Top 44 Quotes about Tony Blair

Tony Blair has turned his back on the principles he claimed he believed in before he stood shoulder-to-shoulder with George W. Bush. He was an entirely different kind of leader.

When I started writing the screenplay for ‘The Queen,’ about the aftermath of the death of Princess Diana, both Stephen Frears, the director, and Andy Harries, the producer, begged me not to put Tony Blair in it.

I’m not a political thinker, but I’ve just always thought of myself as a Labour supporter. I was a great fan of Tony Blair. He sent me a letter before I swam the Channel to wish me luck.

My hope that Thatcher would inadvertently bring about a new political revolution was well and truly bogus. All that sprang out of Thatcherism were extreme financialisation, the triumph of the shopping mall over the corner store, the fetishisation of housing and Tony Blair.

Tony Blair is paid $500,000 for one speech, and no one asks how he is going to spend it.

Tony Blair faced a massive defection from his own party ranks during voting around the intervention in Iraq. For our present purpose, the point is not that he survived the defection, but that he had to face it.

I always hated Tony Blair, from the beginning.

Tony Blair is not a villain, but he’s played the part very well.

Tony Blair took us to war in Iraq on the basis of the supposed threat of Saddam’s weapons of mass destruction.

In the aftermath of September 11, you can’t – as Tony Blair was so fond of suggesting – draw a line under historical events. They don’t go away. They come back.

Tony Blair in opposition recognised that as long as the economy remained a ‘Tory issue,’ which Labour could at best play down, Labour was going to lose. So he turned it into a genuine battleground. We need to do the same on the big so-called ‘Labour issues.’

Tony Blair is a brilliant politician. Unfortunately, his legacy is entwined with George W. Bush because of Iraq.

I have moved on from being a British parliamentarian, I have moved on from being a New Labour politician, I have moved on from being the supporter in the active day-to-day sense of Tony Blair.

On my first day at Yale Law School, there were posters in the hallways announcing an event with Tony Blair, the former British prime minister. I couldn’t believe it: Tony Blair was speaking to a room of a few dozen students? If he came to Ohio State, he would have filled an auditorium of a thousand people.

I’m 51; I’m younger than Tony Blair. I don’t have a dicky heart; I’m up like a broom handle in the morning. I don’t drink or gamble – I’m still a catch.

Tony Blair has made a good contribution to the cause of peace in Ireland. He has made a great effort to understand it. He has great empathy with the need to resolve the conflict.

I hesitated, too, because for better or worse, I have been one of the principal architects of New Labour and I have worked closely with Tony Blair and the team for nearly 20 years.

If there’s one thing above all that sets me apart from Tony Blair it is this – I am not embarrassed to articulate the instincts of the British people.

My guess is that good and bad parenting is spread fairly evenly across different social groups. But can you imagine Tony Blair lecturing the middle class on how to bring up their children? He is far more comfortable as a latter-day exponent of the Poor Law mentality.

My journalistic mission was straightforward: to await the U.S. invasion of Iraq. Nobody knew quite when this would be. But the diplomacy – the meetings in the U.N. security council, the allegations about weapons of mass destruction, the martial language of Tony Blair and George W. Bush – all suggested a war was brewing.

But let’s be clear. We’re talking about a country where there’s no opposition. As leader he can ignore Parliament and – sorry that’s Tony Blair isn’t it? Um, so he doesn’t even have to ask the country before he goes to war – sorry that’s still Tony Blair.

I mean that the time where we need International agreement more than ever on the environment and the rest, poverty we are breaking up our International Institutions and the rule of law and Tony Blair is part of it.

Just as the England football manager starts with bells and flags and balloons and ends up reviled, so do prime ministers. Tony Blair – is there anyone more despised now? Gordon Brown – all right, nobody voted for him but, you know… just think of any of them. Margaret Thatcher. John Major. Steve McLaren. Fabio Capello.

As Tony Blair has made clear, our fundamental challenge is how to make Europe work better.

People using a public platform to further their own personal agenda, I think that’s immoral. You have no right to do that. Tony Blair is a great example of that.

When you consider what Tony Blair was saying about liberty, human rights and that sort of thing, it would be terribly revolutionary to sell the speeches he and Jack Straw made in 1994.

I know people have tried to make citizens’ arrests on Tony Blair and so on, but really it’s time the international criminal court has some guts and charges white war criminals. They need to face justice just like other war criminals.

I played Margaret Thatcher, John Major, Tony Blair, David Cameron – four Prime Ministers. If Rishi Sunak became Prime Minister I would find it difficult that I would not be allowed to play him because of the colour of his skin.

Tony Blair is a war criminal, and I think he should be tried as a war criminal. Then I see Bono and him as pals, and I’m going, ‘I don’t like that.’ Do I think George Bush is a war criminal? Probably – but the difference between him and Tony Blair is that Blair is intelligent. So, he has no excuse.

One minute you’re up a mountain, the next you’re down a well. One minute you’re with Tony Blair, the next you’re with McFly. Ten years feels like two years when you’re in the ‘Blue Peter’ bubble.

Ronald Reagan, Bill Clinton and George W Bush (and, in their image, Tony Blair) bitterly annoyed their antagonists because they were – at least until the Iraq war caught up with Blair and Bush – Teflon. David Cameron is in this model.

It’s a very good idea that we have a third term Labour government led by Tony Blair for a full term.

Tony Blair was a good politician but not a good Prime Minister, and that’s what we don’t want to be. We don’t want to be just people who are good at winning elections: we want to be good at governing. I think we benefit from having seen the mistakes that we think Tony Blair made in 1997.

I remember when Tony Blair came into office, and there was a sense I was thinking, ‘Well, what on Earth am I going to do now?’ until I realized that’s exactly what he was thinking.

Tony Blair is a dreadful man; really truly dreadful.

Tony Blair adopted the accent of the audience he was speaking to, which worked very well initially, but then voters began to perceive him as phoney. The ‘man of the people’ act is the height of condescension.

Tony Blair will be remembered for nothing other than that he followed George W. Bush over a cliff; took the rest of us with them, and we haven’t yet reached the bottom, I’m afraid.

There was only one punch. Tony Blair rang me and he said ‘Are you OK?’ and I said ‘Yes’, and he said ‘Well, what happened?’ and I said ‘I was just carrying out your orders. You told us to connect with the electorate, so I did.

Tony Blair – good thing there are not parliamentary elections in this country.

It is in the country’s best interest that Tony Blair rather than Michael Howard should form the next government.

What we want to do is reform the welfare system in the way that Tony Blair talked about 13 years ago but never achieved – a system that was created for the days after the Second World War. That prize is now I think achievable.

In a way I’m almost more rueful about the notion of having a non-ideological Labour party than I am about the personality of Tony Blair.

I love the Restoration. It’s a bit like coming out of the John Major era into the optimism of Tony Blair.

George W. Bush and Tony Blair had to convince the world that Saddam Hussein represented an imminent threat. Tony Blair lied when he claimed that Iraq could launch a chemical or biological attack within 45 minutes.