Writing this book has been like a journey for me. Reading it will feel like a lifetime for you. I have always been obsessed with five things: myself, politics, myself, sport and myself. This book has been my chance to find out what makes other top people in sport, business and politics as successful as me.
Winning is everything to me. I don’t mind admitting that. Winning is also a state of mind. When I ran my first marathon, I knew there was no chance of me winning a race that included several Olympic champions, so I had to set myself a realistic goal. What would winning look like to me? As a classic self-delusional narcissist, I reckoned third place would be OK. In my dreams, I won.
The same applies in politics. Take the Iraq war. Tony Blair and I knew there was no chance of actually winning the war on the ground and bringing peace to Iraq, so we had to construct our own criterion for success. What we came up with was Tony not getting indicted for war crimes, going on to make a fortune out of doing deals with dodgy third-world dictators and ending up in a California hot-tub with Wendi Deng. Judged by those standards, the Iraq war was a complete triumph.
Politics has often lagged behind business and sport in the science of winning. The reason David Cameron did not win an overall majority at the last election was that he was not ruthless enough in getting his message across. What he failed to realise was that the British public are very gullible, and if you keep telling them something for long enough, there’s a chance they’ll believe it. To my mind, that’s why Bill Clinton is one of the most successful politicians of all time: he survived any number of financial scandals, had two presidential terms, has made a fortune, has a tremendously happy marriage and had his cock sucked by Monica Lewinsky. What more could anyone ask? Vladimir Putin is also a bit of a winner, though he’s a lot shorter than me.
My mantra is Objective, Strategy, Tactics. OST. Far too many people fail to understand the difference between S and T. To find out how crucial this is, I communicated with Steve Jobs via a Ouija board. “What is the secret of your strategy?” I asked him. “Hi Al,” he replied. “It’s so great to be talking to a winner like you. My strategy was always just one word. Simplification.” “Genius, Steve,” I replied. “That’s just what I intend to do in this book with a reductive analysis of people who have succeeded at something.”
I was hungry to talk to some other great winners. In football, there are few managers whose team has so consistently underperformed in the Champions League than Arsène Wenger, so I was keen to get his views. “Er ... the referee missed some key decisions ... er ... we should definitely have been awarded a penalty ... we were definitely the better side,” he told me. “Now why don’t you ferk erff and talk to José Mourinho. “Tactics and strategy mean nothing,” José said. “All you need to win the Premier League is a Russian oligarch to bankroll the club and a manager of my brilliance.”
Winning is about not being satisfied with anything less than winning. A winner is happy under pressure and doesn’t fall into a comfort zone. In any team, there can only be one leader. Tony Blair understood that perfectly which is why he appointed John Prescott, someone with no leadership qualities, to be his deputy. Winners also need to be resilient, have a good command of the facts and be good in a crisis. Who’d have thought it? I have been involved in a few political crises in my time and have always come out on top by bullying people, shouting a lot and being entirely economical with the truth. A winner always remembers that his own survival is more important than maintaining the integrity of the democratic process.
Winners also need to be a bit lucky sometimes. The Queen is one of the world’s biggest winners, though it has to be said, she only got the job through an accident of birth, and loads of other people might have been as good if they had been given the same chance. But she’s a great queen and I now love her a lot because she’s a winner like me. We winners must stick together.
Digested read, digested: Winners for losers
