Speaking on the BBC One Politics Show on 28 January, Tony Blair talks about his uncompleted mission: i want to finish what i started...
JON SOPEL: Prime Minister, so here we are in Davos, the big issues under discussion: climate change, Africa, debt, world trade. Is it frustrating in your last few months in office there's only so much you're going to be able to do.
TONY BLAIR: (...) Africa of course, I mean people will be dealing with Africa long after I've gone on and in the decades to come, but no, I think what's interesting actually is the degree to which, the type of agenda that we have articulated at international level is really the type of agenda that is now more or less dominating international discussion, and also, I think even more interesting in a way, the solutions that we're putting forward on climate change, on world trade, on Africa are the solutions most people are gravitating towards; so I think, you know for our country, it's erm, you know, we should take a certain amount of pride and enthusiasm from that.
(...) JON SOPEL: I'll return to those domestic issues in a moment. Just staying with the whole thing of Africa. I mean you've talked about the need for good governance, anti corruption as being vital in the fight against poverty is almost central to all of that.
TONY BLAIR: Yeah, it is, absolutely and you know, there are good signs. I mean we have the President of Liberia here; that's a war torn country, totally corrupted by successive Presidents, now with the first woman President in Africa, leading it. Next door of course is Sierra Leone, which we helped stabilize as a country, about to have another set of democratic elections. You know you've got to a process of change that was really quite exciting. You've got 1.6 million people getting HIV aids treatment that weren't getting it before. Millions of kids getting in to primary school education, but then you've still got problems like Sudan. (read full article)
JON SOPEL: Prime Minister, so here we are in Davos, the big issues under discussion: climate change, Africa, debt, world trade. Is it frustrating in your last few months in office there's only so much you're going to be able to do.
