Tony Blair’s Advice on Leadership: Tend to Your Legacy

Europe|Tony Blair’s Advice to Rookie Leaders: Tend to Your Legacy Before It’s Too Late

Tony Blair is out with a new book, “On Leadership,” which he says offers all the tips he wished he’d been told when he entered 10 Downing Street in 1997.

Given the timing, one can’t help but think of it as a user’s guide for Keir Starmer, the first Labour leader to win a British general election since he did.

Mr. Blair said the book is “absolutely not” aimed at Mr. Starmer, whom he insisted he is “really not” advising, though the two did appear onstage together last year, as Mr. Starmer was gearing up for a campaign. In this global year of elections, Mr. Blair is offering lessons to any rookie leader who will listen — about geopolitical upheaval, surging populism and how to deal with a politically unstable United States.

“I think you’d have to say American politics in some ways has become bitterly divided and at a certain level, dysfunctional,” Mr. Blair said in an interview. “But it’s happened at the same time as America itself has re-emerged as, in my view, easily the strongest country in the world.”

Affable, expansive and only fleetingly defensive, Mr. Blair, now 71, offered a reminder of why, 17 years after he left Downing Street, he remains an enduring presence but also something of a riddle.

He spoke proudly of his government’s achievements in overhauling education and strengthening Britain’s public health service. Yet in his lucrative post-government career, which has included advisory roles for banks, Middle East diplomacy and his own consulting business, he has drawn criticism for mixing too readily with autocrats and billionaires. He defended engaging with Saudi Arabia and extolled the transformative potential of A.I. in government — only to become reticent on the subject of Elon Musk, whose inventions he celebrates.