Tony Blair talks Keir Starmer, AI and globalisation

Sir Tony Blair has been out of energy for 17 years.

Yet he believes he has learnt as a lot since leaving Number 10 as he did whereas dwelling in it.

A key perception gained from the revolutions in behavioural economics and neuroscience over the previous 20 years is the extent to which our biases and experiences affect our understanding of recent info.

Even once we don’t need to, we perceive the brand new within the context of the previous.

So it’s inevitable that the latest election of a Labour prime minister after greater than a decade of Tory rule has given rise to limitless comparisons with the final election in 1997.

Both Sir Keir Starmer and Sir Tony are legal professionals by occupation.

Both have positioned themselves in opposition to the left wing of the Labour Party.

But the similarities finish there.

“The mentality today is different,” says Mr Blair.

New Labour was heading not simply in direction of the tip of the century, however the flip of the millennium, and the temper of the nation was “deeply optimistic”.

and at the moment?

“More worried.”

Britain just isn’t, as Mr Blair’s predecessor Sir John Major wished, a nation comfy with itself.

In specific, our latest financial historical past, like that of many different Western democracies, is a narrative of shocks and stagnation: “a vicious circle of increased costs, higher taxes, and poor outcomes”.

Apart from the scenario in Britain throughout their tenures being very totally different from one another, Sir Tony and Sir Keir even have very totally different political understandings and life experiences.

Mr Blair expressed concern about inequality and the plight of the poor, writing in his memoir, A Journey, that he felt extra linked to the aspirations of the center class than the considerations of the working class.

He mentioned he wished to take Labour past class battle.

Sir Keir has mentioned his “project” is to “put Labour back in the service of working people, so that it can once again become the natural vehicle for labour.” their hopes and aspirations.”

But I am told that the question “What would Tony do?” is often heard, explicitly or implicitly, within the new government, just as those running the coalition used to jokingly refer to him as “Master”.

Fortunately, for all concerned, he has penned some answers in a new book, On Leadership .

There are two central arguments for this.

First, the quality of governance and leadership is the difference between the success and failure of countries.

Effective leadership requires stability and long-term decision making.

When Mr Blair stepped down, Britain had been led by just three people for 28 years.

Now we have our sixth Prime Minister in eight years.

Second, and what is not new from Sir Tony, is that we are living through a technological revolution with consequences far greater than previous industrial revolutions.

Mainly, it is related to artificial intelligence (AI).

The former Prime Minister believes that AI will change everything, everywhere.

He is totally into it.

And his argument, which is a key pillar of his institute's work, is that “the most important query for any political chief in fashionable politics is how do I perceive, grasp, and use the know-how revolution?”

He is sometimes criticised for talking about technology in generalities or abstracts rather than in specifics, but this overlooks the many detailed policy recommendations made by his Tony Blair Institute for Global Change.

The think tank works in more than 40 countries and advises governments on policy, implementation and strategy.

Key among these: a digital ID, which is stored in a personal digital wallet for each individual so he or she can control who it is shared with.

While in power, Mr Blair spent a lot of capital on identity cards, and lost the debate.

Today, although Labour rejected digital ID, people like former chancellor George Osborne have changed their minds, and accepted Sir Tony’s point that given how much data we hand over to tech companies, and the potential benefits in running services and controlling migration, the idea should be reconsidered.

Technology gives Sir Tony the opportunity to build on the optimism he displayed after winning the Labour leadership.

He argues that there has never been a more exciting time to be in politics, because the potential of this technology revolution is so enormous.

But there is no escaping the sheer scale of the challenges.

I asked him how he would describe Britain’s place in the world compared with 20 years ago.

At least in the beginning, he was diplomatic.

He said there were three pillars of his foreign policy.

First, he believed Britain should be “America's strongest ally”, and second, we should be a “main participant in Europe”.

The third pillar was that we should use our soft power globally through the Department for International Development.

“And the reality of the matter is, the place are we now in all three circumstances?” he said.

I asked him if he was really saying that Britain was smaller and less influential in a more dangerous world.

“Yes”, they say, “but it is a consequence of the decisions we make”.

Brexit is one of them. “We must rebuild our defence capabilities,” he says, although that could be expensive.

As you will see in the interview, we had a heated discussion on globalization.

I put ahead an argument to him that Gordon Brown made itHe mentioned globalisation had produced many failures and maybe his authorities was not adequately ready for, or delicate to, it.

And national populism, which is on the rise in much of the world, is to some extent a reaction to that.

He protests.

An uncompromising globalist, Mr Blair insists that “the world just isn’t going to decelerate”, and that you have to reskill and equip people for a world that is doing the opposite.

Asked why politics in many Western democracies has shifted toward socio-cultural issues of identity and belonging, perhaps more uncomfortable territory for the Left than socio-economic policy, he says: “Where people feel the world is changing in a way over which they don’t have much control, they tend to cling to their identities.”

And on whether the failure to find weapons of mass destruction in Iraq has eroded public confidence in democracy, Mr Blair argues that no public inquiry into the Iraq war has ever found fraud.

The mistake, he stressed, was that we failed to adequately understand the area Britain and America were entering into.

Spending time in the Blair universe means being exposed to familiar patterns of thought.

They often describe people they hold in high esteem as “worthy”; constantly use the phrase “I at all times inform individuals this”; say of admirable people that so-and-so “was and is” admirable; and resort to terms such as these, so you can see politics in terms of left and right, or right and wrong.

But the biggest surprise in his new book is its constant references to the Bible, particularly to Moses.

In his memoirs written in 2010, Sir Tony said that he had a greater passion than politics: religion.

Now it can be felt clearly.

When I spoke to more than a dozen people who knew him well, including former prime ministers, in preparation for this interview, the word they most often used to describe him was “messianic.”

At 71, he nonetheless has that spirit. Whether that's good or dangerous is as much as you; however there's little doubt that he continues to have affect around the globe and at 10 Downing Street.