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The Sunday Times wrote a devastating piece this week, entitled “What Tony did Next: Tony, the Globetrotting Messiah Making a Mint”. This was picked up in the FT (”Blair Defends Lucrative Life as a Social Entrepreneur“) and the Guardian (“It’s Not True That No One Likes Me“) today. It’s hard to know where to begin to respond to the original piece or the follow-ups, but as this is a blog on social business and entrepreneurship, let me offer an opinion on his claim to be a social entrepreneur. He most certainly is not a social entrepreneur, something we have also commented on before, in our post “Philanthrocaptalism and Davos Make Me Sick“. Our opinion has not changed but, as the details emerge of the life of Tony Blair since Government, is most definitely strengthened.

To be a social entrepreneur, one must run a social enterprise (based on the definition which emerged under the Blair Government) or a social business (based upon the ClearlySo definition on our website). Social enterprises are socially oriented organisations “whose surpluses are principally reinvested for that purpose in the business or in the community”. With his net worth estimated to have rocketed from a net deficit to £15 million, there is little evidence that this is the main point of “Blair Inc.”

Our definition of a social business requires that it “integrates” two equivalently important objectives: a financial one, and one that is social, ethical or environmental. The Blair activities fail badly on the equivalence test. This is not to say that some good does not come of Blair’s gyrations, but this is akin to a business dressing its money-making up with a CSR-like cloak. It has value, and is probably better than nothing, but social entrepreneurship it is not. According to the Sunday Times, “It is certainly hard to escape the conclusion that one reason Blair is working at such a frenetic pace on “good works” all over the world is to maintain the kind of global profile he needs to charge top dollar for his after-dinner bon mots”. I agree. If Blair wants to make money that is fine; what makes this especially annoying is his incessant need to justify himself.

There is also the unavoidable and haunting question of what Blair did when he was in power. I will never forgive him for what turned out to be an immoral war and an economic, social, ethical and environmental catastrophe. Those things count. The fact that some good deeds get done as he parlays his erstwhile position into a money-making enterprise does not compensate for the harm he has caused and the millions who have died or suffered as a result. You cannot purge that guilt so easily with a few good deeds. This makes a mockery of the social enterprise movement and would, at best, be CSR, practiced most cynically, by some of the worst offending companies. A company previously causing such harm would have the good sense to avoid the headlines.

Social entrepreneurship also involves taking risks, and using entrepreneurial methods to bring about social change. His roles at JP Morgan and Zurich Financial Services role (each reportedly paying £2 million per annum), together with some consultancy work and highly-paid speaking engagements simply do not qualify as risk-taking or entrepreneurship in any sense. He is just another guy making some money. That may be fine, but he should not dress himself up in the Social Enterprise cloak in doing so! This brings the whole movement into disrepute.

With his current work, Blair seems to seek fame, fortune, applause and redemption all at the same time. This is unachievable, and I suspect he has an inkling of that. The Sunday Times quotes a senior Palestinian as saying, “Everyone is kissy-kissy with him on both sides because he is the former British Prime Minister. But, behind his back, both Arabs and Jews laugh at him. He flies in and out and talks to a lot of people but he has changed very little”. Social entrepreneurs get things done. Normally they do so with laser-like focus on a clear set of objectives. Blair has taken on far too many roles, I suspect, to be a genuinely effective social entrepreneur.

The two saddest bits of all of this are the lack of dignity and the lack of perspective. It’s not the case that this disqualifies him as a social entrepreneur–I know a few who lack dignity, but most do not. The high visibility of Blair makes his claims damaging to the sector. He sees no problem in flying on an executive jet owned by Rwanda’s (one of the world’s poorest countries) President Kagame, staying in five-star hotels, owning four UK homes, surrounding himself with security guards and aides who are ferried about in gas-guzzlers, as he does his bit to widen the ozone hole by jetting all over the world. This is behaviour no social entrepreneur could possibly exhibit and no social enterprise governing body could conceivably condone. Nor the lack of financial transparency, discussed in detail in the Sunday Times regarding his commercial ventures.

Yet for all this, the most galling are his protests. “It’s not true that nobody likes me!” “I’ve got a problem with the UK media. They don’t approach me in an objective way” “Nobody says Bill Gates is bad for moving from business to philanthropy. Why shouldn’t a politician do a business model when they change their life?” All so sad, and so contradictory to the spirit of social entrepreneurship.

I thought, is there any political ex-leader who has made a successful transition into social enterprise and could think only of Jimmy Carter. He was perhaps not the most successful US President but, in his later years has found meaning through the work of the Carter Center; having had a major impact on disease eradication. I hope one day Blair finds redemption, that would be an appropriate seasonal wish–but he is off to a very bad start.

Rodney Schwartz

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