Hello, I'm Kirsty Young and this is a podcast from the Desert Island Discs archive. For rights reasons, we've had to shorten the music. The programme was originally broadcast in 1996 and the presenter was Sue Lawley. My castaway this week is a politician. At the moment he's leader of his party, but by next summer he might have... Become leader of his country. If he doesn't become Prime Minister, it will be a disaster for his supporters. But for him, the public... Schoolboy who might have become an actor but became a successful lawyer instead. Failure in politics...

While not welcome, would by no means be terminal. He may be dedicated to reform, his eyes may be set unswervingly on victory, but he says... Being a hinterland in which there are things that matter to you every bit as much is desperately important. The leader of Her Majesty's Opposition, Tony Blair. What is it about this? Interland, Mr Blair, that makes it such a safety net? I don't know that it's a safety net, but I think it's important that you're not a political obsessive. I mean, politics is my life. I'm dedicated to the aims I've set myself in politics, but it's not all of life. My family, my friends, other interests are all of life. Were also important. - But you have a very young family. They're what, they're 12, nine, eight? - They're 12, 10 and eight, so they're shortly to become 13. And it's been difficult combining politics and the family.

That's the point really, isn't it, that the leadership, if you like, came a bit too early for you because they're still at those ages where they require a lot of time and energy. Do you feel guilty about not being able to supply enough of that? I feel worried about it. is It's a decision, once I decided to go for the leadership, that inevitably meant there To be strains on the family but then it was what I thought was right to do and I wanted to do it. I think if you are in politics and you decide it's the right thing to do, You've got to go for it. The other problem we had in doing that, of course, was Gordon Brown, who was perceived to be-- I think the senior partner, wasn't he? How difficult was it to say, Gordon, I'm sorry, but I gotta do this? discussing it obviously and I'd always assumed that he would be the leader of the Labour Party and I've always had a huge and still have a huge admiration

For us that have been in the Labour Party in long years of opposition, in a way I always thought, look, fine, being Leader of the Opposition, government and I always used to say to people I prefer to be a junior minister in a government than leader of a perpetual opposition. So in a way our thoughts were particularly at that point in time. How we got the whole show into government. Once it happened, once John died and we had to come to the decision, then we did discuss it. And I think it is a mark and measure of Gordon and the type of person he is, we were able to agree it. But it's also perhaps a mark and measure of you that when you have to be ruthless you can be. I don't think it was ruthless, but it was a view of both of us that in those set of circumstances I was the right person to do it. I had the circumstances... Different. I mean, had the question, for example, risen after the last general election, I think the decision would have been different, but it didn't happen like that.

All positions of power are lonely places. How lonely are you finding yours? Yes, I mean it's in the end, the buck stops with you and you've just got to understand that. It's a great opportunity, you know. I mean, you know, I shouldn't sit here and sort of wallow in how awful it is, and let me tell you there are plenty of other people who'd like to take my place, so I'm not complaining about it. It can be even lonelier on a desert island, I tell you. What's the first record you'll play there? It's a record by a group that no one will actually have heard of. I don't think it ever sold that well and I'm not even sure they've still got a record deal together but it's an album. I started to listen to a lot when I first became leader and I was sort of making big speeches in the comments and occasionally put something on The title of the song is Cancel Today which is about wanting today to go away, which is usually how I feel every day. Tuesday and Thursday when Prime Minister's Questions comes along. Pull back the curtains

♪ Up your eyes ♪ ♪ And let's warmth upon your skin ♪ ♪ Then come over here ♪ ♪ Just lay for a while ♪ - Ezio and Cancel Today from his album Black Boots on Latin Feet. Moment this theme Tony Blair that your life is not consumed by politics do you think that's why you've been able to achieve the modernization of the Labour Party that you've achieved that in a sense You've taken it on as a job that required discipline and dedication, but in the end you're doing it with your head more than your heart. Well, I hope I'm doing it with my heart as well, but I think there's a sense in which I really almost Stood outside the Labour Party and looked at it and said, look, if you're an ordinary person looking at British politics, how would you want to see it develop? How should it develop?

Ever since I've been in it, I've thought we had to change, but... I think it would be wrong to see this merely as a sort of, you know, as a rational expedition rather than an emotional one. But it is more of a rational expedition than an emotional one, isn't it? Because, as I say, you're not bound up with those thousands of people who are just like you. The people in the Labour Party who would live and die by Clause 4. You were able to say Doing us any good we've got to get rid of it. Yes, but I think more than that though, you see, what I would say to you is that the true... Emotional attachment to the Labour Party is not to cling on to something long past its sell-by date. It is actually to say, well, what is this party about? What do we feel? Why do we join the Labour Party? Why did I join the Labour Party? A sense of justice. The single greatest difficulty we've had in changing has been this belief that if you change, you become unprincipled. Absurd. Principles are for all time, but policies and practical programs are for all time.

Will vary from generation to generation. But in the meantime you get people like Austin Mitchell who put it I think speaking for the left who feel like squashed hedgehogs on the road to the manifesto. Well... You had to squash them to make the party electable, didn't you? I hope I didn't squash them, but I didn't sort of sit there and say, well, you know, how do we get the Labour Party into power? everything it believes in. I mean, that's just rubbish. That is what has kept the Left back for so, so long that it has confused principles with their application. The point of mentioning all of that is that, you know, people have called you rootless in the past, but this is what's quite important, isn't it, in the shaping of Tony Blair. Bring that emotional baggage of the Labour Party with you. You know you're not a child of the welfare state, you're not the son of a miner, you didn't struggle through the 70s. You're a man with a job to do, simply that. Get the party elected. I hope. That I'm also someone with a vision for both the Labour Party and the country.

You're right in this sense that it's not a question of being rootless, it's being part of my own generation. Look, for people like me... You. I was born almost 10 years after the Second World War. We grew up with Eastern Europe. So any idea that what... Labour Party should stand for was more state control. Well, it was just an affront to your reason when you looked at Eastern Europe. So if the left doesn't stand for big government state control, What does it stand for? And the answer is it stands for certain key values. It does not stand for economic policy prescriptions that may be good for one generation but aren't good for another and you know therefore it's not a question of as it were Not carrying the emotional baggage of the Labour Party, it's that my emotions are... Are grounded in something different. - Record number two. - Well, record number two is.

Is the record that was my mother's favorite record. And it's Debussy's Clair de Lune.

you Part of Debussy's Clair de Lune played by Pascal Roget. Even the most cursory look through your biographical details Tony Blair reveals that you're a born performer that you know whether it was at school or at university you like Being centre stage. I'm sure it felt like that at the time. You acted in school in Durham and in Edinburgh and at Oxford a bit, didn't you? Yes, I did. I avoid acting tremendously, particularly at school, but for some reason it never quite worked out for me at Oxford. And I regret that. It allowed me to do other things. It allowed you to lead a rock band called The Ugly Rumours. Could you actually sing?

Well that is a very good question and I think if I was to be completely truthful, though I shared this in common with a lot of rock singers at the time, not very well, no. But apparently your, your liking of... Performing goes back earlier than that. According to your father, you danced in your nappy, aged 18 months, on the ship to Australia. Yes, I was so grateful to my father for bringing me here. Counting that. Not something to be repeated for a politician in this day and age. So you might have been an actor, had family circumstances been different but they weren't. Father was a self-made man and he was active in politics. Indeed, he wanted to be Prime Minister. He certainly wanted to be a Conservative MP and was well on the way to doing it. In fact, in the early 60s he was chairman of the local Conservative Association.

But you finally dragooned him into the Labour Party last year? We did. I mean, actually, I didn't really dragoon him. He offered to join, though I have to say I think it was more a case of blood being thicker than water. But in 1964, just after your 11th birthday, he had a stroke. What are your memories of that day? I remember being with my mother. In the morning by my mother because we were about to go to school. You have a sense as a child immediately that something is wrong and I remember becoming very very upset and then she said well you know dad wasn't very well and you know we got through the day somehow and it became parent by end of the day that he was actually going to live, so that was a great relief.

How did you feel it incumbent on you to tell that to the party conference this year? Because I just wanted people to understand that... You know, I mean I did learn through that quite early on that not everything... Thing in life was just a sort of smooth run and it obviously brought with it tremendous insecurity and one of the odd things about being a politician, because people ask you out your previous life is that you start to analyze things in a way that you would never really have... Most people don't look back at all. That's really my point, that reading interviews you've given, you sound as if you had really quite a happy childhood. And yet, you know, on the-- party platform, you relate this story because it seems to be de rigueur that political leaders these days have to have known suffering. Well I don't call it knowing suffering actually, I think they were putting it far too high.

I think obviously, I mean, when people ask you what are the events that have made a huge impact on your life, that is, that obviously... Was probably the most important event of my childhood. Record number three. The record number three is one of the... Songs and that after he had the stroke and began to... Recovery. He actually was a very, very good pianist, my father, and he lost it when he had the stroke. He lost the ability to play and he then learned to play a little bit again Beatles songs.

I love you more The Beatles and In My Life. So despite that change in family circumstances you went off to, I think they call it the Scottish Eton, don't they? Fettis. And then you went on to Oxford to St John's to read Law and you just completed your... Your finals there, when your mother fell ill? - Well, my mother actually had been ill before then, but she actually died just shortly after You went to see her in hospital. Did you know she was dying? I did. In fact, I think... The family rather kept from me how ill she was just as I was completing my exams. And although it's one of these strange things, I mean, it should have been obvious that she was -- But you're so used to your mother and father being... Rocks of stability in your family you can't really imagine that this can ever happen to them. But was it partly that the...

That changed your idea or any idea of your being an actor that you wanted to choose something perhaps more secure like the law. Although some people would say the two professions have a lot in common of course the law and acting but there's a kind of need for secure in that choice. I think when someone very close to you dies you you're brought up short with the nature of life and The fact that if you want to do certain things you better get on and do them. So you did, you talked your way into Derry-Irvin's chambers. Yes, I certainly did do that. And you didn't particularly want another pupil because he'd just taken on a new young pupil called Cherie Booth. Do you recall your first meeting with her? Yes, because we were both up for some scholarship for Lincoln's Inn, which, needless to say, she won and I didn't. I'm sure you say that she got the scholarship and you didn't. She is allegedly, legally.

Speaking anyway a lot cleverer than you, is that right? Oh yeah, absolutely. I mean, she's a brilliant lawyer. I mean, the first bit of the pupil... I mean I was I was struggling a bit. She helped you. Yes, she did. She helped me enormously I mean I was used to remember because in Lincoln's Inn I mean I was doing the bar exams Which I did not treat with the seriousness that well actually I think I did treat it with the seriousness it deserved But anyway, I didn't worked particularly hard at it. But I always remember Shree being in the Lincoln's Inn library and when everyone else would sort of go down to the pub for lunch, she would be sort of eating her sandwiches in there and pouring over her body. But instead of calling her a SWAT you thought she was quite interesting I did I thought and still think she's one of the most unusual in the people I've met. But she wasn't interested in you? And no, not particularly no, to be honest, but... How long did it take? Well, it took quite a long time. And then Derry took us out for lunch, and he disappeared after a time.

I remember we were still there at dinner time, so something must have happened along the way. More music. I like Bruce Springsteen tremendously, and this is one of the early tracks of his that Shree and I used to listen to. And two together from time to time because I had this extremely grotty flat in St. John's Wood just around the corner from where she used to live and we used to play this song.

And 4th of July, Asbury Park. You don't, Tony Blair, you don't like talking about all this personal stuff, do you? You sort of lose your fluency almost. I don't like it very much. No. I think it's difficult for people sometimes to understand as well. I mean politicians are... I mean we're normal people, most of us. And we came into politics because there were great... Policy ideas that we had and ideals that we wanted to implement and see through. And it is difficult because... You then get to a stage in your political life, actually people are more interested in what you are privately than your public position. You know, the press is a tiger. And whether you like it or not in politics, you'll put a stride at it. But it's a pretty fearsome beast.

Let's go back to where we were in your life because after you studied under Derry Ervin and you took your bar finals, you then decided to stand for Parliament, you eventually got yourself selected for a safe seat for Sedgefield, County Durham, went to Westminster with the class of '83, you'd have been 30 years old. On a bit then because we've got all these lost elections then I mean by the time a large number of them to when you end in a third in 87 and then we come to 1992 now I can be you saying during that campaign that you had spent nine years in opposition, nine very valuable years of your life. You didn't win this time. You might think of chucking it in, going back to the law, because you really couldn't afford to waste your life in this way. Well, thank you.

I never really thought I should chuck it in, but I did think this though. I made myself a promise. If we lose, and I thought we might, the next time we take all the decisions... Necessary to take, even if it is difficult to do. So you never paused and thought, I've had enough of this, I can't face, I can't make it 13 years in opposition. No, I didn't really. I mean, obviously these sort of thoughts flit across your mind, but no, I was pretty determined because I-I th- I thought I knew, I mean it may sound arrogant to say it, but I thought I knew what the Labour Party needed. And I also believe that it's... Fundamentally wrong if the country isn't presented with a proper choice in a democracy between two political parties, both of whom are... But nevertheless it meant that you had to spend all of those years of your life that I mentioned it is now 13 from the age of 30 to the age of 43

opposition which is I think you've put it it's a matter of waking up every day thinking of what you've got to say not what you're going to do that must be soul-destroying for a you know a man in his prime it is Extremely frustrating, yes, which is why it's right to have changed that position. But yes, I mean, you know, there's no point... But you haven't changed it yet. Well, we haven't changed it. You're still waking up every morning thinking hard to say. No, but I think we have... I mean, whether we win or not, I think we have now created what is plainly an electable party. Now obviously got to take anything for granted, you've got to go out and win. But I think yes, it was extremely frustrating, is very frustrating, because if you're in politics... Got anything about you at all, you want to do something. Record number five. Record number five was the theme music for the film, Platoon, and I actually, although I must have heard it at the time. I didn't really hear it properly until I was writing my conference speech this year and I was staying at a friend's house and suddenly the music...

Came on and I think it's a wonderful and inspirational piece of music.

I'm part of Samuel Barber's Adagio for Strings with Ralph Kirschbaum and the Scottish Chamber Orchestra conducted by Jukka Pekka Saraste. You've said several times that... Your main priorities in government would be education, education and education. On the personal front, do you think in hindsight it was a mistake to send your son to a Grant-maintained school across the other side of London when there was one on your doorstep? No, I don't, because I think it was... Important to do the right thing for him and had I not done that that would have been a betrayal of his future. But he was in a sense selected wasn't he you had to be seen by the headmaster. Well you do Or the church schools, but that happens because since it's a church school they wish to be clear that you share the

religious convictions of the school. It was a furore which was compounded undoubtedly some time later when it turned out that Harriet Harmon on your... Bench was sending her son to an undeniably selective school. I mean this was a he had to sit a highly competitive entrance examination. You said that the way in which you dealt with that was your biggest mistake since you've been leader. Why? Should you have sacked Harriet? Absolutely not. What we probably should have done is been out there far quicker saying what had happened and explaining the circumstances of it but... But how can you explain a way that you both sought preferential treatment for your children? I think everyone wants to do the best by their children. Our task is not to stop people doing the best by their children. It is to make the state education system excellent.

But we were talking earlier about this pool that you have, which seems to become our theme here, between politics and the family. I mean, is this yet another example where you were prepared to risk political flak because you wanted to put your family first? I couldn't have got up and looked myself in the mirror in the morning if I hadn't. I mean, if I sent my kid, I thought, I mean, this is a school that he would have gone to under the last Labour government, who can go to under the next Labour government. Even if the party looks at you and says, Well, hang on, you know, this is, you're being a bit of a hypocrite here. Well, I don't accept that actually, but in relation to, uh... Whether it's right to make this choice because there's going to be a political outcry. I mean I've got an obligation to my boy as his father and we've got an obligation to him as parents. What about your... I'm not going to put it into a particular school because it happens to be convenient to do so and I hope that...

I think what is important in the end is that we actually do try and raise up the standards of all the schools, not say to parents, We've got to send your child to a particular school even if it's not a good school for them. What about your second boy, Nicky? Will you send him there too? Will you do the same again? Well, that would be a decision we will take shortly. I see no reason why not. Record number six. Record number six is Robert Johnson, who is an old blues singer. Actually in the 1930s, I think it was recorded, but I heard it first when it was recorded by Cream. And a whole lot of others. The first rock music I really came to was the sort of Yardbirds and Deep Purple and Black Sabbath. And cream and all the rest of it. But I came then later across this version of it, which is the original version, which I think is absolutely fantastic. ♪ Get to the crossroads ♪ ♪ Well down on my knees ♪

Robert Johnson. And Crossroad Blues. So it's Blair versus Major, probably five months from now. You're 20 points ahead in the polls but you've got, according to other polls, a problem with women. They think you're smarmy. Smooth and they don't like your hair what you can do about it well you know people can take me and like me on as I am. I don't think there's any point. I always thought at the time with this publicity that it was the most extraordinary and gratuitous insult to women to believe that they were going to change their vote on the basis of my hairstyle. I should just say to you that when there's all this talk about the gender gap, actually there is a gender gap in Labour's favour.

And indeed mine in relation to younger women. It is older women. But... So it's older women you've got a problem with? I don't know that I've got a problem with. They've got a problem with you? Well, I don't know that they've even got a problem with me. But, you know, in the end, as I say, people can like me a lot as they see fit. But I'm not going to change, there's no point in pretending that... And you can't flatten the hair. It's very easy to see... Well I've got no intention of doing anything like that, you know, so people can... In the end, what I think is that people should make up their minds on slightly more serious topics, and indeed I'm sure that they will. They'll... It caught their mind about whether they want you or John Major as Prime Minister, one presumes. It's very easy to see how you differ in terms of image. It's far more difficult to see how you differ in terms of policy. And I'm not talking about the intricacy of individual policies now. I mean, as you look at you, you're both decent.

Christian men who would like things to be a lot better than they are. How do you differ fundamentally? What's between you? what is between us. I mean I hope in the political debates of the last 100 years in this country they've been between people who are decent and want the country to be better. The question is how. Yes, but you've moved so far over to the right, your progression through the Labour Party has been so far over to the right that... It is difficult to see this clear blue water that everyone talks about. No, I profoundly disagree with that. I think what has happened is that the Labour Party rightly has come to terms with the fact that we live in a market economy and that we've got to have a successful... An enterprising business sector to the economy if we're going to succeed in it. John Nader would agree. Exactly so, and that is where, if you like, there is agreement that that is what the country needs.

Therefore there is nothing left to do or that there aren't any differences. No, but the things that you say you want to do, like improve the health service or reform the welfare system or... Have a good relationship with Europe or be the party of business and be respected by the city are all things which John Major wants too. Well, no doubt they're all aims that people have in common, but I think the priorities and the means of achieving those aims are different. So the best hope that you can have is that there is simply a mood for change of the men. But not the measures? No, I don't agree with that at all. The mood for change should be far more than that. It is a mood of change about the measures, about the direction, about the priorities. I simply make you this prediction. Should we be elected two or three years into government, people will say, no, actually, there have been quite significant and beneficial changes.

From how the Conservatives govern the country. And there's a man in Durham who is dedicated to your becoming Prime Minister, more dedicated than anyone else in the land, as I understand it. Well, there was a man in Durham who had the foresight, or not, to put... I think he put 25 pounds, going some years back, on my being Prime Minister of the year 2000. Because the odds that he was offered were rather long. He now stands to make a sort of small fortune of how I've become Prime Minister. Every time I meet him in the street now, he sort of looks at me, imploring... And says how's it going? How are we doing? Yeah, how are we doing? And I sort of feel that, you know, I bear the entire... Responsibility for this man's future in his family upon my shoulders. Record number seven. Record number seven is by a group of people who have been in the who those in my generation will remember from the 70s, which is the group Free. And the guy who's the lead singer here was the person whose voice I always wanted to emulate.

He's Paul Rogers, his name is, and he's great. Free and wishing well, and that's how you'd like to sing, is it, Tony? If I could have sung like that I would probably have stuck with being a rock musician. So we prepared to cast you away on this desert island. Is there part of you that would quite like to go to a desert island right now? For a few days it would be absolutely great. I mean then I'd get a bit fed up. How practical are you? How's the DIY?

The DIY is not good, to be honest. How's the cooking? The cooking I can just about manage. I mean, I cook occasionally for the kids. So physically... They're not very flattering about it, I have to say. Physically you'll cope. What about mentally, without Cherie, or indeed a spin doctor inside? Well, I can probably do without that, yes. But without the spin doctors? Yeah, but I'd miss the family and whatnot. I hope that my party would miss me, you know, the Labour Party National Executive would pass a resolution by 20... Votes to five asking me to return. But you'd have a go at surviving. I mean, in that sense, you're a do or die man, are you? Yes, absolutely. You know, it's do or die right now, certainly for the Labour Party. You couldn't possibly survive a fifth successive defeat, could it? What about you? You could, couldn't you? You could survive. You could walk away. You've got this hint to land. It would be very tough and we will cross that bridge when we come to it. If we come to it.

The song, which is Memories of the Alhambra, is a song that I have not heard played by John Williams, though the record is by John Williams, but it was played by a... A friend of mine who is a flamenco guitarist at Pacopenia and he very kindly tried to teach me how to play it. I'm not really expert enough to do it at all.

But it is a beautiful piece. .

And Memories of the Alhambra by Francisco Tarraga. If you could only take one of those eight records, Tony Blair, which one would it be? I'd take the last. The John Williams. Why? My luxury would be connected with it. Oh, I see. All right. Well, give us your book first, then. You've got the Bible there. You've got Shakespeare. Complete works. What's the book? The book is Walter Scott's Ivanhoe, which I think is one of the great love stories of the British. Literature. And this luxury. And the luxury would be... Guitar that Pacapeno's actually lent me. If I took the record, you see, I could complete learning how to play it. Tony Blair, thank you very much indeed for letting us hear your desert island discs. You've been listening to a podcast from the desert island discs archive for more podcasts

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