Prime Minister Tony Blair's Resignation Speech

Prime Minister Tony Blair resigned recently, and his farewell speech was telling in several rather depressing ways.

First of all, it’s personal.

Blair is a brilliant public speaker, to be sure, but his focus of interest has contracted from the entire world and its problems to Blair’s own state of mind and how the voters feel about him. When the two greatest prime ministers of England in the Victorian period retired, Gladstone talked about the future of Ireland, and Disraeli about Turkey and the Empire. Churchill, the incomparably great Prime Minister – and perhaps the greatest leader – of the twentieth century, made his farewell to Parliament a powerful oration on the cold war, ending with the lines:

The day may dawn when fair play, love for one’s fellow-men, respect for justice and freedom, will enable tormented generations to march forth serene and triumphant from the hideous epoch in which we have to dwell. Meanwhile, never flinch, never weary, never despair.

Contrast that lofty rhetoric with Blair’s conclusion:

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.

Of course, all politicians are concerned with their legacies, but Blair’s speech shows a sensitivity to the nuances of public approval and disapproval that marks an extraordinary departure from prime ministers – and leaders – of the previous centuries.

Leadership communications has become to a great extent about the personal relationship between the leader and the public he or she serves. We now know far more about our leaders, and they themselves know far more about us – how we feel, how we picture them, what we want from them.

This contraction of the public discourse makes it much harder for leaders to demand sacrifice of us, and to enlist our help in great causes. Their interests are more selfish, and so are ours.

And it also means that they have to spend more time justifying themselves to us. We are closer to each other, our leaders and us, and we are engaged in a smaller enterprise. Our problems may be vast, but the lense through which we may view them is personal – and human.

Second, the media now frames the debate ( but it’s still your job to attempt to influence that).

A quick scan of the issues that Blair discusses shows that he never strays far from what the media has identified as the crucial topics of the day. 9/11, Iraq, Afghanistan, Northern Ireland, gay rights – these are the subjects discussed regularly in the press. So thoroughly has the media set the agenda that it would look decidedly odd if Blair – or any leader – seriously tried to set his own.

Blair makes a game attempt to change the subject, putting in his claim for having improved the regular English person’s lot in life:

Look at the British economy – at ease with globalisation. London – the world’s financial centre. Visit our great cities in this country and compare them with 10 years ago. No country attracts overseas investment like we do.

And think about the culture of Britain in the year 2007. I don’t just mean our arts, that are thriving, I mean our values. The minimum wage. Paid holidays as a right. Amongst the best maternity pay and leave today in Europe. Equality for gay people.

Or look at the debates which reverberate around the world today. The global movement to support Africa in its struggle against poverty. Climate change. The fight against terrorism. Britain is not a follower today. Britain is a leader. It gets the essential characteristic of today’s world: its interdependence.

But he knows that none of that rhetoric will make the evening news, because it’s not newsworthy. The debate is circular – the media defines what’s newsworthy and those subjects become the only ones that are talked about by the so-called newsmakers.

Nonetheless, a leader has the power – and the responsibility – to put an issue into the 24-hour news cycle if he or she deems it sufficiently important. Global warming has been talked about for years, but it never made the 24/7 news frenzy until Al Gore figured out how to put it there with his lectures, his movie, and his Academy Award.

There is no analogous issue that Blair will be known for, because he went along with the media during most of his tenure and accepted its power to define the issues of the day.

Third, there is no room for nuance.

Throughout the Iraq war, commentators have contrasted Blair’s articulate, impassioned defences of that unpopular war with President Bush’s far less effective rhetoric. But neither of these leaders are a match for the body count on the evening news.

Blair’s comments on the war are revealing:

. . . and then Iraq, . . . bitterly controversial. And removing Saddam and his sons from power, as with removing the Taliban, was done with relative ease – but the blowback since, in global terrorism and those elements that support it, has been fierce and unrelenting and costly. And for many, it simply isn’t and can’t be worth it.

For me, I think we must see it through. The terrorists who threaten us around the world will never give up if we give up. It is a test of will and belief, and we can’t fail it.

The causes and the results of the war are many and complex, but Blair has reduced them to two opposite points of view: either “it simply isn’t worth it,” or “we must see it through.” Here, he is falling in with the worst tendency of the media today: to reduce every noteworthy issue to two extremes – what rhetoricians used to call the “either-or” fallacy.

The lack of nuance here is disappointing, but Blair is a veteran of the wars that are fought every night on the evening news, and he know that the extremes are the only points of view that will be aired there.

The art of leadership communications today is to be found precisely here: how do you pack an informed point of view, a vision, a call to action in such a limited, black-and-white picture? If no one is paying much attention today, because we’re so distracted by all the information coming at us, that makes the challenge even more difficult.

But, as Blair himself says, Politics may be the art of the possible, but at least in life give the impossible a go. That’s a lovely line, and the one he should be remembered by. He did achieve some things that seemed impossible when he took office – he showed Britain that the Labor Party could lead, he worked in many ways to bring England into the modern world, and he helped make that country both cool and celebrated for its traditions at the same time.

Unfortunately, he stayed too long and got the Iraq war hung around his neck thanks to his loyalty to President Bush and his desire to be a player on the world stage.

Words he speaks near the end of the speech could be spoken by any embattled politician in any country around the world today: