Tony Blair’s advice to up and coming leaders is to focus on their domestic priorities and delivery, embrace technology, seek respect rather than love, keep foreign travel to a minimum and avoid distractions. Sir Anthony Charles Lynton Blair KG, who served as Prime Minister of the United Kingdom from 1997 to 2007 and leader of the Labour Party from 1994 to 2007 and served as leader of the opposition from 1994 to1997 said: “It’s a great time to be governing”. His smile, which first infatuated and then infuriated Britain, is not a believer in a first among equals or the light touch. He defines leadership as being “of advancing and not just being: of action and not mere analysis; to resolve the problem and not simply articulate it”. He explains how to conduct a foreign negotiation, how to manage a bureaucracy, how to handle the media, how to deal with enemies and fawning acolytes, ow to switch off by find that little touch of Zen … and how to manage you inevitable downfall. He says natural gas is essential to the green energy transition. He warns politicians on a heated issue of Gaza that the public is wary of the presence of Islamist groups among the ceasefire protesters. His message on public services is to keep parents and patients, front of mind not producers, doctors and teachers combine reform with investment; and let the private sector in as a partner.

Blair’s ethical foreign policy was the “foolish” promise of a naïve opposition. In Iraq and Afghanistan, he was “hubristic” about the ease of entrenching a democracy. At home, he was not good at looking after the Blairites.

He explains: “I have been surprised, shocked and more than occasionally appalled at how much I have learnt since leaving office. I have kept maturing, If only I knew then what I know now not what I did”.

After 2002, Iraq drained his government of political capital. He is dismissive of the changes that governments can make simply by passing a law, and values the much harder, more complex structural changes – such as driving patient choice over providers in the NHS – that led to lasting improvements in public services.

When Blair first became an opposition MP in 2001, he was at the height of his powers.  The book is a masterclass on leadership in general, political leadership in particular and the lifetime learnings of a once leader for current and future leaders.

On Leadership: Lessons for the 21^st Century by Tony Blair, Hutchinson Heinemann £25, 368pages