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In His “Radical Centralism” Essay, Tony Blair Is, As Usual, Talking His Book

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And that book was written by Larry Ellison. 

Tony Blair’s 5,600 word essay, “The Labour Party Is Playing With Fire Over Its Future and the Future of the Country”, has made some big waves since its publication on Wednesday. Blair has wielded significant behind-the-scenes influence over the Keir Starmer government during the past two years, both through his modestly named foundation, the Tony Blair Institute for Global Change, or TBI, as well as key Blairite cabinet members.

With the release of this essay, however, Blair is once again in the front and centre of the political stage. Some deluded commentators are even calling for his return as prime minister…

Many have viewed the essay as an attack on both Starmer and the main challengers to Starmer’s throne, whom Blair rightly notes have “no coherent plan” for the country.

At the same time, however, Blair seems wilfully blind to the inescapable reality that Britain’s current malaise is the result of almost half a century of neoliberal economics, of which he played a vital part in cementing. He even admonishes those on the left for daring to think that “nothing good [came] out of the last ‘40 years’ of ‘neo-liberalism'”. An apt riposte:

In this humble blogger’s opinion, Blair’s latest intervention smacks of desperation. The Starmer project is coming apart at the seams at the worst possible moment for both Blair and his corporate sugar daddy, Larry Ellison.

The foundations of the so-called “AI revolution” are not quite firmly in place yet, while public opposition to AI is rising rapidly on both sides of the Atlantic. Meanwhile, Labour’s leadership woes appear to be going from bad to worse, with nearly half of the public now saying Keir Starmer should resign rather than contest a future Labour leadership election. His potential successors — Andy Burnham, Wes Streeting and Angela Rayner — inspire zero confidence.

Unsurprisingly, the legacy media has played down some of the conflicts of interests that lie behind Blair’s latest call-to-arms while somehow trying to present his essay as a rare intervention in British politics…

A more realistic take…

Blair’s essay is brimming with what Blair calls “radical centrist” proposals (economic deregulation, a crackdown on welfare spending, pension cutbacks, more NHS privatisation, more private-public partnerships…) that could have been written at just about any time by either of the two main parties over the past 30 years.

As Richard Murphy notes in his blog post on Wednesday, which we cross-posted here, Blair’s article is full-on TINA:

Blair’s core argument is straightforward. He says Britain is entering an era of immense disruption driven by artificial intelligence, geopolitical fragmentation, declining Western dominance, climate pressures, demographic change and a new global economic order. He argues that politics as we have known it is becoming obsolete, and claims Labour has no coherent response to this transformation.

So far, so good, then, even down to Labour having no answer to those things, because it very clearly has not. What Blair does not notice is that this is because neoliberal politics – of the sort he and Bill Clinton helped create – is not designed to have those answers. Its whole purpose is not to answer questions, but to suggest that these may be found in the market.

That said, Blair is right on two points: that it would be disastrous for the UK to re-join the EU from its current position of economic and political weakness. This is particularly true if it would mean having to give up Sterling and join the eurozone straight jacket, as one senior eurocrat has suggested.

Blair also makes three particularly controversial recommendations that I believe are worth highlighting:

  1. The UK should cosy up to Trump, on whose “Board of Peace” Blair currently sits. It is vital, Blair says, that the US can trust the UK as an ally regardless of who is in power. In an interview on the Newsagents podcast, he says: “It doesn’t matter if you agree with the [current occupant of the White House’s] policies or disagree with his policies, the American relationship matters. And as a prime minister, you’ve got to explain that to the people.”
  2. The UK should take a more active role in the US-Israeli war on Iran. No great surprise here, this being Tony “Butcher of Baghdad” Blair doing the talking. To my knowledge, there isn’t a US-led war Blair hasn’t supported since NATO’s bombing of Yugoslavia in 1999. He is also one of the most fervent pro-Israel voices in British politics, which is some feat given the extent to which Israeli lobby groups have infected British political institutions, especially since joining forces with the Blairite wing of the Labour Party to bring down Jeremy Corbyn’s leadership.
  3. The UK should abandon its Net Zero commitments and embrace cheap energy, describing the Starmer government’s phasing out of oil and gas licences as key mistakes. This is not the first time Blair has pushed back against climate change policies. In April 2025, TBI launched a call to “reset action on climate change”. As always with Blair, money is the prime motivator. Cheap energy is a vital input for the data centres that will power the AI systems his foundation has been plugging for years. Besides the huge sums of money it has received from tech overlord Larry Ellison, the TBI is part-funded by oil companies and petrostates.

In all three of the aforementioned proposals, Blair is essentially talking his book, as he always does. And that book was written primarily by Larry Ellison.

Ellison is far and away TBI’s largest backer. Ellison invested $130 million in the foundation between 2021 and 2023, with a further $218 million pledged since. As Agenda Publica reports, Ellison’s donations have propelled TBI into a category all of its own among UK-based think tanks:

Ellison donations have seen it grow to close to 1,000 staff, working in at least 45 countries. It enjoys US levels of funding and influence, so while UK counterparts like Policy Exchange had income of £4.3 million in the last financial year, and the Institute of Public Policy Research registered £4.3 million in 2023, TBI’s turnover was $145.3 million…

Blair himself takes no salary from TBI but in recent years it has been able to recruit from bluechip firms like McKinsey and Silicon Valley giants Meta. In 2018 before the Oracle founder’s funding surge, TBI’s best-paid director earned $400,000. In 2023, the last year where accounts are available, the top earner took home $1.26 million.

One former staff member said the effect of this cash injection was to make the culture “toxic as fuck”, while others described a form of AI boosterism that silenced nuance and pushed the boundaries of lobbying for Oracle. Some TBI staff — including a number who left because of it — say the cash injection has produced a toxic culture at the institute that is rife with nepotism , dominated by AI optimism that silences nuance and pushes the boundaries of lobbying for Oracle.

All three of the aforementioned proposals, if acted upon, would either benefit Ellison directly, by lifting energy restrictions and regulatory obstacles for the development of AI, or indirectly — by fortifying the UK government’s relations with the Trump administration, of whom Ellison is both a prominent backer and major beneficiary, and its unquestioning support of the State of Israel, to which Ellison, a fervent Zionist, is a big donor.

As we reported in our article, Larry Ellison’s Dark Vision for “OUR” Future, Ellison has a religious-like belief in AI, describing it as “maybe” the most important discovery in the entire history of humankind — more important, seemingly, than fire, the wheel, language, steam, electricity and the atom. He is also aggressively pushing for governments to embrace AI-enabled control and surveillance technologies, with a significant onus on biometric identifiers:

The world’s fourth richest man, Larry Ellison, has a vision for the future, and it is one that most of us would never vote for if given the chance (which, of course, we won’t be). It essentially involves harvesting and storing all of a nation’s data, including all of its citizens’ most personal data, in one place, and then letting AI programs scour all over it. That data, he says, should include economic data, electronic healthcare records, including our genomic data, spatial information, agricultural data and info about infrastructure.

“I have to tell [the] AI model as much about my country as I can,” Ellison said in a recent onstage discussion with his old friend Tony Blair at the World Governments Summit. “We need to unify all the national data, put it into a database where it’s easily consumable by the AI model, and then ask whatever question you like. That’s the missing link”…

Today, Ellison is determined to turn his dystopian vision of the future into reality through his deep connections with two markedly different governments: Donald Trump’s second administration in the US and Kier Starmer’s Labour government in the UK…

Now, Ellison wants to take AI-enabled digital surveillance and control systems to a new level by totally centralising them, despite the obvious security implications. He also envisions a world without passwords and personal identification numbers (PINs) in which access to IT systems and tech platforms will be based purely on our biometric identifiers. As he says in the clip below of his recent chat with Blair, “this is the last year you will ever log onto an Oracle system with a password… biometric logins are the future.”

Ellison also talks about the need for national governments to have their own “sovereign” data centres to power their AI systems, which will no doubt provide Oracle, the world’s largest database management company, with lots of new income streams.

In an Oracle financial analysts meeting in September, Ellison told investors that AI will usher in a new era of surveillance that he said, gleefully. will ensure “citizens will be on their best behaviour.” It is as if Ellison read Orwell’s 1984 and Huxley’s Brave New World and came away with a new business model.

In September last year, the New Statesman published a report flagging growing concerns among TBI staff about Ellison’s malign influence over TBI, as his cash injections have produced “a culture that is dominated by a form of AI boosterism, and which, as they see it, amounts to lobbying for Oracle”:

The TBI, however, was welcomed by Keir Starmer’s Downing Street operation, which includes many figures with close connections to the former prime minister. Peter Kyle, an adviser in Blair’s second term, was appointed technology secretary and called on governments to show “a sense of humility” towards Big Tech companies. In an August 2024 paper on “preparing the NHS for the AI era”, TBI found “good reasons” for building new digital health records with an existing system run by Oracle.

In January 2025, Starmer’s government announced the creation of dedicated AI Growth Zones to enable the “rapid” build-out of data centres. As David Powell reported last year, the AI Growth Zones represent a fundamental shift in how the UK approaches industrial development, bypassing normal environmental assessments and community consultation processes:

This mirrors the Freeport model – special economic zones where normal rules don’t apply. While the government hasn’t explicitly confirmed tax holidays for AI Growth Zones (our FOI requests are pending), the pattern is clear: deregulation, fast-track planning, and corporate subsidies disguised as economic development.

The regulatory divergence from Europe is stark. While the EU has enacted comprehensive AI governance through the AI Act, the US and UK have pursued what JD Vance called a “hands-off approach.” This creates regulatory arbitrage – allowing practices in Britain and America that the EU has deemed too risky.

The regulatory divergence from Europe is stark. While the EU has enacted comprehensive AI governance through the AI Act, the US and UK have pursued what JD Vance called a “hands-off approach.” This creates regulatory arbitrage — allowing practices in Britain and America that the EU has deemed too risky.

Blair’s essay ends with a ten-point plan for political reform, the first of which provides a textbook example of this way of thinking:

1. The private sector will go through a process of adaptation to this new AI world and, therefore, business and entrepreneurs need to know government is on their side, removing obstacles to business growth – not creating them as they go through this massive process of adjustment. So, all those measures I described above which hold business back should be corrected or mitigated.

Yet those obstacles are exactly what are needed to protect local residents and communities from the dark externalities of AI. While companies like BlackRock profit from managing British pension funds and investing them in data infrastructure, residents near those facilities face a litany of health, environmental and financial impacts that mirror experiences in the US.

Meanwhile, the BBC flagship political discussion program Question Time is hosting a debate on AI that exclusively features pro-industry voices, including a TBI representative:

But even as the BBC imposes strict guard rails on the debates it hosts on AI, public criticism of AI is rising fast. This is hardly surprising given that AI is at root “a political project” aimed at “stripping agency from everyone, everywhere”, as Karen Hao, the author of Empire of AI, explains in the brief clip below.

The digital public infrastructure that AI systems will make possible — most notably digital identity and central bank digital currencies (CBDCs) — are primarily about surveillance and control, as we have been arguing since 2022. As Professor Richard Werner explained in his recent interview with Tucker Carlson, their ultimate goal is to permanently micromanage and control humanity.

But for all these systems to work, a fully functional digital identity platform is “vital”, as Blair himself notes in proposal #9 of his ten-point plan, which he describes as the most important of the ten points:

9. Most important of all, reorganising the whole of government around the harnessing of the 21st-century technological revolution. All governments for the foreseeable future will govern in the age of AI. Those which understand it will see their countries prosper; those which don’t, won’t. This is literally the challenge across all sectors including welfare and health (digital ID is just one, though vital, part of it). It will define the future of the British economy which, ironically, has a powerful position in technology but one we’re in danger of squandering.

The problem for Blair and Ellison is that the UK does not have a fully functional digital identity system. What’s more, the Starmer government’s attempts to introduce one have been “poorly timed” and “badly communicated”, according to a recent Home Affairs Select Committee report.

By announcing that digital ID would be de facto mandatory for anyone looking for work before quickly rowing back the statement, Starmer let the cat out of the bag too early. In so doing, he undermined the trust of the general public, as well as private sector stakeholders, the report concluded.

And if there is one thing the British public do not trust, it is national ID systems, as NC reader Michaelmas explained in a recent comment:

Every country has its shibboleths that may seem incomprehensible to some other cultures, like the right to bear arms in the US. In the UK it’s been the right never to have to carry IDs to show the police.

To try to regain the public’s trust, the Starmer government launched a public consultation on its proposal to launch a digital ID. Yet when the government’s chief AI booster and Blair lackey Darren Jones was asked what would happen if the panel of experts finds against it, he essentially ruled out scrapping the proposal.

By pretending to hold a public consultation whose outcome has already been decided, the Starmer government risks further eroding what little public trust remains in its digital identity plans. Meanwhile, the grassroot movement against data centres is growing, particularly in the US…

Is it any wonder Blair and Ellison are worried?

 

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11 comments

  1. skippy

    Fun with facts …

    “Steve Hall
    @ProfHall1955
    Doubt that Tony Blair is a Tory has always bemused me. He lived round my way from the age of 5. His arch-Thatcherite father Leo was the chairman of the local Conservative Association and, guided by his father, Tony stood as a Conservative in his school mock elections. Fettes College where he boarded was a toff hothouse that held mock ‘slave auctions’. He was groomed for Labour leadership by his Chambers boss Derry Irvine, a gaffe-prone, pro-privatisation Labourite, one of the architects of New Labour who constantly referred to Tony as ‘young Blair’. I don’t understand why anyone thinks he could have been some sort of socialist or even social democrat.”

    https://x.com/ProfHall1955/status/2060011929502953668

    Reply ↓
    1. Michaelmas

      Treason doth never prosper: what ’s the reason?
      Why, if it prosper, none dare call it treason.”
      . ― John Harington

      179 British military personnel died during the Iraq War between 2003 and 2009. An additional Ministry of Defence civilian also died, bringing the total UK loss of life to 180. Around 3,500 servicemen and women were injured, with an estimated 2,000 requiring some form of medical evacuation.
      https://blesma.org/iraq/
      Blesma, Organization for Limbless Veterans

      The Tony Blair Institute for Global Change — formerly the Tony Blair Faith Foundation, if you can stomach that — isn’t a traditional endowment-based foundation, but operates with massive revenues, reaching over $160 million annually, largely through global consulting contracts with governments and massive ‘philanthropic’ backing (e.g. the likes of Larry Ellison).

      Tony Blair is the sole owner and executive chairman…
      https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tony_Blair_Institute_for_Global_Change

      Reply ↓
  2. hemeantwell

    Fine work, Nick. Daniel Finn has a piece at Jacobin that doesn’t dig as deep as you have, but there’s this dandy quote that’s so goofy it rings the “is that long covid?” bell.

    “He goes on to compliment Trump for his willingness to press down hard on the accelerator when he sees a brick wall approaching: “Yes, there are bits flying off the bus, there is a fair amount of debris and damage, the passengers feel mildly nauseous, but, with luck, he’s through the wall.”

    And bleeding in a pile of bodies and rubble?

    Reply ↓
  3. The Rev Kev

    ‘Blair himself takes no salary from TBI but in recent years it has been able to recruit from bluechip firms like McKinsey and Silicon Valley giants Meta. In 2018 before the Oracle founder’s funding surge, TBI’s best-paid director earned $400,000. In 2023, the last year where accounts are available, the top earner took home $1.26 million.’

    In the same way that you have individuals selected and groomed to become billionaires that would otherwise be working at McDonalds, you also have organization and corporations that are also selected and groomed by the deep state for success. Typically this is done by government or corporate contracts. So Alex carp would be an example of an individual and Google of a corporation selected and boosted and that paragraph above tells me that TBI has been selected and groomed as a platform to spread policies on behalf of others.

    Reply ↓
  4. The Rev Kev

    I note something from that linked tweet from Samuel Rubinstein-

    ‘He has aged graciously, and his years of rest have served him well — one gets the sense (thanks perhaps to his Big Tech, jet-setter lifestyle) that he is really plugged into the world, that he knows what it’s all about.’

    That sounds an awful lot like Richard Nixon’s attempted comeback slogan-

    ‘He’s tanned, he’s rested, he’s ready!’

    Reply ↓
    1. Michael Fiorillo

      He’s aged graciously?

      Good Lord, he’s ghoulishness incarnate… like one of those boy-monsters who age into the face they truly deserve.

      Incredible how stupid they think we are.

      Reply ↓
      1. The Rev Kev

        If you think that he looks bad, it is a good thing that you have not seen his Dorian Gray portrait then. Before Virginia Giuffre “committed suicide” here in Oz, she wrote of one of her ‘clients’ that in his sexual usage of her, that he was vicious and cruel. She did not name him but said that he was an ex-PM. You have to wonder.

        Reply ↓
      2. lyman alpha blob

        Indeed. Never cared for Blair, but he used to be somewhat handsome.

        Looking at Rubinstein’s body of work for Unherd, it is not difficult to see what side he comes down on, and what his motivations for such a puff piece might be, given that TBI was involved with the Bored of Peace proposal that was going to make a bunch of Zionists rich as they rebuild Gaza under the watchful eye of Blair-sponsored machines of loving grace.

        Reply ↓
  5. Ignacio

    I would define Blair not as “radical” but “extreme centrist” though here we aren’t talking about the classical political divisions. This is a centre which is far, far away from the population at large where you find mostly PMC types plus a few confused pundits.

    Reply ↓

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