GQ have been asking me to do this for two years and I have always resisted. It just feels a bit weird. Not the “former prime minister” bit, the loved by some, hated by many, defining figure of recent British political history; but the fact that Tony Blair is, in addition to being my old boss, one of my closest friends. How do you interview someone when you know what he thinks, how he thinks, what he feels and how he expresses himself almost as well as he does, because for years you have been His Master’s Voice? We have shared the highs of election wins, historic peace processes, huge progress on devolution, gay rights, schools and hospitals and much else besides, and the lows of ministerial scandals, policy setbacks, debilitating personality clashes and the opprobrium that came to both of us over Iraq.

Watch the full interview with Alastair Campbell and Tony Blair

So why cave in to GQ pressure now, and why did TB, as I call him in his many thousands of entries in my diaries, agree to this interview? Because what with the triple-boxset Trump/Brexit/Corbyn horror story of our times, the Blair voice needs to be heard again, more clearly, more often, and more defined by him – not by his enemies. Even the haters (he recognises they are numerous) must surely admit there were huge achievements amid the controversies and that his experience and insights make him an enduringly relevant political player. Since making way for Gordon Brown in 2007, TB admits that his reputational currency has fallen as his bank account has swelled and the unpopularity of his policy on Iraq has deepened – and that he hasn’t always handled his profile well. He has circled the world, working in Africa and the Middle East, where peace remains elusive though he remains convinced it can be won.

He is still the same person deep down, I think. But he is tougher, and that resilience, allied to his worries about Britain and progressive politics, is what has encouraged him to be far more active at home and set up – and fund – an Institute to develop arguments and policies to fight back against the populist forces he believes are damaging our politics and the world.

© Charlie Gray

I have tried to be rigorous in my questioning, but nobody will be surprised to know I like Tony Blair. I liked him from the first time I met him when, in 1983, I was a Daily Mirror political reporter and he a bright-eyed, badly dressed, newly elected Labour MP. Eleven years later, he asked me to work for him. It has redefined my life and I often get asked if it was all worth it. It was. Though he could be self-centred, demanding, tricksy, he was (almost) always a good guy to work for – and we built a tremendous team.

Listening to him now, I am reminded of why I like and respect him so much: he is very smart, analyses the world deeply, but can explain that analysis simply. He’s committed to progressive politics that meet people’s aspirations and has a chance to win power. Oh, and he is still, despite it all, a major optimist who makes you feel that seemingly impossible change can come. Brextremists be warned.

AC: Do you remember the last time I interviewed you?

TB: No. Was it very memorable?

AC: 1994, BBC Breakfast TV, you were running to be Labour leader. I asked if you thought you were tough enough?

TB: I suppose I had to be to say yes to that.

AC: How have you changed?

TB: Three years as leader of the opposition, ten years as prime minister, ten years out in the world, so you’re learning all the time.

AC: Do you think you’re fundamentally the same person?

TB: Fundamentally, yes. I’ve still got the same basic instincts, values and principles, the same hopes. I’m still optimistic and very committed.

AC: How hard has it been to go from being very popular to being somewhat toxic and by some totally hated?

I don't agonise over the decisions, but I do over the consequences

TB: Yep, it’s hard. It’s all about coming to terms with the fact that when you’re running for power you can be all things to all people. But when you achieve power you have to make decisions and when that happens, and the process of government is your life, you become less popular.

AC: But when you left, you left to a standing ovation in the Commons – the toxicity followed your being PM.

TB: I have had people attacking me all the way through, and particularly post 2003, after Iraq, but all the way through that latter period of government. Papers like the Mail started around 2001.

AC: So why stop? Bill Clinton never stopped communicating. You took a strategic decision to get out of it and that allowed others to define you.

TB: That was definitely a mistake. If you read about what I have been doing these last ten tears you’d think I have just been going round the world making money when I have spent the vast bulk of my time in the Middle East, in Africa, on the things I believe in.

AC: So why did you stop being political?

TB: In a sense I felt there was no point trying to participate still in British politics.

AC: Was that about letting Gordon [Brown] get on with it?

TB: Partly. But I felt the best contribution I could make was out in the world. I started our initiative on Africa, which is doing great work in ten different countries. The Foundation around religious coexistence and tolerance is in 20 different countries. And though it is tough in the Middle East, I spend lots of time there. When I go to Israel next week, that is more than 180 visits so far. The biggest thing when you leave office is you lose the infrastructure, you have to build it yourself.

Our knowledge of religious and ethnic problems was inadequate

AC: Do you still see yourself on that level, a prime minister-type figure?

TB: No, but I am politically active and committed. I could have done what the parody of me is, which is go around the world and just make money.

AC: Do you accept your reputation went south after you left?

TB: Yes.

AC: How much was that about Iraq and how much about money?

TB: Both. But it was also because people didn’t really know what I was doing.

AC: And you decided not to explain.

TB: I did explain, but you don’t have the same instruments at your command. I always say to people who are about to leave office that when you leave you are no longer the first person in front of the microphone. You no longer shape the agenda, the agenda is shaped by others. And in the Middle East it has suited the next generation to say all the problems are because of “those guys”. Whether Syria or the Middle East more generally, the issues are difficult, as much to do with the Arab Spring as what we did, but people said all these problems came from us.

AC: Who has done this post-power politics well?

TB: I think Bill Clinton did it well.

**AC: **Are you surprised George [W] Bush has vanished and gone off to spend time with his paintings?

TB: I think he has done it well, in a way. He has immersed himself in his Foundation and his Library, and it does excellent work, not least in Africa. He works a lot with veterans. He has chosen not to go out into the world. I decided I wanted to create an organisation, we have 200 people employed here, and it is a big organisation for someone to create on their own and the work we do is fantastic. I think now we are starting the new Institute, with this new pillar of work around what is the modern progressive agenda that fights back against populism left and right, that will give me a better voice and a more natural political voice, and that’s what I will spend a lot of time doing.

To compare Trump to Hitler or Stalin is ridiculous

AC: And you have to keep earning money to do that?

TB: You have to make, or raise, enough to do it, pay wages, pay for office premises, all that goes with a big organisation.

AC: On Iraq, America provided 95 per cent of the military contribution, and we were relatively small, yet you seem to get more flak than Bush.

TB: That is because the Americans have a more textured view of what is happening in the Middle East, the complexities, the difficulties, and there is a significant part of opinion that will say we would not be in a better place if we had left Saddam in place.

AC: Do you still believe that?

TB: I personally believe that, yes.

AC: You never sit down and think, “Oh my God, why did we do that?”

TB: No, I don’t think that, but I do and have always accepted responsibility for the failures on intelligence, and also the failures of planning. What I cannot do, which many people want me to do, is to say it would have been better if it never happened. Because I don’t accept that. When you look at the Middle East today, I am there twice a month, I have far greater knowledge than I used to have, the biggest reproach I make to myself all the time is that our knowledge of the depth of the religious, ethnic problems in the Middle East was inadequate and insufficient.

AC: But that is quite a big admission.

TB: It is a big admission, I have admitted it many times. I have a huge amount of humility about it. The one thing I won’t accept is that it is better you leave these dictators in place, because it isn’t, and what the Arab Spring showed you is that it wouldn’t work anyway. It is a struggle for religious tolerance and rule-based economies and that is why we have a massive strategic interest in supporting those modernising elements in the Middle East, because it will affect our own security.

AC: OK, but you never lie awake at night thinking, ‘Oh God, I wish to f*** we had never done that’?

TB: I don’t think that but of course I go over constantly the decisions taken and the consequences. But in the end, I always say to people, I am really sorry if this is such a problem for you that you can’t listen to me. I am deeply sorry, but I cannot undo what I have done.

AC: How did you feel at the unveiling of the Afghanistan/Iraq memorial when you had families of soldiers saying you shouldn’t be there?

TB: This is a situation where if I hadn’t been there, people would have said it showed disrespect.

To win you have to go back to the centre and you have to have policies that address the future

AC: I accept that, but how does it make you feel when you get the relative of someone killed saying Tony Blair shouldn’t be there…

TB: Of course it makes me feel sad for them and for their situation.

AC: But how does it make it feel for you?

TB: For me it is the same. You are never going to take a decision like that, where you don’t have people who feel deeply like that, and if you lost a loved one, and you decided this was all done on a false basis...

AC: The war in Afghanistan is still going on; you don’t get it over that.

TB: I do actually.

AC: Kosovo? Sierra Leone?

TB: It is not of the same nature. Some people are settled in their view that it would be better if we never went into those places [Iraq/Afghanistan.] That is not my view. But I understand the other point of view.

AC: Kosovo worked. Sierra Leone worked. People feel Iraq hasn’t, added to which – I know we didn’t lie – but they feel we lied.

TB: Yes, and there have been six different inquiries that have found there was no deceit. There was a decision, but people will carry on saying it was all lies. It was easier in Kosovo and Sierra Leone because you didn’t have the interference of radical Islamist ideology you had in Iraq and Afghanistan.

AC: That’s something we underestimated.

TB: Yes, and that is why the reproach I often make is not what people reproach me for; it is that we did not at that point understand the depth of this Islamist question, and therefore we thought if you removed a dictator and gave people the chance to elect their government, that they would do that and the rest was a matter of reconstructing the country. Now, by the way, people did have their election and did decide they wanted a free country, then we had the interference, in the case of Iraq, from Iran on the one side and from Sunni extremism on the other, and that is what destabilised it.

AC: Right, but I remember at the time, you were worried about this “hornets’ nest” argument. So do you accept we prodded it without knowing the full consequences? And so was it still the right thing to do?

TB: We underestimated the consequence of what happens when you removed a dictatorship. The only thing I say is what the Arab Spring teaches you is that all of these dictatorships were going to come under pressure and be toppled in the end.

AC: So what about Syria?

TB: When the Arab Spring began, what I said to people was be very careful because you have been through a situation in Iraq and Afghanistan where you have removed a dictatorship but then the problems begin. So if you can evolve a transition, do that. My view on Syria and Libya was it would have been better to have agreed a process of transition, so if you could cut a deal, which I think you could have, with Gaddafi, or Assad, for transition, that would be better. Then having said you wanted them to go, you had to get them out. And the problem with what we have done in Syria is that we have insisted he go but then not made him go. And the inevitability therefore of a civil war as a result of that was, I’m afraid, very clear. He was going to fight to stay and then the Russians and the Iranians came in on his side and propped him up. But what has happened in Syria in my view is a hideous blot on Western foreign policy.

I think Brexit is a catastrophe for Britain. It makes no sense

AC: So Obama, Cameron et al must take some responsibility?

TB: I am not going to start allocating responsibility because I know what it is like to take these decisions. But if you had left Saddam in place you would have had the same problems. The Arab Spring would not have stopped at Syria, it would have gone into Iraq. There is a case for saying it would have been a worse situation because in Syria you had essentially a Shia-backed minority keeping out a Sunni majority, and in Iraq a Sunni minority keeping out a Shia majority.

AC: Do you dream about Iraq?

TB: [Pained look, shakes head.]

AC: So what do you dream about?

TB: Lots of things. I think about these things a lot, of course. But if you are going to be prime minister, your job is to take the decisions that you think are right for the country. That is your responsibility, and the moment you shy away from taking those decisions, because you think you’re going to get criticised and attacked, life may be easier but you are failing in the prime responsibility of the leader to take decisions. I took a decision post 9/11 to be with America, this was important for global security and I took a strong view about this extremism and how we were going to deal with it. I may have been wrong but I did what I thought was right and that is my responsibility. I don’t agonise over having taken the decision, because I know what I did was what I thought was right. Of course I agonise over the consequences.

AC: So what do you dream about?

TB: That’s my business.

AC: We both liked Bush, but many didn’t, and wrongly assumed he was stupid. Donald Trump makes Bush look like a genius, doesn’t he?

TB: I have to work with the American president.

AC: You don’t have to.

TB: I do because of the work in the Middle East and it is extremely important to me, so I am not going to get into a situation of slagging off the American president. It is not what I have done or will do.

AC: So if he called you now and asked you do the quartet job [envoy for EU, US, Russia and the UN], would you do it?

TB: No. I have made it clear I have not asked for a job; that was one of those classic made-up Mail stories...

AC: Fake news?

TB: Right. What I do in the Middle East I do independently and it is important to keep my independence, because it gives me relationships with the key players, Israelis and Arabs, because the only way to get a peace agreement is through them working together on this.

AC: So Trump comes along and says the two-state solution won’t work.

**TB: **He hasn’t said that. Their view is a very traditional American view, there should be two states. They are operating on the basis of a two-state solution.

AC: So you don’t share my terror that this guy is president of America and the comparisons with Hitler and Stalin are not overdone. It took Hitler a long time to go for journalists and judges. He did it in the first week.

**TB: **The comparisons with Hitler and Stalin are ridiculous. However, as I said openly during the campaign, I would have backed Hillary Clinton. You can assume what my views are. But I am working on this issue...

© Getty Images

AC: So you met Jared Kuchner [Trump’s son-in-law] and it was just about the Middle East?

**TB: **Yes.

AC: We got accused of lying the whole time when we didn’t. But Trump lies all the time.

TB: Alastair, I’ve got enough issues. When you’re me you have to choose the issues you want to get into. One of the reasons I am doing this whole new strain of work is to push back against the rightist populism, some of which has echoes in the campaign that brought him to power.

**AC: **America is the most powerful democracy in the world and now at its head is someone who is a liar, a misogynist, a racist, a sexist, and I think if you are in positions of leadership people should call it out.

TB: Where there are things I profoundly disagree with I will and have.

**AC: **So what has he done since becoming president that you disagree with?

TB: All that stuff on immigration. I’ve not got a problem doing that on individual issues.

AC: Is there a part of you that thinks Obama was not great for the Middle East and Trump could be?

TB: It’s less the former than I think it is possible that if this administration goes down the path I am advocating, to build a strategic alliance in the Middle East whose purpose is to fight extremism of the Shia sort promoted by the theocracy in Iran, or the Sunni sort, I think that could be productive. So whatever else is happening in the world, and whether you agree or disagree with what is happening in America, in the Middle East there is an opportunity. Now I know this is one of the situations you get into today where things become so polarised, so if I am with a group of Democrats in the US, and I even suggest there might be an area where the Trump administration can do good... The reality is there is an alliance to be built in the Middle East today around the whole struggle over religious tolerance, and if the Trump administration wants to put themselves behind that, which they could...

**AC: **[Trump chief strategist] Steve Bannon thinks the only way to deal with China is bring it down and on religion that Christians are superior to Muslims.

TB: I don’t know if he thinks that but I know Rex Tillerson [secretary of state], James Mattis [secretary of defense] and General McMaster [national security advisor] don’t think that.

AC: And when Trump started the thing about moving the embassy to Jerusalem, did you not think, “Oh my God! Do these people know what they are doing?”

TB: I just point out to you that the embassy has not moved.

The media have crossed the line and operated like a cartel

AC: Did you not think Theresa May offering Trump a state visit when he had barely been elected was an act of utter sycophancy and insulting to Her Majesty the Queen, for whom we both have enormous fondness?

TB: No. She is perfectly entitled to get alongside the American president.

AC: We would not have sat down and said OK, new president, not sure about him, let’s give him a state visit.

TB: Oh, come on, Alastair, honestly. When George W Bush came in we made every effort to get alongside him straight away. Based on the fact he was president of the US. Come on, we thought Al Gore was going to win the election, if you remember.

AC: So you would have given Trump a state visit?

TB: I have no idea, but I am not going to criticise her for getting alongside the American president. She is entitled to do that and it is important they have a good relationship.

**AC: **Do you remember our first meeting with Vladimir Putin? Do you remember what you said afterwards?

TB: Erm... because you keep these damned diaries, you can remember all this stuff.

AC: The first time he came to Downing Street – before he became president – as he left you said, “I think he is going to be OK.”

TB: Yes. [Smiles.]

**AC: **Stand by that judgement?

TB: I stand by the judgement at the time because at that point it was very clear he wanted to point westward.

AC: So is he good for the world or bad for the world?

TB: This resurgent Russian nationalism, I understand it, I understand what motivates it, and we have not always made the right overtures to try and bring Russia onside. But I don’t approve of things they are doing in Syria or Ukraine, of course.

My desire is for the Labour party to recover itself

AC: And what about interference in elections, the US, France, Germany, our referendum?

TB: I completely concur with those who say it is wrong. The real issue for Russia is can it find its way to make the reforms to its economy? Why is China so much more powerful? Because they reformed the economy.

**AC: **Because we’re so focused on Russia, are we not missing the main picture with Trump: his relationship with China?

TB: Absolutely, the big thing is going to be Trump’s relationship with China, and actually it could be good. The American relationship with China, most people have not caught up, is the most important relationship of the 21st century for sure.

**AC: **So Putin is a bit of a sideshow?

TB: Well, he is not a sideshow because it is very important that China develops and evolves politically and economically in a way that is not based on the Putin model.

AC: Fake news: isn’t it about Trump trying to delegitimise any source of information other than himself and his ridiculous Twitter feed? Putin has done it by throwing journalists in jail, invading countries and saying you haven’t, blowing up planes and saying you didn’t, killing people on the streets of London and saying you haven’t…

**TB: **Yeah, but it [Russia and the West] is different in a crucial way. I think that there is a major problem with the way the media operates in the West. It is becoming polarised and partisan and not everything Trump says about his media coverage is unfair. The left media finds it very hard to be objective on Trump. Now, my point is different. The right-wing media is brutal towards progressive politicians. You actually have a media today that is completely partisan.

The left wing media finds it very hard to be objective on Trump. The right wing media is brutal towards progressive politicians

AC: The right lie more than the left, in general. The Mail and the Telegraph are worse than the Mirror and the Guardian. Fox is worse than CNN.

TB: They are far more brutal and aggressive. It does not help our cause to be partisan for the reason you give, because what happens is they are so much more brutal at it than we are, and the trouble with progressive politics is we are happy to turn over our own whereas they defend their positions very strongly.

AC: How are we going to stop Brexit?

TB: What we have to do is mount an effective co-ordinated campaign that has a very simple message at the heart of it. The option of changing your mind is open to you and don’t let anyone tell you it isn’t. Because what the right-wing media cartel and the government are trying to do is to create a sense not just of inevitability but of the impropriety of even discussing what should happen when we don’t yet know the terms. When Theresa May said “Brexit means Brexit” she meant “at whatever cost, whatever the circumstances”. We have this situation where we say we are going to be this great global trading nation and we are going to start by withdrawing from the biggest single market in the world, on our doorstep. And we are now advocating much greater defence and security co-operation, which is a good thing – so pooling our sovereignty on defence and security but when it comes to our economy we are doing the opposite. It literally makes no sense.

AC: It is madness.

TB: I think it is a catastrophe for Britain. But I have to accept there has been a referendum. Now it is important we raise this in the right way. I have used the analogy of the house swap and it is a good analogy. We have agreed we are going to swap our house for another house. We say it is going to be ugly, other people say it is going to be beautiful. We are going to test it, see the neighbourhood, do the survey, go round it, see whether it meets our needs or not. Our case has got to be that if we come to the conclusion that the gain is very slight, the pain is enormous, and thanks to the concentration on Brexit, nothing else in the country is being done properly, we are entitled to change our mind.

AC: But because of this sense of inevitability, and the two years… I agree it will be a catastrophe, but will we know that within two years?

TB: That is a very good question and I’m not sure what the answer is. It is like the currency, 15 to 20 per cent down. That is not a market correction, that is a prediction by the international financial markets that we are going to be that much poorer. That will have an impact on living standards, on inflation, particularly with the poorest families. I don’t know if that will become manifest, but there is a good chance that it will do. We’ve got to point out to people, one of the reasons they say “Brexit means Brexit and don’t question any longer why we are doing this...”

I do not think independence is sensible for Scotland even if Brexit happens

AC: Is because they are worried.

TB: They are supremely worried that if you subject the claim that this is a good idea to analysis, what are you left with? You are left with EU migration and the European Court of Justice. It is now absolutely clear we will keep the majority of these EU migrants, that we need them, and so we are actually talking about stopping a very small number of people, so we are not even dealing with immigration. And on the ECJ I would defy most people to name a European Court decision they have ever heard of. And if we are going to have a free-trade agreement with the EU, by the way, we will also have to have a disputes procedure and if that is not the European Court of Justice it is going to be something that looks very like it.

AC: Do you not look at Theresa May and think she must know deep down what she is doing is wrong for Britain? Do you not look at that and feel a certain contempt? Or is that my prejudice again?

TB: No, it’s not your prejudice, it’s your opinion, and you are entitled to it. I don’t criticise her. She inherited a situation where she believes it is her duty to deliver Brexit. I understand why she believes it. She thinks if you are going to reopen this debate, you are going to create stresses and strains for the country and, by the way, I understand that...

AC: But she is being driven by the Tory right and the Mail.

**TB: **The problem is if you had a vibrant opposition then she would come under pressure from the centre and the left as well as the right. The trouble is at the moment she is only under pressure from the right, the right-wing media cartel, the Mail, the Sun, the Telegraph, the Express, who just provided the ramp for pro-Brexit propaganda pre the campaign, and post the campaign just do “Brexit is brilliant, it’s going to make the country great” and no other news that might collide with that is ever published by them. She is under pressure from that and from the right of the Tory party who say, “Look, if you reopen this we’re going to split the Tory Party.”

AC: If hard Brexit does go ahead do you think it likely Scotland becomes independent?

**TB: **I don’t know. I think it is very hard to judge. But I think the fact that Brexit clearly imposes a big strain on the Union in Scotland and in Northern Ireland means it imposes an even greater obligation on us only to do this if the gain is substantial and the pain is not and the fact is it’s the other way round.

**AC: **The extent to which Northern Ireland barely figured during the campaign or since, at a time when in Ireland they are seriously worried, shows we are in political la-la land.

**TB: **The trouble with Northern Ireland is our generation remembers pre the peace process and knows how terrible it was, and the deep mark it left. Today’s generation does not.

It is no great secret I think the Labour Party has gone in profoundly the wrong direction

**AC: **Theresa May does. She went there and left an impression on the politicians she hadn’t given it much thought.

**TB: **I don’t know whether she did or not. It is a very difficult thing to work out how you have a hard border with the EU in Northern Ireland, and when we’re talking trade we have more trade with Ireland than India.

AC: Cameron should never have had the referendum.

**TB: **In the course of the last election campaign, I think I was the only person who made a speech on Europe precisely to warn it was not a good idea to have a referendum, but I understand why he felt he had to do that, and he campaigned very hard for the right result.

**AC: **Do you ever dream about Gordon?

**TB: **Oh, for God’s sake, Alastair, get off the dreaming thing. You obviously have a problem with dreams, go and see your shrink.

**AC: **When was the last time you spoke to Gordon?

TB: A short time ago.

AC: Re?

TB: Scotland, British politics.

AC: When was the last time you spoke to Jeremy Corbyn?

**TB: **Some time ago, I guess.

AC: Has he phoned you and said, “Tony, you used to do this job, got any tips?”

**TB: **No, but why should he? We disagree strongly about the direction of the party.

AC: Do you think there is any chance that Jeremy Corbyn could be prime minister?

**TB: **[Long pause, trying not to laugh.] I think we have to pass on that one. How do I answer that without just getting into a whole heap of “Blair attacks Corbyn”? It is no great secret I think the Labour Party has gone in profoundly the wrong direction, so...

The Labour Party has to understand that when you have something as critical as Brexit, the country are expecting us to lead

**AC: **At the moment the way people talk, they say we just need to lose an election and rebuild. But we might lose an election and get wiped out.

TB: It is a big mistake to think that, yes.

AC: So we could be seeing the end of the Labour Party as a serious political force.

TB: I don’t know, but I am very clear about two things. One, if people think you can just go into the next election, lose it heavily and come out and rebuild... there may be no bottom to this market, so this is a very dangerous course indeed. And secondly, because of Brexit, it is a betrayal of our duty to the country if we’re not offering a competitive opposition. My desire is for the Labour Party to recover itself. It has gone beyond Corbyn. This is about the direction of the Labour Party. If the party is going to win power again it has got to own the future.

**AC: **Politics is a continuum. I did a piece about Corbyn for GQ and said “Tony begat Gordon begat Ed begat Jeremy”. Do you think we started this?

TB: No, because I think we were always very clear about our own position.

AC: We paved the way for Gordon, who changed a bit, then Ed who changed more, and now Jeremy.

TB: But Gordon was in a supremely strong position to become leader of the party. Rather than go back over the personalities, there is a much bigger question about the future of progressive politics. And I think the progressive political position only wins when it builds out from the centre and when it has policies designed for the future.

AC: That has been rejected.

**TB: **It has been rejected by the Labour Party and we can see the result. We lost in 2010, lost even bigger in 2015, and we are now 15 points adrift of a Tory government and losing safe seats. So the one thing I find weird is when people who are running things ascribe their defeats to those of us who won victories. All I can say to people in the party is if you want the chance to get power, you’ve got to go back to the centre, definitely and clearly, and you have to have policies that address the future.

AC: You’re not arguing for a return to New Labour?

**TB: **We have to demystify New Labour.

AC: Do you not think the centre is being rejected?

TB: No, I don’t think the centre is rejected by the people. In 2015 Cameron won from essentially a centre-right position.

**AC: **If we go to the next election with a hard Brexit Tory leader on one side and a hard left Labour leader on the other, you say that leaves millions politically homeless. Surely the logical conclusion is the churn in our politics can only be broken by some new force emerging?

TB: I think it is extremely difficult. Or [by] the old political forces reasserting their sense.

**AC: **That is just not happening in the Labour Party.

TB: No, it’s not.

AC: And people like you and me are opting out of that and devoting our energies to Brexit because we think maybe we have a chance.

TB: Also because it is the most urgent thing facing the country, and one of the things the Labour Party has to understand about the situation is that when you have something as critical as Brexit, the country, millions of people out there, are expecting us to lead.

**AC: **Could there be a case for a new pro-European party that fights the next election purely on this?

**TB: **I think it is incredibly difficult to start something new.

**AC: **What do you think of Nicola Sturgeon?

**TB: **I think she is a very effective politician.

**AC: **What do you think of her basic argument that Brexit has changed the nature of the argument and Scotland should have another vote?

**TB: **I think it is a change. People in the Labour Party were angry with me when I said it was a material change, but as I said, I can hardly go through the referendum campaign saying “If you vote Brexit it is going to be a problem, for the Union” and then afterwards say it is not a problem at all. But having said that, I do not think independence is sensible for Scotland even if Brexit happens.

**AC: **But if you were Scottish and you saw a way of Scotland, independent, staying in the EU, rather than being part of this Brexited UK, is that not a very attractive option, even with the obstacles?

TB: I still think it is better for Scotland to remain part of the UK.

AC: Even when you think coming out of the EU is going to be a catastrophe?

TB: Yes, because I think the Union between England and Scotland is so important.

**AC: **Paul Dacre, force for good or bad?

TB: The politics that he drives through the Mail is very damaging for Britain.

When you go and fight the media, it is a full-on fight, they come at you with everything they've got. They are like a Mafia

AC: Murdoch, force for good or bad?

TB: I disagree with him on politics too.

AC: So why did we get too close to him?

TB: Because we had been savaged by the media through the Eighties and early Nineties.

AC: Who is the worst of those two, Dacre or Murdoch?

TB: No, no, no. I have changed my view about the media because of Brexit.

AC: So you’ve come to my view.

TB: Nobody could ever be quite as jihadist as you. Let me make my point about the media. I think their activities in Brexit changes the dynamic of their relationship to politics. This is a decision that changes the whole course of our country’s history... whatever issues I had with the media and the way newspapers had become the playthings of a small group of powerful individuals, my view is they crossed the line when they operated like a cartel in respect of Brexit. What I am saying is that to have this small group of individuals who control the press, on the right, who provided that ramp for the propaganda, and who provide the vilification of anyone who dares oppose that now, when this is not a decision of newspapers as institutions, but the decision of individuals – the papers would not be taking these positions unless instructed to do so – I think that’s a line they have stepped over.

AC: So when I tried to get you to do something years ago, I was right?

**TB: **It is also because when you go and fight them, in my position, not yours, it is a full-on fight, they come at you with everything they’ve got. They are like a Mafia.

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