At the coronation of King Charles III. (74) on May 6th in Westminster Abbey, former Prime Minister Tony Blair (69) will also pay his tribute to the heir to the throne. The fact that he has to skip his own birthday party doesn’t seem to bother him.
Despite occasional disagreements in the past, he describes his relationship with the British royal family as very good.
During his time as British Prime Minister between 1997 and 2007, Tony Blair had the honor of having tea with Queen Elizabeth II (1926-2022) around 500 times. He still remembers the course of his first weekly audience with the Queen, who died in September 2022, as he does today, as he recently reported in an interview with the “New Labor” channel. “The first time she said to me, ‘You are my tenth Prime Minister – the first was Winston Churchill. You weren’t even born then.'”
Democracy and monarchy are not mutually exclusive for Britain’s youngest prime minister at the time (he was 43 when he took office). On the contrary, there are many advantages to having a king or queen at the official head of the state: “The tradition of the monarchy gives the country a certain degree of cohesion – even if there are major rifts at the political level.”
He is certain that King Charles will make “certain changes” soon after his coronation to make the British monarchy more contemporary. He considers the monarch to be a “decent and caring guy” who will take care of the future of his country with a high degree of reliability.
And what has Tony Blair been up to since the end of his last term?
His first project as a private citizen was to write his memoirs. He is said to have received around six million euros from the publisher Random House for his autobiography “Tony Blair: Mein Weg”, which was published in 2010.
After his departure, he also worked for several years as the special envoy of the “Middle East Quartet” to promote the peace process between Israelis and Palestinians. Blair has chaired the European Council for Tolerance and Reconciliation since 2015.
In addition to consulting and political activities, Blair is also active as a partner or chairman of various companies. In October 2021 he hit the headlines after the publication of the so-called “Pandora Papers”. The tax haven data leak at the time revealed that he too was involved as a shareholder and director in so-called offshore companies.
Despite public controversy, Blair was knighted by Queen Elizabeth II in 2022. Since then he has held the title “Knight Companion of the Order of the Garter”.
