Bold claim: Blair’s story is simpler to criticize than to truly understand, but the real core of his leadership isn’t what many documentaries showcase. In the early years of the Blair Years course I co-taught with Professor Jon Davis since 2008, students asked about Tony Blair’s decision to join the American invasion of Iraq. Like Michael Waldman, who crafted this week’s Channel 4 documentary about Blair, they were fixated on why Blair did something so evidently flawed and how he could resist acknowledging a mistake in hindsight.
In recent years, however, students have shifted their curiosity toward Blair’s effectiveness as a prime minister. They want to know how he improved public services, sustained an optimistic narrative, and secured election after election. Waldman, in my view, succeeds by offering a fuller, more nuanced portrait than most, even though Blair himself resisted deep dives into his inner life more bluntly than I have seen before.
Blair told Waldman, as recorded, that he isn’t into psychoanalysis and that there is “far too much of it” in public discourse. He knows why he acts as he does, because he believes in his cause, and if others reject that conviction, he’ll simply pursue his agenda. Still, outsiders can speculate about the influence of Blair’s father, Leo, a Glasgow-born barrister and academic who began as a Conservative and later aligned with Labour. Leo’s stroke may have redirected Tony’s political energy from an early age, and Tony absorbed a pragmatic “stand on your own two feet” ethos that echoed Margaret Thatcher’s bold, transformative style in the 1980s.
A recent conversation with Charles Moore, Thatcher’s biographer, reminded us that Thatcher herself resisted probing into her early life and motivation. When Moore pressed about her mother, Thatcher spoke in broad generalizations about voluntary work by “the women of Britain,” rather than intimate self-disclosure, and Moore followed with a similar pattern of generalized commentary rather than personal specifics.
Waldman probed Blair’s late-night reflections, but Blair deflected with the line, “You’re always a politician,” underscoring the ongoing nature of his public life. Indeed, Blair remains politically active in a broader sense: this week he joined the first meeting of Donald Trump’s Board of Peace to explore potential paths for Gaza, and his daughter Kathryn notes that “he’s just not finished.”
The documentary’s most compelling moments come from Blair’s family: Kathryn, and Blair’s sons Euan and Leo, along with Cherie, portray a real, human family rather than a mere PR machine. I recall a private chat in No. 10 where Blair’s thoughts were interrupted by a sleeping Leo bidding goodnight. Now Leo reflects on growing up in Downing Street and remembers the pain of leaving in 2007. Cherie remains temperamentally opposed to Gordon Brown, and she questions whether Blair should have stepped down earlier in 2005. She defended the children’s visibility, arguing they deserved to be part of the public story, not hidden away.
Euan also reveals the delicate family balance: even as Blair’s popularity waned after Iraq, the family aimed to keep politics from bleeding into their personal lives. They accepted that the father’s public role would shape their experiences, yet they stayed connected to him as people first.
The film arguably corrects Blair’s self-portrait as a fate-driven leader, grounding him in the family background that formed him and the family he built with Cherie. Critics have mixed reactions: some say Blair’s self-searching is lacking, others question his continued defense of the Iraq decision and find his principle that “history goes on a long time” tiresome. Yet a telling takeaway is how easily we can explain Blair’s strengths by comparing contemporary leaders’ weaknesses. A Conservative reviewer suggested the right needs its own Blair, just as the left does too—an idea that invites debate about leadership styles and political storytelling.
Would you agree that Blair’s greatest strength lay in his ability to motivate and communicate public optimism, or do you think his lasting impact rests more on policy outcomes and governance? Share your view in the comments.
