He has a string of jobs and earns £3m a year but what has the ex-PM actually achieved since leaving Downing Street a year ago?
 Five minutes into Tony Blair's description of his new life in his
first year since leaving Downing Street, a hovering aide in the Windsor
suite at Heathrow's Terminal 5 whispers: "Prime Minister Olmert on the
line."
At that moment Blair had been expounding on his work in
Sierra Leone. Now, as Middle East special envoy for the Quartet powers,
he must change gears and focus on some arcane detail of the peace
process with Israel's embattled prime minister.
During our
interview, conducted on planes and trains between London, Sunderland -
near his old Sedgefield base in County Durham - and back again, Blair
juggles issues as much as he did in No 10, often to the exasperation of
his staff.
He frets about sewage in north Gaza, but is also
worried that Europe and the US have still not grasped the enormity of
the shift of power to Asia. Why? Because it has been preoccupied since
9/11 with global security and terrorism, one of the decade's biggest
changes.
"The other change I have got to know better since
leaving No 10 is that the whole centre of gravity in the world is
shifting east, that for countries like us, and Europe and America, this
is a change so profound that I don't think we yet quite understand its
consequences or its implications for us.
"When you think the
industrialisation of China and India is going to be four times that of
the USA, happening at five times the pace too, you can understand the
magnitude of what we are talking about. We are about to enter into a
new epoch in terms of power relations."
He rattles off a list of
institutions that will have to change - the UN security council, the
G8, the IMF and World Bank. But he is almost as wary of prescribing
detailed reforms as he is of discussing Gordon Brown and British
domestic politics.
Aides stress this interview is to explain what
he has been up to since last June 27, not Gordon. It is timed not to
clash with Brown's own anniversary. When asked if his remarks about
voters taking a "profound" view of current economic woes can be
reasonably interpreted as advice to his successor, he says: "not
reasonably".
Blair does not miss "that ghastly moment at three
minutes to 12 when they come and get you for prime minister's
questions". It always scared him. But he also admits he has yet to
establish the better work-life balance he was always urging on voters.
"I
faced a choice when I stopped. 'Do I take a break, surge into a
different gear?' As it turns out, I have got more offers than I can
handle."
This is clearly a conciliatory gesture towards his
wife, Cherie, who has not seen as much of him as she might have hoped -
and he admits it. Though he has read her new autobiography, he has not
read John Prescott's or Lord Levy's. Typically, he admits most of what
he now reads is "technical or about religious faith".
He
believes conflict over faith threatens to push the world's peoples
apart. Hence the Blair faith foundation. What about the authoritarian
model of capitalism which China appears to sponsor? China's leaders
know political liberalisation must follow, he says.
When he
returns to his coffee from talking to Olmert, he explains that people
were wrong to assume that "if you construct a [political] deal the
facts on the ground will change. My view is that you also have to
change the reality on the ground to create the space for the political
deal to work.
"People say to me, 'Well, we have had all these
agreements in the past.' But I never have. Oslo [the accords] was not
an agreement, it was agreement to have an agreement," he says.
"Some
of the economic work we are doing with the Palestinians requires
permissions from the Israeli government so it is about getting those
permissions. The Palestinians want to build a facility or bring one in,
so you are trying to cut through bureaucracy. Sometimes it is about
getting lorries up roads or across checkpoints, getting cement and
equipment in. I know more about the north Gaza sewage treatment works
than you can possibly imagine."
Ever the optimist, even more the diplomat, Blair believes progress can be made before George Bush leaves office.
"In
the last year there has been intensification of this administration's
focus. Condi Rice has made many many visits, President Bush himself has
been twice. There is no doubt at all that there is a big engagement by
the Americans on this. I still think progress is going to happen even
under the remaining part of this presidency.
"What is really
important for the next president is that this does not go to the bottom
of the in-tray ... it's fundamental to what is going on in the whole
Middle East. This is a region in transition, there is massive potential
there for it to go right and for it to go badly wrong."
That is
almost as close as he will get to discussing the McCain-Obama contest,
other than to suggest that many in Europe are "naive" if they imagine
either candidate will be other than "really tough" on Iran - "because
Iran having nuclear capability is not a good idea for the world".
His
wary optimism extends to Iraq and Afghanistan, where he sees the same
forces of modernisation that are bringing the Gulf Arab states into the
21st century world being resisted by those who want to use the economic
power that comes with oil to sustain what he calls "semi-feudal"
regimes.
Sierra Leone, where British military forces stopped a
bloody civil war in 2000, gets less of the world's attention, but was
one of the quieter successes for Blairite liberal intervention. His
Africa project is one of six major initiatives - plus his money-making
ventures, consultancies, speeches and memoir-writing - that Blair has
launched since handing over to Gordon Brown.
As well as
becoming the Quartet's envoy, there is his climate change project, his
sports and faith foundations and an initiative launched this week
called Beyond Sport which will identify "heroes" who have used sport to
do work such as promoting peace.
What he does in west Africa and
in Rwanda, he explains, is help with basic questions of government.
"How they build the capacity necessary so the decisions they take get
implemented. And I am working with them to attract private sector
investment."
Does that mean getting on the phone to JP Morgan,
the US investment bank for whom he now consults for a fee said to be
somewhere between £500,000 and £2m a year. Not exactly. But, he says,
he knows who to put in touch with whom.
Fellow-passengers on the
flight to Newcastle barely seem to register the VIP in seat 1A. His
hair distinctly greyer now, his spectacles on, he is buried behind a
newspaper. He says the pressure is now much less than during his 10
years as prime minister.
"The big difference is that you choose
what you want to concentrate on. When you are prime minister your
agenda is partly chosen by you and partly by events. So although I am
extremely busy and am working very hard, the pressures are not the
same. The prime minister's job is a very tough job with stress and
constant pressure on you 24 hours a day, seven days a week."
But
if this is a typical Friday it is a frantic one. He struggles to
remember where exactly he has been this week. Today: a dash to
Newcastle airport, with two staff plus security in tow, a drive down
the A1 to the Puma indoor sports centre at Sunderland where 1,000
primary school kids have been competing for the Tony Blair Tennis Cup,
sponsored by his sports foundation.
As chairman, Blair is there
to present the cup and tell competitors how "utterly amazed" he is at
their progress since his last visit. "When does Wimbledon start?
Perhaps it's a bit early this year, but in years to come, who knows?"
Local heavyweights listen attentively. With his four-car cavalcade, staff and security detail, Blair's star aura has not dimmed.
Asked
about the huge sums of money he is supposed to be making from speeches
and business consultancies he says "some are exaggerated, some are
true, I won't say now which are which".
Unexpectedly, he presents
himself in a new role, as the man who pays the bills. "I also have a
whole operation now, offices in central London, 25 or 30 people working
for me. I run a small business now, I love it." This is true: friends
estimate he needs to make £3m a year to keep it all going.
He is
dressed as usual for all eventualities: dark grey suit, white shirt,
red tie. He hopes he will be allowed to stay on as Quartet envoy and
does not rule out the eventual EU presidency - stalled again by
yesterday's Irish referendum.
What about that book he promised to
write? He laughs. He is definitely putting aside time to write it. He
has help, but will write it himself, in longhand.
"It's in my
head. There are people [hired], but I'll write it myself. My computer
skills are there, they're limited, but I now do emails, I use my
computer and my Blackberry," he says - a shade defensive since Cherie
once said Tony and technology were like oil and water.
Is email
his most liberating new skill since leaving office? Yes. "I can type a
one or two line message in less than half an hour."
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