A spectre is haunting British politics — the spectre of Tony Blair. The former prime minister, once seemingly stuck in a tortuous internal exile after his departure from office, has not only recovered reputationally in the years after Brexit, but also politically. Where Blair goes, it seems, Keir Starmer soon follows — a trend extending back to the ex-Labour leader’s early embrace of a second referendum.
Over the past few years the former PM’s think tank, the Tony Blair Institute, has blazed an ideological trail for the Starmer government, focused primarily on the transformative potential of technology — and specifically artificial intelligence. In May last year, the TBI published a report arguing that better use of AI could save the Government hundreds of billions of pounds. The organisation has also called for the introduction of digital ID cards and a “national AI-powered health-analytics platform” to transform the NHS.
At the beginning of this week, the Starmer government duly set out its AI plan, including proposals for a national data library. In a press conference after unveiling the plan, the PM signalled that health records controlled by the NHS could be part of this library. Alongside this, Labour’s plan calls for “AI growth zones” and much greater use of the technology in the public sector to save money. The Government, it seems, is about a year behind the TBI, much as Boris Johnson seemed to be chasing the Blairite tail during the pandemic. Naturally, the AI plan’s launch was accompanied by a newspaper op-ed from Blair, alongside former Tory leader William Hague.
Since becoming Labour leader, Starmer has also repeatedly turned to influential Blairite figures in times of crisis. First came the appointment of Blair’s former political director Matthew Doyle as director of communications following Labour’s defeat in the Hartlepool by-election of 2021. Then in 2023, Starmer made Blair’s former political secretary Pat McFadden his election coordinator, where he worked alongside Morgan McSweeney.
After becoming Prime Minister, the trend continued. In October last year, Starmer brought Blair’s former No. 10 staffer Claire Reynolds into his own operation. She was followed by Blair’s onetime chief of staff Jonathan Powell, who became Starmer’s national security adviser. Finally, just before Christmas, Peter Mandelson — the high priest of the New Labour project — was appointed Britain’s new ambassador to the United States.
From my conversations with senior Government figures, it seems Blair’s influence does not stop there. Internally, McSweeney’s Downing Street operation has also introduced the same “progress check” meetings which Blair used as prime minister to drive his agenda. Indeed, Starmer himself has taken such interest in these updates that he now regularly goes directly to Government departments to find out what is happening instead of asking senior civil servants to come to him. These progress checks are a direct lift from Blair’s experience in office, when he concluded that only by driving the Government machine from the centre would anything actually happen.
David Cameron recently complained that Starmer had not picked up the phone to ask him for advice about his time in power. Perhaps that is because he does not have to. Starmer already has another prime minister to guide the direction of policy, with AI being just the latest example.
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SubscribeStarmer will only ever seek advice from Cameron when he wants to line his pockets further.
No to digital ID. .i am not a.number, I do not wish to be harvested, I.do not want to be additionally surveilled, and I certainly do not want my life and my money to be programmed. Authoritarianism can easily give way to something darker.
“These progress checks are a direct lift from Blair’s experience in office, when he concluded that only by driving the Government machine from the centre would anything actually happen.”
Better to leave the government machine out of it wherever possible if you actually want stuff done.
Nothing really new here:
a) Starmer has no ideas of his own, b) he can’t tell the difference between good and bad ideas, c) Blair still thinks he knows best (despite plenty of evidence to the contrary), d) a huge section of the MSM are still Blair fanbois (The Times has never recovered from backing Blair).
Driving the Government machine from the centre led to the Welsh and Scottish Assemblies and what a success that has been.
You would think the epic debacle based on a lie that was the Iraq War would be enough reason to never ever listen to Tony Blair. But no. Apparently not.
I guess in a world where Alistair Campbell is listened it makes sense that Tony is too. Who else from the 90s new Labour alumni can we expect to hear from?
Blair (and the EU) has been obsessed with imposing biometric digital ID on us for a long time now. He was voted out of office also a long time ago but he never really went mores the pity.
To be fair, he wasn’t voted out of office, he gave way to Gordon Brown, as they’d secretly arranged.
He’d certainly have been voted out otherwise.
Blair vacated his PM role in 2007 and Gordon Brown took over, as per their agreement once Blair had served 10 years as PM.
In doing do, he dodged the bullet of the subsequent financial crash.
15 years after it was ejected from power, Blair-ism and Brown’s self-loathing Fabianism still dominate politics, thanks largely because the traditional news outlets support it.
Now you’d be naive to believe anything is NOT for sale in today’s Britain, but we do seem to lack any media, or indeed opposition, intellectual capacity to challenge politicians on the legal checks and balances for the citizens in such an arrangement, or (think Chagos) of what is the actual material benefit for them / UK generally.
Still, in a world where British people’s medical records are available and state sponsored euthanasia seems a real possibility, I’m sure a potential third market could be possible such as organ harvesting.
Who knows, it could prove so successful that “not for profits” such as Mr Blair’s might even be persuaded to pay tax.
We are pretty much already at the point where embracing AI will increase productivity – but that’s not the end of the story. AI itself is going to keep improving – there will be a tail-off at some point, but the limits are nowhere in sight yet, improvements, past human capabilities, have got potentially decades to run. But following on close behind the productivity improvements, is a Jobs Armageddon. Most in the Labour government probably don’t have a clue about any of this, but I would be very surprised if Tony Blair isn’t fully cognizent of the likely playout, and to me it doesn’t look as far out as medium term, we are talking short term here (although I have to confess that while I’m often proved right on the eventual outcomes, my record on timing is pretty bad).
The following kind of illustrates what I’m waffling on about:
https://youtu.be/USBW0ESLEK0?si=pS4sxXofRNStzSTq
On Monday, Starmer announces his enthusiasm for energy-intensive AI data centres. On Wednesday, Miliband announces all new connections to the Grid are paused. That doesn’t look much like Blair’s “joined up government” to me.
Test.
Test also…
Testing edit
If this is correct, and I have no reason to suspect otherwise, why isn’t Starmer being open and honest and say it out loud. Why does he keep his association with Blair, Labour’s most successful prime minister so hidden? Perhaps because Blair’s reputation is not toxic, it’s radioactive.