Tony Blair

I mean, I sometimes come across countries that are island states with warm weather, but they get all their electricity from heavy fuel oil when they've got limitless amounts of solar and wind that they could be using, but it's vested interest.

The other thing is,

I sometimes say that government is a conspiracy of distraction because you've got events and crises and scandals.

The most difficult thing is to keep focused when you've got so many things that are diverting you from that core task.

What often happens with leaders, sometimes what we do with our leaders is we say to them, okay, we're going to do an analysis.

of here are your priorities, here's how much time you spend on them.

And you end up literally with people spending 4% of their time on their priorities.

And you say, well, no wonder you're not succeeding.

No, that would be too high, I think.

But...

but a lot, and a lot more today, because people are expected.

So I have this thing that I often say to leaders, and I think this is the single biggest problem with Western politics today.

You know, sometimes when I used to, my kids were younger and I used to speak with them and I would say to them, you know, work hard, play hard, right?

If you work hard, play hard equals possibility of success.

Play hard, work hard is a certain failure, right?

Because you'll play so hard you never end up working hard, right?

The equivalent in politics is policy first, politics second.

In other words, work out what the right answer is and then work out how you shape the politics around that.

But actually what happens to a lot of systems today is it's politics first and policy second.

So people end up with a political position.