you stoke the fire and keep that forward momentum without I think being overrun by that and not being able to focus. Maybe it's just the nuance of being alive. The thing I often wonder when I meet people is, you know, is it something natural or is it something that events and people's lives have pushed them too. I don't know. I think to be able to be calm in the face of whatever life brings you is I think that's

a great quality. Do you think you've cultivated that as you've got older. I've tried to, but as I say, not really very successfully. Maybe the living is in the trying, you know what I mean. Maybe there's no actual arrival point. But it's like the other thing I always think is that is the Greek's always had it right when they

talked about humorous and nemesis. That's a very interesting aspect of life that you should always as well remain rooted in a certain degree of humility about your own position, your own capabilities. Because there's no occasion that I've ever come across in any part of my life or the life of people I've known, where I have not never since has followed uberst. It's interesting. It's a big life lesson or what relationship, real or fictionalized, defines love fear?

So I thought about this and I thought about it. What is its purest form? I mean, I would say parent and child is a very obvious answer to give, and now I'm a grandparent. It's the same feeling of unconditional love. Maybe what you have for your child is something I think that is not repliable. I mean, there's there's nothing that comes near it in its unconditionality, but it is to some degree also it's bound up with yourself.

So in its purest form, I would say that the love that I have seen when I've seen people who dedicate their lives to looking after others in really difficult circumstances. And I think, for example, of the nuns I met in Africa looking after HIV AIDS children, many of whom at that time would die, but they would care for them through, you know, the last years of their life.

And that love was unconditional but also selfless. I mean, they didn't have a family relationship, but they were able to give those children complete and unconditional love, and usually in circumstances where their parents have died. And I remember, because she and I visited an orphanage where the nuns looked after these children. I remember coming away and literally weeping afterwards because I just felt there's nothing that could

ever come close to that purity. Is the distillation of love? Then? For you, is that in its most unsolid form where it's most meaningful. Because you're right, there's a huge difference, and yet they're both worthwhile. The love for your children and the unconditional love of a nurse for a very sick child. Yeah, and the love for a stranger. So that is to be able to bestow that love on a stranger, I mean, you know, obviously not strange when you start to look up them, but the fact is

they're not connected with you by family. They're not friends, they're not people have done anything for you. I mean that is selfless as well as unconditional. One of the things I worry about sometimes is whether with the passing of religious belief, we will lose something of that, you know, that selfless love that I think is often found in people of faith. I don't think faith is going anywhere.

I hope not, but I think it's difficult. I think organized religion is under so much pressure, and religious belief is subject to so much cylicism and criticism, as well as an inquiry as to whether it's consistent with science. I agree. I mean, I think that that's the nexus of whatever the new vendor diagram of new physics or some sends and religion, and I think it's fascinating and

interesting to see what that will look like. But maybe it also forces us to do a bit more self inquiry and not be quite so externally structured, but rather to find it within yourself. Yes, that's true, but the question is whether its best religious faiths will assist you in that. I think the question really is whether in this century, because I think organized religion will continue to

habits severe problems. Whether it's possible to distill and capture the essence of spirituality if organized religion declines, or does it just become just humanism. My school practiced comparative religion at Bedles. Each summer a collective or a person of a different faith would come and live at the school and they would be available to chat to and to talk to at any time. So we had Franciscan monks and Buddhist monks, and Catholic nuns and Hasidic Jews like

it was absolutely fascinating. And what I really is in talking to all of them was that that yes, their particular form of faith had cultivated the spirituality, but I felt so much that it was already there and they would be doing it anyway. They would be doing it on the side of a hill, or in their own garden or at the butcher's. Well, maybe it's that they came to that spiritual understanding and enlightenment through their organized religion.

I think what is interesting is that at a certain point, you know, if you study comparative religion, you realize that there are certain things that all the faiths have in common. And the question is, as people apply the force of reason and science to organized religion. Does it just obliterate organized religion or does organized religion adjust and find its place, Because in the end, what organized religion should be is a gateway to greater spiritual understanding and understanding or your

own self. So do you believe the latter. Do you believe that it's possible for organized religion to shape shift into accommodate so science and reason. I'm not sure. I think it's possible. I think religious faith can go in two directions. It can either go in the direction of reaching out across the boundaries of faith in the belief that there are these things in common. Or it can go for what I would call in political terms, your

core votes strategy. In other words, you turn in in yourself and you you become a sort of fundamentalist construct. Everything has a shadow, even well, particularly the really beautiful things. Maybe that always has to be there so that you keep choosing it, You keep choosing the light, you keep choosing the good stuff. Yes, as people learn more about different religious faces as well, I think they mean, certainly

this has happened to me. I'm a practicing Christian, but I go to Israel a lot and so I see a lot of people of the Jewish faith, obviously because of the work I do of the Muslim faith, to Hinduism, Buddhism. I think the question all main religious face struggle with the day is how do they separate the essence of that faith and how it teaches you to live a life from the doctrine and the practice which has grown

up in particular cultures in particular ways. That often serves as a barrier to understanding, certainly identity politics in America. For there to be common ground in a way, it's really tricky. But I'm not a fan of the identity politics. You know, we just watched it play out in real

time of who is a fan of identity politics. But I do hope that religion can I like the word embrace because that has felt the fundament of of faith, that it can embrace an evolution, which might be counterintuitive, but it was going to happen, I think in the end, otherwise it won't, it won't connect, it won't survive. So is there something in your life that has grown out of a personal disaster? I don't. I'm not shimpol of think so I can really everybody in my personal life.

I think when I was young and my father became very seriously ill when I was ten years old, more or less ended his career, and you know, he had to be looked after by my mother for several years, and then my mother died when I was quite young. I think those are the things that probably set my life on a different course. Well, I think the rest of your life emerging after an incredibly painful start, is something growing out of that hard I mean, no no doubt,

conflict creates action. Yeah, I think what it did for me was create a sense at a very early age that you couldn't take anything for granted. I mean, it may be that that is the only kind of upside of that restless spirit fault that I've talked about earlier

in politics and adversity. You know, I started supremely popular as Prime Minister, and then you know, obviously post nine eleven and the Art War and all of that, it was very difficult for me to come to terms with the fact that that you know, I can say I thought I was doing the right thing, but you know that the unpopularity that comes then with a decision like that, you then come to terms with the fact that you're given that enormous responsibility and there is a sort of

crushing element about it, and you've got to be prepared then to to live with that. If you're looking at it from the point of view as someone who gets to the very top in a in a profession, there are things that leaves you with a mark afterwards that you will live with for the rest of your life, and that's coming to terms with that is also something

that is beneficial. Well. I think it's exactly what you spoke about humility of maybe seeing the panopoly of our entire life and that those moments that have the spotlight thrown onto them, that we live around them. And obviously I can't speak to what that is of making decisions that affect people or affected people on such a huge level, but I think that's why it's so interesting to talk to so many different types of people, because we're human and the choices that we make are the choices that

we make. I think it's interesting what you said about belief as well, and going into politics. You have to

have belief, you have to choose a path. One thing that I did learn about politics, so I think it's an interesting lesson in life is that if you calculate too much, you miscalculate, and ias when you're looking at the way your life is going to go in the future, it's often better to follow your instinct, keep relatively true to yourself, because if you're always trying to calculate your next movement in that very narrow way, you often end up failing because the world changes in the way you

didn't anticipate. It's so true. I work very briefly with Robert Almond on and commercial for something once, and I remember at lunch had one of the best conversations I've ever had anyone, where he said that you know, your life and your decision and your belief and your commitment to what it is you're doing, is this straight line and the public opinion and zeitgeist and all these other things kind of bisect and zig zag that straight line

your entire life. And you know, he must have been eighty when we we've made that commercial, And he said, never once in following the zig zag did anything really productive happen except my realizing that I should really just don't follow the zeit guys, just commit commit to your line. Yeah, I'm sure that I think that's for me. I would never have become leader of the Labor Party if I if I'd simply calculated, because I definitely did not follow

the traditional path to leadership. I was way out on the limit points and that looked like it was a fatal flaw, but it turned up to be. Then the leadership question came up when John Smith was the previous leader of the Labor Party. Treasity did, and the leadership of the Labor Party came up after John's death. It was then suddenly I was the right person, the right place, right time. It's amazing, It's amazing. So this is a this is a broad question, but what person, place, or

experience most altered your life? And I'm going to say apart from becoming Prime Minister, because it's too it's too easy when you have such an extraordinarily rarefied experience, probably meeting someone who became my mentor at university who was actually a reverend priest, a guy called Peter Thompson, who was an Australian and who was a remarkable character and teacher, and he changed the direction of my life because, first of all, before I met him, I was an interest

in politics. Secondly, I didn't really have any ambition to do anything in the world as it were, as opposed to become a lawyer or settle down or whatever. And he put my life on a different path by showing me really that unless you lived your life with some sense of obligation to try and do your best do good in the world, and it wasn't falling short of

what you should be. Do you think it's a confluence of sensing something in somebody else that you speak to that a mentor see something in their mentee and speak to that part of them before they've perhaps even seen it themselves. Or is it them? Is it them just sharing knowledge that they've they've paid attention to in the world around because they've been around longer than we have. Like, do you think that he saw something or do you think that it's what he was saying through his observances

ignited something in new Yeah, so it's interesting. Good question. I actually have asked myself that question quite off. I don't really know the answer. I mean, I think he saw something that he felt should be developed maybe, and he had this impact on a lot of the people around me. You know, I had a strange time at university because I never felt I really made the most of my time at university in many ways for someone

who ended up as Prime Minister. I think the only time I ever went to the Oxford Union was once to listen to a speech by Michael Heseltine. Bizarrely, Oh my god, that's like the worst, that's the worst one. It was quite interesting. Actually, I was not interested at all in politics. I was actually trying to get close to a particular girl at the time because I wasn't interested in politics at all at the time. What did

you read at university? Law? I mean I had a very good tutor, of very good tutors and everything, but I think it law wasn't really a subject for me at university. I enjoyed it much more when I practiced it. I would even better properly with history. But I didn't go to the Oxford Union. I didn't go on on stage or anything. But I ended up mixing with influential people on me at university. Peter Thompson was the sort

of focal point of all of them. But when I look back now, I think maybe it all to my life in another way as well, which is that I became aware that there was a world beyond my own society, my own country, my own way of life, and that

gave me always a broader perspective. It must be very interesting to see the position of prime minister as one of service that requires a power graph, it requires choose me, a pick me, and then the notion of service and governing one would hope kicks in, but they seem to be diametrically opposed. How one gets to be prime minister and then actually governing. Oh there's my dog um by

where your question is a great question. So the thing that people find hard to understand about politicians, and you know, I never felt myself like a politician. I didn't feel different from anyone else. It's just that the environment in which you're in you realize at a certain point in time there's a bit of it that is noble and there's a bit of it that's skullduggery. And politics as

all these things. Now, my theory of this is that very few people ever get to the top and politics don't mind being prime minister unless they're driven by belief, you know, and you start in politics with belief. The trouble is you're always trying to implement those beliefs in this environment and which all these other ignoble elements are present.

And if you believe in what you're trying to do, you can't just pretend in some elevated way, in some saintly way, because otherwise you just get devoured, right, so, and then you never get to do the things you want to do. This is why usually art portrays politics is just a dark thing. But in fact, most politicians that I've ever come across go into politics wanting to do good, and obviously oftentimes they will fall short. But

it's not that they cease wanting to do good. It's the competitive nature of it and the way that what in normal workplaces would be sort of relatively low key psychological dramas in politics is played out under the full glare of global stage. Yeah, and the choices are difficult, you know. I always say to people, the time you should trust the politician most is when they're telling you what you least want to hear. But actually that's not how most people view politics. They trust what they do

want to hear. But that's the easy thing to do with politics. The hard thing is when you're particularly to your own supporters saying no, I can't do that, it's not right. And when you when you take decisions, when you decide, you divide, when you decide you to Yeah, yeah, I really can't thank you enough. I'm just so so interesting talking to you. Displeasure all the very best, Thank

you so much, good Bye. See Tony Blair's Institute for Global Change hopes, among other things, to offer in an advisory capacity, practical solutions to the challenges the world faces. Mini Questions is hosted and written by me Mini Driver, supervising producer Aaron Kaufman, Producer Morgan Levoy, Research assistant Marissa Brown. Original music Sorry Baby by Mini Driver, Additional music by

Aaron Kaufman, Executive produced by Me Mini Driver. Special thanks to Jim Nikolay, Will Pearson, Addison, No Day, Lisa Castella and Unique Oppenheim, A W. K here Day, La Pescador, Kate Driver and Jason Weinberg, and for constantly solicited tech support, Henry Driver, M