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Tony Blair speaks to Channel 4 News about the "extraordinary dignity and courage" of Philip Gould

In an interview recorded yesterday for Channel 4 News, Tony Blair spoke of Philip Gould’s lasting impact on British politics as well as the way he faced death with extraordinary dignity and courage.

On Philip Gould as a Labour Party strategist with deep personal convictions:

"Philip was an indispensible part of the whole project of making the Labour Party electable, not just for one term but so that you could win successive terms in office. And he was, if you like, not just the pollster and focus group person is to kind of diminish it. He was a strategist really, and I used to find with Philip that the insights he would give me about public opinion, about where he thought the country would stand, were as good as anything I’d ever seen in politics.

"He understood big trends in politics. He looked at things in a big way. He was a philosopher as much as a political analyst....And he also had deep personal convictions. I mean, Philip was a huge believer in social justice, in representing the British people, and in the Labour Party’s place as able to govern for a significant enough period of time that you could make a difference."

On Philip Gould’s pioneering use of modern political campaign techniques:

"What he did do was say that if you are going to devise policy, at least have a bit of evidence of what people are thinking, and sometimes the best way to do that is not a quantitative poll – where they show you sort of 70% think this or 60% think that – but actually where you are talking to people in depth about their experiences, what they feel and what they think.  And when I used to find it useful – I mean, look, these are just aids that you use. 

"They shouldn’t be a substitute for policy-making or decision-making, but where I found them very useful, particularly interpreted by Philip – and I always used to joke with him that, you know, I wasn’t actually sure that these focus groups ever existed, I was just getting what Philip thought – but they gave you a slightly deeper sense of people’s anxieties, their hopes, their fears and so on. And in their proper place, by the way, parties use them because they are sensible."        

On Philip Gould’s support amongst the next generation of Labour Party members:

"He was a great influence on them. I mean, the younger people in the Labour Party really adored him. When I was growing up in the Labour Party in the 70s and 80s, I mean, Young Labour was the thing that the leadership wanted to get as far away from as possible. Today, it’s something that’s very much, I would say in the vanguard of progressive politics, and Philip was a big part of that. You know, and one of the other things he did was he was constantly in Labour Party headquarters, speaking to the young people, motivating them, inspiring them, driving them on. He was a great leader in that sense."

On Philip Gould’s extraordinary dignity and courage when it came to facing death:

"I've been visiting him regularly over these last months and I visited him yesterday. But I think the thing about Philip is that in this last period of his life, when he was facing death, and knew he was facing death, his qualities as a – as really a leader of people, came out, and he had this extraordinary sense that he was going to reconcile himself to the mistakes he’d made in life, to the relationships he had, that he was going to use this as this period of extraordinary, remarkable emotional growth, as he used to call it. And he did.

"And of all the things he has done in his life, I don’t think there was anything quite as remarkable as the way he faced death and took it, not just with extraordinary dignity and courage, but left those of us behind feeling great hope about the future, as a result of the way that he did that."

Donations in Philip's memory should be sent to the Royal Marsden Cancer Charity, 6 Fulham Road, London SW3 6JJ or online at www.royalmarsden.org/donate

Funds raised will be held and used in his memory for the research and treatment of oesophageal cancer.