Tony Blair

You don't really care whether it's Labour anymore, do you?

In that sense, what was the policies?

I don't.

I don't think Labour's got something... I'm not tribal in the sense that I think one political party is going to have the exclusive capability of deciding the right answer.

And I guess, you know, the interesting thing when you go out of politics, and this is where I think the most interesting politics today comes from people outside of politics, because when you step out of politics...

and you start seeing how the world is changing, it's not really about traditional left and right politics.

In fact, I think that gets in the way a lot of the time of just asking the question, OK, look at the world.

How do we make sense of it?

How do we keep Britain strong, its economy strong?

How do we build its military and so on?

Xi Jinping's not sitting there in Beijing saying, I wonder what Ed Miliband thinks.

The person that Keir Starmer turned to to become an advisor was Gordon Brown.

That is Tony Blair, who for the past two years has maintained a Trappist monk-like silence on British politics.

Today, that changed.

Born of frustration, anger, irritation, desperation and depression about the state of the Labour Party, about the state of our politics.

We have an extended interview with him.

Welcome to The News Agents.

Well, we're joined on The News Agents now by Tony Blair, him in central London, me in central Sydney.

There we are.

Now, Tony Blair, you've pointedly chosen to stay out of British politics for the past two years.