Tony Blair is dead wrong

In telling the Labour Party what it should do, the former Labour Party prime minister has shown his right wing colours.

Tony Blair by Pavel Golovkin

I used to vote for the Labour Party.

Then Tony Blair took it to the right and it was no longer the party of labour.

In a way, I can see why he did it. When Maggie Thatcher destroyed the unions with the miner’s strike, the income from union dues fell, and he was faced with the choice of having less money to fight elections with, or embracing commerce. This was before the days when it was possible to raise a lot of money in small amounts on the internet. In the USA, the Democrats faced the same choice.

Blair chose to seek money from corporations. Understandable, perhaps, though some labour values had to go if he was to attract corporate donors. What I can never forgive is how enthusiastically he did it. He dragged his party a long way to the right to where it is now, leaving Starmer with a party that has completely lost its way. A party that is not centrist, as he says it is and should remain, but right of centre. A party that does not serve labour and other ordinary people well. No wonder that it is losing votes to the left. And if Tony Blair has his way, that will continue.

He has just published a long essay on how he sees the future of the Labour Party. Here is his “Radical Centre agenda” contained within it:

“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.”

Note, his first priority is “business and entrepreneurs “ - not the people. Not the workers.

“2. We need a transformative programme for planning reform and deregulation. The planning system in Britain is an abomination. The government has taken significant steps, but well short of a truly radical reform.“

Deregulation is a right wing, corporate policy. It seeks to strip people of protections against harm from the action of corporations.

“3. We must prioritise cheaper energy and electrification over net zero and use what is left of our North Sea oil and gas resources. This is essential for our competitiveness and for taking advantage of AI.”

The aim of net zero is to lessen the effects of climate change, and it is people who would pay the price. Renewables are cheaper than North Sea oil and gas, and will not run out. Using up more fossil fuels would do little to affect the global price, and people would continue to suffer from their pollution.

“4. We should create a major new partnership with the private and voluntary sectors for apprenticeships and training – not just for the young and unemployed, but for the existing workforce whose jobs will be affected by AI and who need to learn AI adoption. Build on and not dilute the education reforms for schools started under New Labour and continued under the Conservatives. And keep our universities strong because they’re critical to the technology economy. This is the key to extending opportunity and wealth, even more than it was in 1997.”

Unions used to do a lot of apprenticeships. Labour would do well to try and boost union membership rather than rely on profit-motivated business. I do agree on keeping our universities strong - and not just the tech departments - something which Labour is failing to do.

“5. ‘Reindustrialising’ the north of the country can be encouraged by government giving incentives and help but most of all it will come through first-class infrastructure, education, freedom from bureaucracy, and government working in partnership with the private sector and with the forward-facing part of the trade-union movement. And with a broad definition of ‘industry’ if we want to create jobs because much of future manufacturing will likely be done by robots, though there will be also major opportunities in areas requiring a high degree of traditional skills. “

I’m all for manufacturing at home, but with AI and robots taking the place of people, Universal Basic Income will be needed to prevent an increase in poverty due to joblessness. Businesses are not going to hire people if machines can do the work cheaper.

“6. A plan for fundamental reform, over time, of welfare. By the end of this decade, we could be spending more on incapacity and disability benefits than on defence. No serious country can do that. Mental-health spending has exploded over the past five or six years. The system at points incentivises people not to work. The triple lock is unaffordable long term. All of this is horribly hard, but the British people know, deep down, the necessity of doing it. If the Conservative Party repeats its offer of working together on welfare, Labour should accept the offer.”

Defence spending is increasing now thanks to the Ukraine war and Trump’s crazy policies towards America’s (former?) allies. Many people are already struggling to find work and young people are struggling to join the jobs market at all. This is blaming the victim. It is not helping people.

“7. The NHS needs not NHS reform but whole-system health-care reform. Moving from cure to prevention. Mixing private and public provision in a fundamental realignment of the two. Reorganising the delivery of health care, for example making weight-loss drugs and other preventative products widely available. Getting rid of all the old shibboleths which have turned the NHS into a point of theological principle rather than a modern service where the transformative power of technology alters its foundations.”

I agree about prevention. The less private provision for the NHS the better. Anyone making a profit out of the NHS is taking money that could be used for NHS services. And companies like Palantir do not believe in the NHS at all and so should not be allowed anywhere near it. No doubt there is plenty of room for improvement, but privatisation, even partial, is not the way to go about it. For example, “Palantir’s NHS tech is ten times slower than current system“ and no doubt it is costing a small fortune. Use of private companies should be limited to where it really is the best solution.

“8. Take effective – i.e. ‘whatever it takes’ – action to solve the illegal immigration issue. The home secretary is right in believing that solving this issue is critical and has completely changed in nature since 2007. Solving it is pre-conditional to getting the British people to listen to bigger arguments about the future. We should deal by whatever means with small boats but recognise the necessity of targeted immigration in certain sectors for economic growth and be unashamed to advocate it.”

Brexit is the main cause of the problem. Aid to help the countries from which people are fleeing the effects of climate change would reduce the problem, as would peacemaking to reduce the numbers of fleeing war. Providing safe routes for those with a reasonable claim to asylum would also help. In any case, the amount of immigration has fallen considerably.

“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.”

AI has the potential to do great things. But it is also full of danger. To go full steam ahead, trusting it, would be absolute folly. Plus, the data centres would put a considerable strain on our electrical grid or, if they use their own gas plants, on our environment. “More than 100 UK datacentres plan to burn gas to generate electricity“. Moore’s law and quantum computing should solve that in a few years. Britain should not follow the other lemmings unthinkingly. Use well-tested AI trained only on facts for serious problems, and leave the rest. And have plans in place for the workers it will replace. Just as the AI companies are taking us towards a financial AI bubble, Inserting AI everywhere into our lives now is courting disaster. Already some companies are having buyer’s remorse. And talk about the danger!

“10. Our aim, for the long term, should be a Reimagined State in which taxes and spending can be lower, productivity higher and government seen as enabling not directing, with political consensus behind such a radical restructuring of the state.”

Tony Blair is full of right wing talking points in his essay, so no doubt he means reducing taxes mainly on the rich, here. And lower spending means spending less on the social safety net - on the people. Higher productivity includes either replacing more workers with robots or AI, or somehow getting more work out of people.

Tony Blair is a traitor to labour, and should have no future say in the party.