Tony Blair on the Iraq War and Donald Trump | Good Morning Britain

because when you all Prime Minister I want imagine energy it's a really important thing you're probably permanently tired there's all this stuff coming at you wave after wave of things and you discovered that the miracle source of energy for you with bonuses questions with bananas yep I literally when I first started doing it I was finding because there's a half an hour session towards the end of the half hour your energy levels were dropping and I was you know make mistakes or not thinking quickly enough in my feed and I often hadn't eaten for a couple of hours before I go into the the chamber so I actually in the end took a banana every time just short about five minutes before I go in and it would and it worked sounds ridiculous but your last questions were good well they were better like Prime Minister's Questions and how do you think Jeremy Corbyn is dealing with them so sometimes you couldn't different parts of the world and even cable TV programs in Japan and places that have Prime Minister's Questions and people say you know do you miss it and I say the one thing I really do not miss about being Prime Minister's Prime Minister's ones because you're literally thirty minutes or more than 30 minutes now on the at risk register where anything could come yeah anything you come and it used to be amazing sometimes you'd think you know today is gonna be quite an easy day and half an hour later you'd you know you'd emerge from the chamber battered and bruised and other times you think it's gonna be really sticky and odigo well but it occupied so much of your mind I mean it was a and it's it's almost like a sort of physical thing because you you have to keep your minds so alert cuz you make one mistake Prime Minister's Questions and you know you can be misleading Parliament or you know you can in your own side is sitting there in judgment on you the whole time so you know you kind of think they'll all be roaring their approval but frankly they're much more like a sort of dispassionate audience in their thinking as he lost it well you did in the end I like every Prime Minister you become an ex Prime Minister it's interesting because you were such a popular new breath of fresh air Prime Minister in 97 will remember the tidal wave of Blair ISM and so on you then get reelected you then got reelected after the Iraq war notwithstanding divisive and polarizing it was and yet you will know them we said you were coming on a lot of tweets you know don't have this warmonger on this liar this this that and the other and others looking forward to it a lot of hostility well Andrew and Kevin earlier was saying Iraq you know is a thorn in your side and has affected your reputation sure and your legacy you know when I came in 1997 I you know I was it was bright-eyed and bushy-tailed and and frankly I thought you could please all of the people all of the time and I learned very quickly that you can you know if you if you come into politics and and popularity is your game if you're in government it's not gonna work you know you'll find in the end for whatever reasons people will you know they come to a point where they're fed up or they want to change you know obviously sometimes I feel it's unfair of people think literally Iraq is all there is I mean you know there are many other things that we did and you know I'm when I'm asked to sort of talk about it I say well you know we introduced the first minimum wage we made record investments in health and education you know we did the Good Friday Agreement in Northern Ireland won the Olympic bid we did lots of different things but you know if you take a big decision like that it's when your Prime Minister will attend and you send troops to war and my brother was one who went to war in Iraq at your behest when you do that that seems to be the biggest decision a prime minister can take and in the end you can argue about the merits of why we went to war but the reality of the Iraq war seemed to me was that the failure to find a weapons of mass destruction led to a deep distrust not just in you and your government but also I think in the Americans and and all of it were frankly it then led to huge turmoil through the Middle East many could argue that the rise of Isis you can be directly linked back to the term or credit by the Iraq war we've seen how that's gone Iraq is still you know a very dangerous country very unstable country vast swathe of the Middle East a very dangerous and unstable I'm not expecting you to say I'm sorry I got it all wrong but given the way everything has played out from the Iraq war on woods was it a smart move by the Allies to do what we did with Saddam Hussein well it was never designed as us as a smart move but there are two basic decisions I had to take at the time one was do you remove Saddam or do you leave him and you know remember he had caused two wars in the Middle East he had actually used chemical weapons against his own people and against others and the other decision I had to take was do you stay with America or I mean the choice was really America or Russia at the time I think the one thing that is important piers you know you opposed it at the time and so I've always had respect for people who actually posted that the at the time saying this but I think there's there's been a a tendency to run together the decision to remove Saddam in 2003 with then the outbreak of unrest right across the Middle East from 2011 onwards which was the Arab Spring and actually if you look at Iraq today and you know talked to the new president of Iraq look at Iraq Syria Yemen Libya I would say all of those countries of difficulties but only one case Iraq is the president prime minister welcome the world over as the accepted legitimate government so I think you know I think there will be a time when people look at this again in in in history I think the most important thing for me and this is why you know you get you get these things people say to who I have in mind your program and so on and so forth the most important thing for me is in the end as primacy you've got to take your decisions and the only thing I ever say to people is I took the decision in good faith if you don't agree with and don't want to listen to me as a result of it I completely understand that but don't say I you know took it in bad faith because I didn't it'll do you I just want just on that do you have any regrets yeah no of course you always have regrets about issues like this because you can never predict when you start something like this how it unforced the biggest regret on Iraq for you for me absolutely the failure to understand the depth of this Islamist religious problem in the Middle East and therefore you know I spend a lot of time in the Middle East today I think it's all about one big struggle now all over the region and that is can the religion of Islam find its proper place in the modern world or is it turned into a political ideology which then tries to govern countries and societies and that battle I think is being played out all over the Middle East today so what is your regret about it my regret is not having the depth of knowledge and had you had that depth of knowledge would you have waged the war in Iraq well I still think it would have been right to remove Saddam but I obviously how it unfolded would have been quite different so you mean the planning for what was a mistake well the planning was wasn't good enough lacked a a very important component and you know this is something I think about all the time but then there's a limit to how you know you took the decision out 15 years ago and it's you stand before Pilate Donald Trump you've never met him he's obviously I mean talking about polarizing Donald Trump is about polarizing as he gets however half of America loves him I go and see these yeah states like Florida Texas and so on New York and LA all predominantly hate him he's a sort of bull in a china shop just disrupting the world order of doing things politically and it you could argue that in China on trade with standing up to Iran with trying to do peace with North Korea with making NATO countries pay more bills and so on actually if it wasn't Donald Trump he might be getting a lot more credit than he's in he's getting but some of the stuff he's doing what would he make of him so when I make him busy you've got to fit the Trump phenomenon into two bits that there's what I call this stuff the noise yeah things that I don't all this stuff missteps and it's just the general sort of yeah way he does the rhetoric yeah and then there's the actual policy and part of the trouble today not just in America but all over the Western world is that people can't see each other's point of view very well so you know if you if you're in the US as you know peers and you try and have a rational conversation about Donald Trump got no you can't yeah and I think what's really important there here everywhere is to rehabilitate what I call the politics of building bridges he's very anti political correctness he feels it's gone way too far that this kind of liberal hysteria about everything whether it's changing mankind because it's offensive or wise men right when you hear stories like that it seems to me it's very self-defeating people don't all sit back watching that on TV and go that's a good idea I think what is this nonsense yeah and I think it does fuel a kind of populism against that kind of thing what do you make of the PC well we now inhabit yeah so even though when we were in government for example we introduced all the measures equality for gay rights and so on and so forth I think this stuff's just gone a bit crazy now a more way three wise men I mean seriously policies it's one individual I know buddy I was trying to be a little bit more liberal and open-minded in one church yeah but it's it's it's a it's an indicator something the fact that you look the fact that you care to change three wise men just it you see that the risk is that you open up a cultural divide where literally you get two groups of people who don't speak to each other listen to each other or like each other and I can see this bill by social media as well of course social media is a revolutionary phenomenon I mean look let's be clear about social media because the politics I think it's a bit of a plague to be honest because it it creates an exchange of abuse rather than an exchange of argue hardens position right it has a split and then increase these echo chambers where you know I read some of the stuff on social media and I read tweets about yourself because I'd imagine that's not a very comfortable experience no I actually don't much for that very reason because you know otherwise these are kind of reading the it's a way that real people can speak truth to power actually it gives this a level place grim truth to power you're right Susanna but on the other hand you look at some of it and it is just abuse and the point is that if you my point is if you end up with two groups of people Society really polarized in this way and you know of course there's a sort of younger generation that will obviously you know it's going to be much more forward and liberal on these issues but you can be liberal while still retaining some anchor of common sense there'll be people watching this the ones who you don't you know just like you he'll be listen to you very eloquently espousing a very clear view about Briggs it talking about PC stuff in a way that they probably agree with and so on look II you can we you look a fit figure I am still relatively young but political standards actually you're not doing very much in terms of officially changing the world right now why aren't you coming back to get involved again properly why don't you come and lead the Labour Party again there are people who think you should you know I don't think that's really possible why brother well give me one reason why it's not possible what people would have to want it to happen in an election the Labour Party I don't I I don't know and you know I never sort of given it thought because I've never thought it's realistic possible now I'm asking you I know you now you're asking me and I'm thinking away ways different ways of avoiding the question but but when you evoke the connotation of voids or questions because he doesn't want to say yes I'm thinking about it no but I'm not thinking about it but I really know and I'm not getting any thought I haven't given the knowledge of the chaos of the Labour Party and the lack of proper leadership and thought you know what I could ride back here and sort this out even one of my chances of leaving labour time 0 0 yeah I would say I would have said that jeremy corbyn's Charles leading the party was zero and there is the leader what do you think about an alternative party that at the moment labor is so split between you know the leadership that wants to honor the brexit referendum but is confused about how to do that and then you know members like Chuck or Ramona who are devout remain errs and who probably represents a large swathe of Labor Party supporters do you think there's an opportunity for another party I mean I always say this to be like more organizing it or agitating for it but I do think if you leave a large number of people politically homeless at some point they'll build a home so if the labour party stays in a far left position and if the conservative party ends up with a very right-wing leadership in his next leadership I you probably will get something new but it's very difficult in our system to create it you know and the first-past-the-post system in politics gives a big barrier to it but you know there are lots of people I meet them the whole time who say I don't really feel I can vote for a Corbin led Labour Party and I don't really want to vote Tory so what do I do and I think if if politics sticks where it is at some point it's just there are too many smart people who are there without a home that are gonna say the will we'll have to build one but who knows finally Tony Blair yesterday was a momentous day in history actually Arsenal beat Spurs for two under our new manager 19 games unbeaten now you talk about leadership you talk about clarity what do you make of the unite that's for Newcastle yeah yeah we don't talk about Newcastle any depress you yeah we're still in the Premier you share my joy the surgeon now you've got me absolutely speechless if it's put you in a good mood this morning yes Tony play great to see thank you very much for coming in this morning something you would choose to do as a rule of thumb to do breakfast telly but we appreciate it and please come back again you

Channel: Good Morning Britain

Views: 661,256

Keywords: good morning britain, breakfast show, news, morning news, gmb, good morning britain interview, itv, piers morgan, susanna reid, Talk Shows - Topic, tony blair, donald trump, saddam hussein, middle east, george bush, prime minister, tony blair iraq, president donald trump, tony blair interview

Id: ORQ8Ny2goFQ

Length: 14min 58sec (898 seconds)

Published: Mon Dec 03 2018