Tony Blair

The biggest constraint is that politics, and in particular political leadership, is probably the only walk of life in which

someone is put into an immensely powerful and important position with absolutely zero qualifications or experience.

I mean, I never had a ministerial appointment before.

My one and only was being prime minister, which is great if you want to start at the top, but it's that that's most difficult.

So you come in and you often come in as, when you're running for office, you have to be the great persuader.

The moment you get into office, you really have to be the great chief executive.

And those two skill sets are completely different.

And a lot of political leaders fail because they've failed to make the transition.

And those executive skills, which are about focus, prioritization, good policy, building the right team of people who can actually help you govern, because the moment you become the government, you end up

leaving aside the saying becomes less important than the doing.

Whereas when you're in opposition, you're running for office, it's all about saying.

So all of these things mean that it's a much more difficult, much more focused and it's suddenly you're thrust into this completely new environment when you come in.

And that's what makes it, that's the hardest thing.

And then of course, you do have a situation in which the system as a system

It's not that it's a – I'm not a believer that there's this great deep state theory.

We can talk about that.

But that's not the problem with government.

The problem with government is that it's not a conspiracy, either left-wing or right-wing.

It's a conspiracy for inertia.

The thing about government systems is that they always think we're permanent.