Tony Blair

And by the way, whichever way you decide it, someone's going to attack you for it.

With Lee Kuan Yew in Singapore, I would...

I mean, it's the wrong way around.

I mean, I learned so much from him.

And I went to see him first back in the 1990s when I was leader of the Labour Party.

And I went to...

see him in Singapore.

The Labour Party had been really critical of Singapore.

The first thing he said to me when I came in the room was, why are you seeing me?

Your party's always hated me.

I said, I want to see you because I've watched what you do in government and I want to learn from it.

I don't think there's anything I could have told Lee Kuan Yew.

The interesting thing, because he's a fascinating leader, and this is so interesting about government.

What I say is that you can look upon government

Like, don't look upon it as a branch of politics.

Look upon it as its own discipline, professional discipline.

And you can learn lessons of what's worked and what doesn't work.

And so the fascinating thing about Lee Kuan Yew is he took three decisions, really three important decisions, right at the beginning for Singapore.

Each one of them now seems obvious.

Each one at the time was deeply contested.