TONY BLAIR QUOTES IV

British Prime Minister (1953- )

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We became complacent; we became the managers of the status quo, not the change makers, and we've got to renew the center.

TONY BLAIR

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I didn't come into politics to change the Labour Party. I came into politics to change the country.

TONY BLAIR

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The British are special. The world knows it. In our innermost thoughts we know it. This is the greatest nation on earth. So it has been an honour to serve it. I give my thanks to you, the British people, for the times that I have succeeded, and my apologies to you for the times I have fallen short. But good luck.

TONY BLAIR

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The Labour Party is presently marooned on fantasy island. I understand would-be leaders will want to go there and speak the native language in the hope of persuading enough eventually to migrate to the mainland of reality.

TONY BLAIR

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We must redefine what radical means. We're living through a technology revolution which is the 21st-century equivalent of the 19th-century Industrial Revolution. It will change everything and therefore everything should change including radical reorientation of government. This is the context in which we tackle inequality, promote social justice and redistribute power.

TONY BLAIR

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Bluntly, what Labour has stood for in terms of values has been magnificent; its achievements in government huge; but as a political competitor, it has too often been a failure. It has only once been elected for two successive full terms; only once for three; and both as New Labour, a period much of today's party wants to disown.

TONY BLAIR

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I can stand here today, leader of the Labour Party, Prime Minister, and say to the British people: you have never had it so ... prudent.

TONY BLAIR

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It is important that those engaged in terrorism realise that our determination to defend our values and our way of life is greater than their determination to cause death and destruction to innocent people in a desire to impose extremism on the world.

TONY BLAIR

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The threat comes because in another part of our globe there is shadow and darkness, where not all the world is free, where many millions suffer under brutal dictatorship, where a third of our planet lives in a poverty beyond anything even the poorest in our societies can imagine, and where a fanatical strain of religious extremism has arisen, that is a mutation of the true and peaceful faith of Islam. And because in the combination of these afflictions a new and deadly virus has emerged. The virus is terrorism whose intent to inflict destruction is unconstrained by human feeling and whose capacity to inflict it is enlarged by technology.

TONY BLAIR

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Broadsheets today face the same pressures as tabloids, broadcasters increasingly the same pressure as broadsheets. The audience needs to be arrested, held and their emotions engaged, something that is interesting is less powerful than something that makes you angry or shocked. And the consequences of this are acute. First, scandal or controversy beats ordinary reporting hands down. News is rarely news unless it generates heat as much as or more than light. Second, attacking motive is far more potent than attacking judgment. It is not enough for someone to make an error, it has to be venal, conspiratorial.

TONY BLAIR

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I think the same feelings that gave rise to Brexit gave rise to the election of Donald Trump. In my view, the important thing for those of us from the progressive side of politics is not just to go in head-on opposition to all that, but to try and work out why it happened, and how we meet the anxieties of people without getting into the politics of fear.

TONY BLAIR

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Technology is changing the way we live and we work and we think. It's going to transform the world, and yet I think there is an alarming sort of disconnect between the world of public policy-making, and the world of technology.

TONY BLAIR

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For the moment, let me say this: Saddam Hussein's regime is despicable, he is developing weapons of mass destruction, and we cannot leave him doing so unchecked. He is a threat to his own people and to the region and, if allowed to develop these weapons, a threat to us also.

TONY BLAIR

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I can't stand politicians who wear God on their sleeves.

TONY BLAIR

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What always happens, in my experience, is that people always think American politics is very different, but usually it is a predictor of what happens in the politics elsewhere.

TONY BLAIR

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You know, one thing I've learned about peace processes: They're always frustrating, they're often agonizing, and occasionally they seem hopeless. But for all that, having a peace process is better than not having one.

TONY BLAIR

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I think we are dealing with what is essentially the inevitable political challenges of globalization. In other words, as the world transforms, moves closer together, jobs are displaced, and the world of work completely changes the way we live, the way we think. As that revolution goes on around us, it is going to pose political challenges of which immigration is one very obvious one, which are going to be extremely difficult to deal with. But it's like free trade. You know, in the end, if we go protectionist, we'll make a mistake.

TONY BLAIR

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But all progressive movements have to beware their own successes. The progress they make reinvents the society they work in, and they must in turn reinvent themselves to keep up, otherwise they become hollow echoes from a once loud, strong voice, reverberating still, but to little effect. As their consequence diminishes, so their dwindling adherents become ever more shrill and strident, more solicitous of protecting their own shrinking space rather than understanding that the voice of the times has moved on and they must listen before speaking. It happens in all organizations. It is fatal to those who are never confronted by a reckoning that forces them to face up and get wise.

TONY BLAIR

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The extraordinary thing is the Labour Party's desire to rewrite its only period of majority government in half a century in negative terms.

TONY BLAIR

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Okay, so one thing I've learned over a long period time in politics is not to get mixed up in someone else's politics. I've got enough problems back here at home, so we'll leave all these questions around Ukraine and impeachment to American politics.

TONY BLAIR

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