Tony Blair
Prime Minister of the United Kingdom from May 2, 1997 to June 27, 2007.
I can't stand politicians who wear God on their sleeves.
To state a timetable now would simply paralyze the proper working of government, put at risk the changes we are making for Britain and damage the country.
Ask me my three main priorities for government, and I tell you: education, education and education. We are 35th in the world league of education standards – 35th. At every level, radical improvement and reform.
Well, Margaret Thatcher is perhaps the politician I have the greatest admiration for. I am reading her memoirs at the moment.
In the early days of his government, Tony Blair liked to paraphrase the famous joke from Monty Python's Life of Brian ('All right, but apart from sanitation, medicine, education, wine, public order, irrigation, roads, the fresh-water system and public health, what have the Romans ever done for us?') in order ironically to disarm his critics: 'They betrayed socialism. True, they brought more social security, they did a lot for healthcare and education, and so on, but, in spite of all that, they betrayed socialism.' As it is clear today, it is, rather, the reverse which applies: 'We remain socialists. True, we practice Thatcherism in economics, we attack asylum-seekers, beggars and single mothers, we made a deal with Murdoch, and so on, but, none the less, we're still socialists.'
A day like today is not a day for, sort of, soundbites, really - we can leave those at home - but I feel the hand of history upon our shoulders, I really do.
He was the future, once...
Some may belittle politics but we who are engaged in it know that it is where people stand tall. Although I know that it has many harsh contentions, it is still the arena that sets the heart beating a little faster. If it is, on occasions, the place of low skulduggery, it is more often the place for the pursuit of noble causes. I wish everyone, friend or foe, well. That is that. The end.
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.
Isn't it extraordinary that the Prime Minister of our country can't even urge his Party to back his own position. Weak! Weak! Weak!
I was born in 1953, a child of the Cold War era, raised amid the constant fear of a conflict with the potential to destroy humanity. Whatever other dangers may exist, no such fear exists today. Mine is the first generation able to contemplate the possibility that we may live our entire lives without going to war or sending our children to war. That is a prize beyond value.
If there are further steps to European integration, the people should have their say at a general election or in a referendum.
I think this has gone beyond, as it were, Al Qaida as a specific network. I mean, this is -- there is no central command in this ideology, the way that, you know, you would normally describe one unit of -- that leads and operation. It's not like that. But the fact is that they are loosely linked by an ideology. They have very strong links with each other, right across the national boundaries. And you know, would be no surprise to me if the people that were engaged in the Mumbai attacks had links with other countries as well.
Whatever the dangers of the action we take, the dangers of inaction are far, far greater.
A new dawn has broken, has it not?
Yeah, Blair, what are you doin'?
I want to see a publicly-owned railway, publicly accountable.
We are asked now seriously to accept that in the last few years–contrary to all history, contrary to all intelligence–Saddam decided unilaterally to destroy those weapons. I say that such a claim is palpably absurd.
Do I know I'm right? Judgements aren't the same as facts. Instinct is not science. I'm like any other human being, as fallible and as capable of being wrong. I only know what I believe.
Somebody who did it first and perhaps did it better than I will do. He has been an example for so many people around the world of what dedicated leadership can accomplish.