Tony Blair on why Britain and Labour are in crisis
The News Agents
Global
4.1 • 5.4K Ratings
🗓️ 27 May 2026
⏱️ 35 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Since Keir Starmer took office almost two years ago - the first Labour Prime Minister in 14 years - Tony Blair has been holding his tongue.
But that has all changed in a dramatic fashion. Blair is profoundly concerned, about the UK's future, the leadership of his party, and of the wider political conversation taking place.
In a 5,700 word essay, he lays out a brutal assessment of the lack of serious policy thinking going on in government, warns of a "slide towards relegation from the Premier League of nations", and pens what is effectively his own manifesto to try and turn the country's fortunes around.
Today on The News Agents - an in depth interview with the former PM. Why has he broken his silence now? What does he make of the leadership conversation taking place in Labour? And how does he believe Britain can halt its slide into irrelevance?
The News Agents is a Global Production.
The News Agents is brought to you by HSBC UK - https://www.hsbc.co.uk/
Transcript
Click on a timestamp to play from that location
| 0:00.0 | The Newsagents podcast is brought to you by HSBC UK, opening up a world of opportunity. |
| 0:09.5 | This is a global player original podcast. |
| 0:12.5 | It didn't really matter what Donald Trump says in relation to Britain. |
| 0:15.5 | The question is, what's the right answer for Britain? |
| 0:17.6 | So, Ed Miliband is a quixotic fantasist. Chi-she-Pings not sitting there in Beijing saying, I'm one of what Ed Miliband is a quixotic fantasist. Chichy Ping's not sitting there in Beijing |
| 0:23.4 | saying I'm one of what Ed Miliband thinks. The person that Kirstama turned to to become an advisor was Gordon Brown. |
| 0:30.8 | Say to people in politics, the easy thing is to say yes, the hard thing is to say no. If we're going to |
| 0:37.1 | pursue clean energy and spend a lot of money doing it, there's got to be a pretty good reason and there isn't one. |
| 0:42.3 | That is Tony Blair, who for the past two years, has maintained a trappist monk like silence on British politics. |
| 0:52.3 | Today, that changed. born of frustration, anger, irritation, |
| 0:59.0 | desperation, desperation and depression about the state of the Labour Party, about the state |
| 1:05.0 | of our politics. We have an extended interview with him. Welcome to the newsagents. |
| 1:16.2 | The Newsagents. |
| 1:19.3 | Well, we're joined on the Newsagents now by Tony Blair, him in central London, me in central |
| 1:26.4 | Sydney. Hmm, there we are. Now, Tony Blair, you've pointedly |
| 1:31.3 | chosen to stay out of British politics for the past two years. What has changed? Were you at your |
| 1:38.9 | wits end? Well, what's changed is that it's very possible we now make the seventh Prime Minister in 10 years. |
| 1:52.8 | So it's a pretty serious situation. |
| 1:55.1 | If we're going to change Prime Minister again, and I'm really worried that we've got this the wrong way around, that we're talking about |
| 2:03.2 | the politics first and the policy second, and it should be the policy first and the politics second. |
| 2:08.2 | So the first thing we should be debating is what's the right answer to the country's problems? |
| 2:12.2 | And, you know, my institute's been producing a lot of work on this and I've finally just decided I wanted |
... |
Transcript will be available on the free plan in 20 days. Upgrade to see the full transcript now.
Disclaimer: The podcast and artwork embedded on this page are from Global, and are the property of its owner and not affiliated with or endorsed by Tapesearch.
Generated transcripts are the property of Global and are distributed freely under the Fair Use doctrine. Transcripts generated by Tapesearch are not guaranteed to be accurate.
Copyright © Tapesearch 2026.