Review

Books

Culture

Leading

Politics

20 November 2024

5 min read

Blair’s revelatory sermon to Starmer

What can the former Prime Minister teach about leadership?

Krish Kandiah

Krish is a social entrepreneur partnering across civil society, faith communities, government and philanthropy. He founded The Sanctuary Foundation.

Tony Blair at rest.

The 1990s are enjoying a revival—from the return of baggy jeans and bucket hats to the reunion of Oasis, and, perhaps most significantly, a Labour government in power once again. Unlike the fervent optimism of 1997, when Tony Blair swept to victory with D: ream’s hit song Things Can Only Get Better as an anthem, today’s Labour government faces criticism for a perceived lack of vision. Luckily, Tony Blair has just released his new book: On Leadership—perhaps a timely read for the current Prime Minister.

Blair's leadership credentials are, at one level at least, pretty impressive: he won three consecutive elections and was the first Labour Prime Minister to do so. His achievements include playing a crucial role in the Northern Ireland Peace Process, reducing NHS wait times, and making a substantial investment in public services. Blair also took a courageous stance with U.S. President Bill Clinton by intervening in the Kosovo conflict against the advice of the UN. He remains however indelibly associated with the controversial 2003 invasion of Iraq that resulted in the deaths of 179 British personnel, and hundreds of thousands of Iraqi civilians.

In this climate of scepticism toward political leaders, Blair's reflections on leadership invite critical questions: Who is this book for? Where is the vision? And even, intriguingly, do we now 'do God'?

Who's it for?

Blair’s book is not a typical guide to general leadership principles; rather, it’s an insider’s view on leading a country. For the average reader, it’s like overhearing a high-level seminar on statecraft—a glimpse into the “room where it happens.”

Maybe there’s a bit of an audience reality check going on in the same way that a TV documentary on what-it’s-really-like-to-be-the-England-football-manager might deliver. Many football fans are happy to shout at our televisions when most have not got even the remotest clue of the challenges and pressures national coaches are under. So perhaps if Blair can tell us how hard it is to handle the myriads of competing challenges as the leader of a nation, readers might better understand the weight of leadership and approach politics – and politicians -with greater humility.

One of the most helpful reflections the book offers was Blair’s self-analysis on three stages of leadership. The first is the new leader listening eagerly; the second comes when they think they know everything, and finally, there’s a third stage of maturity when “once again, with more humility, they listen and learn”. He argues that his book’s purpose is to shorten the learning curve and get leaders to the third stage more quickly.
This a noble cause, but there are times when this book feels like a sermon preached by a slightly unscrupulous vicar, in a church where everyone knows there’s only one person the preacher has in mind. This can make everyone else feel they are there just to fill up the pews so that the message gets delivered. For Blair, his message and his book seem to be very much for Sir Keir Starmer; a plea to him to listen and learn from others.

Where’s the vision?

Blair encourages leaders to make a meaningful impact with their time in office. Recalling a conversation with Shimon Peres, he writes, “Do you want to be in the history books or the visitors’ book?” For Blair, leadership is about pushing boundaries, meeting resistance with persistence, and making difficult choices when others hesitate. He writes, “If you, as a leader, are not a changemaker in this world, it is you who will be changed.” His words on taking risks and demonstrating resilience are certainly inspiring. However, he often focuses on how to lead effectively, with limited exploration of what motivates us to seek positions of leadership in the first place — a disappointing missing focus on moral purpose.

This emphasis on strategy over ideology is evident in chapter titles: The Supreme Importance of Strategy versus The Plague of Ideology. Blair is critical of rigid ideologies, advocating instead for flexibility and pragmatism. He contrasts ideological rigidity with a more agile and pragmatic approach, which could sound like its own simply going-with-the-flow ideology, - a situational ethical approach. This feels very different to the Tony Blair that took on the United Nations over the Serbian genocide in Kosovo. He appeared to take a moral stance driven by a commitment to human rights rather than going with a more pragmatic laissez-faire solution. Blair’s emphasis on pragmatism, while useful, may leave readers wanting more on the values that shape a visionary leader.

Blair includes a joke, a very good one, that feels accidentally pertinent: some people die and the Devil appears and asks them, before they settle for Heaven, to take a look at Hell, because it’s not as bad as they’ve heard. When they see the “drinking and debauchery” in Hell, they ask to be damned. But then they wake up in the real Hell – “cold, miserable and horrible” – and demand to know why it looks nothing like what the Devil showed them. “Ah well,” says the Devil, “back then I was campaigning.”

He meant it as a joke, but the lack of moral clarity in the book made me feel he was sharing more than he intended about the state of political leadership right now. Perhaps sharing to many more than just those he wrote this sermon for. It certainly encapsulates the growing chasm between political promises and reality, as well as illustrating the reason why many people feel disdain, distrust and disappointment in all politicians who say whatever they need to say to get elected.

Are we doing God now?

Famously, when asked about his faith while Prime Minister, Blair was interrupted by his press secretary, Alastair Campbell, who declared, “We don’t do God.” Yet in this book, Blair invokes Moses as an example of leadership under difficult circumstances: “Never underestimate the degree to which people crave leadership. Back to Moses again. The Israelites simultaneously hated and craved his leadership. If you remember, they reached the promised land (though, yes, I know, he didn't).”

Blair sees in Moses a leader who maintained strength and conviction, even in the face of public criticism—a relatable comparison for politicians navigating the pressures of modern social media. Whether or not Blair is “doing God” in this book, he draws inspiration from Moses as a model of resilience and substance, inviting readers to consider leadership as a balance between staying grounded in one’s values and withstanding external pressure.

In the end, On Leadership is a reflective, sometimes provocative take on leading a nation, full of insights that swing from the practical to the idealistic. But it also raises important questions about the ultimate purpose of leadership and the need for a clear moral compass. For a public that remains sceptical of political motives, Blair’s leadership lessons may provide timely, if imperfect, revelation.

Review

Addiction

Culture

Film & TV

Monastic life

26 August 2025

5 min read

Mother Vera: from heroin addict to heroine helping the recovering

The horse-loving orthodox sister with a liturgy for life, and a dilemma.

Susan Gray

Susan is a writer specialising in visual arts and contributes to Art Quarterly, The Tablet, Church Times and Discover Britain.

A nun on a white horse, gallops across a snowy field, in black and white

Equine therapy.

She Makes Productions.

Across the arts, the recovery journeys of people with addiction and mental health issues are being re-narrated, giving voice to the navigators of their own personal transformation. In Mother Vera, the Grierson award winning documentary about a recovery community surrounding the Saint Elizabeth Monastery in Minsk, ritual and nature’s unfolding therapeutic power take centre stage.

From Sister Act I and II, to The Sound of Music and Black Narcissus, big screen depictions of women’s monastic life tend to be overwrought. But Mother Vera is different. Shot in black and white, Cécile Embleton and Alys Tomlinson’s documentary visually pays subtle homage to Black Narcissus’ bell tower scene, with a nod to Citizen Kane here and a wink to Andrei Tarkovsky there, but the overall tone is sober, in every sense of the word.

At the heart of the film is charismatic Mother Vera, a horse-loving orthodox nun, whose story of heroin addiction and betrayal by her onetime partner is micro dosed throughout the film. Surrounding Vera are a team of world-weary men, who she organises into readers for the monastery’s liturgies, as well as directing them in caring for the community’s cows and horses. They declare themselves “snowed in” by the monastic routine of “processions and liturgies” and relentless rounds of physical labour: shovelling snow and ice, feeding and grooming the animals. But the recovery community also acknowledges the bounded routines of the monastery keep them alive, able to face down their longing for drugs and drink. The rhythm of the natural world is woven into the liturgical year as Christmas cribs are replaced with Easter celebrations, all linked by scenes of candlelight, prayers and genuflections.

Early on in the film, Vera slips a puffa jacket over her black habit and gallops across the snow on a white horse. Without giving away too many spoilers, Vera’s desire for a life beyond the borders of the monastery grows as her story develops. Visits to her family show adolescent nephews and godsons growing into strapping maturity in her absence. Her mother relates the time Vera overdosed, 20 years ago, and doctors told her “to prepare for every outcome.” Vera reflects on how her charisma influenced “fresh faced girls” to become heroin users. For Vera, heroin went from being a portal of insight and revelation, to “showing its true face” which was diabolic. In monastery community meetings men praise how Mother Vera helped them to “reconstruct”.

Vera initially joined the monastery for a year, to wait out her partner’s prison sentence. Twenty years on, she has reached a new phase of her own reconstruction. Immersing herself in a river, her parting words are: “Let’s move on. Let’s continue. Amen.”

The community at Saint Elizabeth Monastery echoes the residents of W-3, the psychiatric ward in the American teaching hospital described in Bette Howland’s memoir W-3 first published in 1974, and republished four years ago. The author is admitted to hospital following an overdose, while she struggles to raise two children alone, on a part time librarian’s wage, while also trying to write. “For a long time it had seemed to me that life was about to begin – real life. But there was always some obstacle in the way. Something to be got through first, some unfinished business; time to be served, a debt to be paid. Then life could begin. At last it had dawned on me these obstacles were my life. I was always rolling these stones from my grave.”

Howland positions the institutionalised rhythms of the hospital as the supreme life force, and ultimately more curative than talking therapy or medication. “For the sick in their beds were invisible. They were there only by implication. They must have existed, if only for the sake of this other life, full of importance – the bustling arms, starched coats; the carts, mops, ringings, beepings; the brisk comings and goings of white stockinged nurses.” The invisible, timeless guiding spirit of the hospital “as mysterious as a submarine”, would prevail regardless of what the medical staff or patients did, or resisted doing. Realising they were not the ones calling the shots, was the first step for Howland and her fellow patients to returning to life outside the hospital.

Accepting community and kinship, rather than superiority or aloofness, with others in recovery is also a key feature of Saint Elizabeth Monastery and W-3. “Nothing was original on W-3, that was its truth and beauty,” writes Howland. And continually telling and re-telling her story to fresh batches of medical students, under a psychiatrist’s supervision, eventually allowed it to be transcended. “It is not strictly accurate to say that these interviews were of no use to us. Because you would have to tell your story yet once more, all over again. And each retelling, each repetition, hastened the time when you would get tired of it, bored with it, done with it – let go of it, drop it forever – could float away and be free.”

In Mother Vera members of the lay community argue about accepting a new member, who may have been raped in prison, and is labelled a “downcast”. But the argument against allowing prison hierarchies to overshadow their new community wins the day, with the new member being integrated, and objectors accepting “you are no better than him.”

Contemporary approaches to mental health and wellbeing also pivot on an acceptance of shared humanity and imperfect day to day life with its relentless demands, as well as acknowledgement of a power outside human control. In the Netflix documentary Stutz, actor Jonah Hill charts his sessions with Hollywood psychotherapist Phil Stutz. Stutz counsels his clients there is no escape from pain, uncertainty and hard work. To try to avoid these conditions, whether through fantasy or substance or addiction, is to live in the Realm of Illusion. Progress and satisfaction can only be achieved by embracing the here and now, and doing the next necessary thing for life to continue. Stutz calls these actions the String of Pearls, urging his clients to be the one to put the next pearl on the string. The outcome of the action is immaterial, it is the self -belief fostered by taking real world positive action in support of self-flourishing, that is critical.

Stutz believes in a force for good he calls Higher Forces, and a malign force thwarting human growth he calls Part X. For Mother Vera her latter days at the monastery when she felt she could be of more service in the outside world were “tricking God”.

From a Minsk monastery to a Hollywood therapist’s office, to a 1970s hospital, an acknowledgement of the divine, together with an embrace of each other and demands of daily life, emerge as key tenets of recovery’s long road.

Mother Vera is released in the UK from 29 August.

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