January 15, 2025 - 7:00am

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.


Tom McTague is UnHerd’s Political Editor. He is the author of Betting The House: The Inside Story of the 2017 Election.

TomMcTague