On February 17, 2026, Channel 4 premiered The Tony Blair Story, a much-anticipated three-part documentary series directed by Michael Waldman. With the former prime minister himself sitting down for in-depth interviews, the timing of the series could hardly have been more fraught—arriving as public scrutiny of Britain’s recent political legacy intensifies and new scandals swirl around figures from the New Labour era. But for all the anticipation, viewers are left with a portrait as enigmatic as the man himself.
The documentary, which unfolds over three evenings at 9pm, assembles a broad cast of contributors: political allies like Peter Mandelson, Alastair Campbell, and Anji Hunter; critics such as Clare Short and Jeremy Corbyn; and even novelist Robert Harris, who shadowed Blair during his 1997 campaign. Yet, as The i Paper observes, the most glaring omission is Gordon Brown, Blair’s longtime rival and successor—a silence that speaks volumes about the unresolved tensions of their partnership.
The opening episode, aptly titled “Who Are You?”, sees Waldman attempting to pierce Blair’s famously guarded exterior. The director, who previously drew praise for his emotionally raw profile of Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, finds Blair a far less yielding subject. “If you’re giving an interview, you must be pretty disciplined,” Blair remarks, hinting at the careful self-control that defined his premiership. He later tells Waldman, “I’ve been relatively frank with you most of the time.” The implication, as noted by The i Paper, is that total candor remains elusive, especially on contentious episodes like the Iraq War or his relationship with Brown.
The personal traumas of Blair’s early life are explored with sensitivity, if not always with insight. Waldman delves into the succession of tragedies that shaped Blair’s formative years: his father’s debilitating stroke, his mother’s death from cancer while Blair was still at Oxford, and the suicide of his childhood friend Ewan—whose name would later be given to Blair’s eldest son. When asked by Waldman how these losses affected him, Blair answers, “I don’t spend a lot of time psychoanalysing myself.” That reluctance to reflect, some argue, is a defining feature of his leadership style.
The documentary also revisits Blair’s time at Fettes College in Edinburgh, an elite boarding school recently criticized in the Scottish Child Abuse Inquiry for failing to protect students from abuse. While Blair himself is circumspect, his contemporary Nick Ryden is more blunt: “The school teaches you to survive,” Ryden says, adding, “It knocks a lot of emotion out of you. It’s a bad thing to show emotion when you’re at these schools.” The emotional reserve that marked Blair’s public persona is thus traced back to his earliest experiences of adversity and institutional discipline.
Turning to his political ascent, The Tony Blair Story chronicles the heady optimism of 1997, when Blair, flanked by his wife Cherie and their children, swept into Downing Street promising a new era for Britain. The documentary features a telling anecdote from Blair’s son Euan, who recalls a surreal moment during the Belfast Agreement talks: “Gerry Adams and Martin McGuinness took a break from negotiations at Number 10 and I showed them how to flip a skateboard.” It’s a rare, almost playful interlude in an otherwise high-stakes saga of peace and power.
Yet the portrait that emerges is far from uncritical. According to The Irish Times, the series lands at a moment when the legacy of Blairism appears more embattled than ever. With war raging in Europe, the British economy mired in post-Brexit uncertainty, and the “special relationship” with the U.S. under strain, the documentary invites uncomfortable questions about the durability of Blair’s achievements. “Everything he worked towards in his political life lies in ruins,” the paper notes, suggesting that the story of post-Blair Britain might be titled, with a hint of dark humor, “Things Can Only Get Worse.”
One of the most charged segments of the series is its treatment of the Iraq War. Blair remains unrepentant, refusing to countenance the possibility that his decision was misguided. “Would it be better if Saddam [Hussein] and his two sons were still in power?” he asks, rhetorically. “I can be sorry about lots of things; there’s no point carrying on trying to get me to see a different point of view from the one I had at the time.” This unwavering conviction is, according to Robert Harris, rooted in Blair’s Christian faith and a “Manichaean sense of good and evil.” Harris warns, “This seemed to be a dangerous way for anyone to live their life ... but for politicians, it is particularly dangerous.”
Jeremy Corbyn, for his part, describes Blair as living in a “messianic trench,” driven by a belief in his own righteousness that, at times, borders on the delusional. The documentary relitigates the Iraq debate in familiar terms—Blair’s supporters citing his “conviction” and “belief,” his detractors despairing at the self-confidence and lack of reflection that led Britain into war. When pressed on the funding of his post-premiership work, Blair responds with a burst of candor: “Money’s money! It just allows you to do things!”
Beyond the global stage, Blair’s domestic legacy is given relatively short shrift—a point of frustration for the former prime minister, who feels his achievements at home have been overshadowed by foreign policy controversies. The series races through milestones like constitutional reform and the introduction of the minimum wage, focusing instead on the drama of Northern Ireland, Kosovo, and Iraq. “He didn’t really bring on a generation to carry on his revolution,” Robert Harris notes, though the continued prominence of figures like Jonathan Powell, Alastair Campbell, and Peter Mandelson suggests a lingering influence, if not a true succession.
Cherie Blair appears in the documentary as a supportive, if candid, partner. Unlike Olena Zelensky—who, in Waldman’s earlier documentary, admitted to dreading her husband’s election victory—Cherie is portrayed as a driving force behind Tony’s ambitions. She even confesses, with a wry smile, that Tony has “never once bought her flowers.”
Ultimately, The Tony Blair Story is described by reviewers as both comprehensive and frustrating. It succeeds as a chronicle of a remarkable political journey, but falls short as a revealing portrait of the man himself. Blair remains, in the words of The Guardian, a “calculating communicator” and “insubstantial political thinker” whose greatest skill was being “all things to all people.” His advice to chief of staff Jonathan Powell—“Never lose your temper. Except on purpose.”—offers a fitting glimpse into a leader defined as much by discipline as by vision.
For all its archival footage and star-studded interviews, the series leaves the central mystery unsolved: who is Tony Blair, beneath the polished exterior? As Britain continues to grapple with the legacy of the New Labour era, that question lingers—unanswered, and perhaps unanswerable.