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Tony Blair on Downing Street parties | T&G | Times Radio
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January 16, 2022
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18:56Now PlayingSir Tony Blair has told Times Radio he won't join calls for Boris Johnson to quit over the Downing Street parties.
Speaking to Tom Newton Dunn and Sonia Sodha on T&G on Sunday, the former prime minister said he could "understand how these things happen".
He said: "I don't get into questions of resignation or not. I'll leave that to the people in the frontline of politics today. I mean, if I'm absolutely blunt about it, in the end, what I care most about is not the presence of the parties but the absence of a plan for the country. So, you know, I understand the people feeling enraged and very angry about it. I can also, from the perspective of Downing Street, understand how these things happen. You can explain it but not really excuse it.
I've been Prime Minister for 10 years and I know how difficult it is. I don't really want to get into the business of whether people should resign or not resign and so on. The people in Downing Street would have been working under the most enormous pressure, enormous difficulty. I understand how it happened. But as I say, the trouble is, you can give an explanation but you can't really excuse it. People were obeying restrictions, often with massive personal cost and anguish and grief, and it just shouldn't be allowed to happen, frankly. But I guess he knows that."
He also discussed his controversial knighthood, Covid anti-vaxxers and vaccine hesitancy, as well as the Novak Djokovic case.
Listen in full with Tom Newton Dunn and Sonia Sodha.
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