Faith healer

AS the big black BMW – with an air conditioning control panel for the rear seats more complex than a spacecraft cockpit – enters Hallgarth Street, Tony Blair becomes increasingly distracted.

He’s spent the journey from Sunderland to Durham covering a huge amount of ground, from faith to sport, from climate change to deforestation, from Africa to Palestine. It’s a quick journey, four police motorbike out-riders dancing the BMW through the traffic while others prevent motorists from waltzing in front at roundabouts and junctions.

But as the car turns into New Elvet in the shadow of Durham Cathedral, his mind wanders from global matters onto personal memories.

“That’s where I took my driving test,” he says, pointing excitedly out of the window as the car rises up the hill into Hallgarth Street. “They still take tests there. I passed first time.”

The interview isn’t going much further. The former Prime Minister is a boy again, re-living the Sixties when he grew up in the city.

“Just up here on the right – just there – is where I used to go to dancing classes. It was one of those things you had to keep quiet about at school. It was proper old-fashioned dancing, waltzes, foxtrots and all that sort of stuff. I quite enjoyed it. I must have been about ten or 11.”

The journey had started outside the tennis centre in Sunderland where he’d seen the final of his sports foundation’s schools’ tennis tournament.

Nearly 10,000 North-East children have taken part.

He clearly enjoyed his knockabout with Greg Rusedski, grimacing when a soft shot into the low net let him down. But it’s more than just introducing others to a game he loves.

‘‘I am convinced that sport is the best social policy, the best health policy and the best anticrime policy for young people,” he says. “It is a great way to teach young people life skills.

“There’s a programme where we get Israeli and Palestinian kids playing football together.

Obviously, it is not a substitute for getting the politics right, but it makes a difference, particularly to the youngsters involved. Once they’ve put a human face on the other side, it’s harder to regard them as an enemy.”

He sees sport as about breaking down barriers and crossing boundaries – which is the same as the work of his other group, the Faith Foundation.

He says that whereas the conflicts of the later 20th Century were ideological – communism versus capitalism – the danger for the 21st Century is that they became religious. Globalisation is pushing peoples together. He fears their faiths will become their badges of identity, separating them out, causing divisions and therefore conflict in the shrinking world.

“My foundation is designed to bring people of different faiths together in understanding and action,” he says. “Faiths have the same very strong values in common – a love of your neighbour is the essence.”

Of course, given his involvement in Iraq and Afghanistan, some might struggle to see him as a faithful peacemaker. “Some policy decisions I took were very controversial, but I find in the Middle East, whether they agree or disagree with the decisions, they recognise that it is important to have a dialogue between Christianity, Islam and Judaism,” he says. “I defend my decisions very strongly.”

The BMW has escaped Sunderland and is nearing the A1(M) on the approach to Durham City. In the two years since standing down as Prime Minister and Sedgefield MP, Mr Blair has been working with The Climate Group of greenminded businesses.

“There’s a lot of people who say if you are serious about tackling climate change you don’t drive cars and you don’t fly – but that’s not going to happen,” he contends. “You’re not going to stop people consuming, you’ve got to find the ways for people to consume better and differently.”

He wants a technological global response.

“Deforestation is 15 per cent of the problem – four times the impact of airline travel,” he says.

“If they are cutting down a forest for fuel, you have to provide them with alternatives.”

He detects a climate change in global attitudes since the 2005 G8 summit at Gleneagles.

“The issue now is not whether, the issue now is how,” he says. “The important thing is that even if America and Europe did all the things the most ardent campaigners wanted, if China and India aren’t part of the deal, it won’t work.”

Along the A690 towards Durham City, the railway viaduct becoming visible on the driver’s side, he talks of his Africa Initiative in Sierra Leone and Rwanda. “It’s to test my theory that Africa’s problems are actually as much governance as aid, so we put in teams of people from around the world to help build those countries’ capacity to govern properly,” he says.

Fortunately, the traffic at the Gilesgate roundabout slows the BMW, so there’s time to ask about MPs’ expenses, Labour’s travails, the Iraq inquiry...

With a huge smile and gleaming blue eyes, he says: “I’ve taken complete self denial (on domestic issues). What I’ve learnt is that I can’t raise an eyebrow in the wrong place. There’ve been enough stories written completely wrongly about what I do and don’t think.”

The outriders open up a lane in front of the BMW and it waltzes on again, gliding around the roundabout and sliding smoothly down the hill towards the city centre.

ANOTHER of his aims when standing down in 2007 after a decade as Prime Minister was to spend more time with his family. He emits a strange strangulated gurgle when reminded.

“Truthfully, I’m travelling an awful lot,” he struggles. “Leo – he’s nine now – certainly thinks I should be at home more.”

The Metropolitan Police driver, his eyes protected from the lunchtime Durham sun by the most impenetrable shades, turns into New Elvet and heads for the university where Mr Blair’s father became a law lecturer in 1958. Mr Blair cranes his neck up towards the cathedral in whose precincts the family came to live when he was five. Then he loses himself to driving tests and dancing lessons.

“And I think there’s a tennis court near here that I used to play on,” he says, his voice trailing off in confusion as the BMW comes noiselessly to a stop outside the new big and bright Calman Learning Centre where he is to deliver his lecture.

He starts the lecture by saying: “Durham is very much the place that formed me, and the cathedral is still my most favourite spot in the entire world outside my own home.

“On the way here, we came past where I had my first drink when I was more or less 18, and my first kiss – although that might be an exaggeration: my first attempt.

“And I’ve just told The Northern Echo that I used to take ballroom dance lessons which I don’t think has done my street credibility any good.”

Oh ye of a little faith!