Tony Blair | full interview

If you read our newsletter on reimagining government for the digital age, read on for the full interview with Tony Blair

MILLTOWN PARTNERS: I'd like to take you back to 1994. You've just become leader of a party that has been out of office for 15 years - not dissimilar to the moment we're in right now. By 1997, you'd won a landslide victory. How did you get from the concept of New Labour to the reality of a Labour government? And what lessons did you learn along the way?

TONY BLAIR: We started with a very clear orientation, but it wasn't a lot more than that. The Labour party had been out of power for a long time. I remember going to my first meeting as party leader, and one of my party activists got up and said to me: “Tony, the British people have now rejected us four times in a row, what on earth is wrong with them?” 

We had gotten out of the habit of winning, and we weren't capable of understanding how the world was changing. Britain was coming to the end of the 20th century, but there was still no equality for gay people and many ethnic communities were entirely unrepresented in Parliament. We knew we needed a different type of Labour party - one that was able to appeal to a broader section of people, and that understood the need for a thriving economy and a modernised country, alongside a more just society. 

When you get into government it's completely different, because then it's not about what you say, but about what you do - which is a lot harder. Government is one of the only professions in the world in which people are appointed with no prior experience of actually governing a country. I remember sitting in the Cabinet Room on my first day in office and the Cabinet Secretary, Sir Robin Butler, said (in that very British way) “well done - now what?” That was a great question. I had a very, very limited idea of the answer until I began doing the job. 

MILLTOWN PARTNERS: We've got major elections coming up in the UK, US and Europe in the next year or so. What big ideas are you hoping to see, and what are some of the challenges that the political parties might face as they enter government?

TONY BLAIR: If I were back in politics today, the first thing that I would try to do is understand the way the world is changing. That's why my Institute (The Tony Blair Institute for Global Change) has put the technology revolution at the centre of what we do. That is the big real world change that's happening right now and we need big policy ideas about how governments can adapt to seize the opportunities this presents. 

But if you're not careful in government, you get lost in the small politics and you miss the big politics. One of the hardest things about governing is dealing with crises and events and getting buffeted around by the media. Today of course that includes social media. As with any organisation, you need to stay focused on your strategic objective. What's your vision? Where are you trying to get to? And every so often, it's good to take a step back and say “Okay, what's it all about? What are we trying to do here? Where are we going?” Keeping that focus, whilst there's constant turmoil around you, is the hardest thing about being in government.

MILLTOWN PARTNERS: You founded the Tony Blair Institute in 2016 and you’ve recently published two deeply researched reports entitled “A New National Purpose”, in collaboration with William Hague. Why did you set up the Institute, and why do you believe technology should be the UK’s New National Purpose?

TONY BLAIR: The hardest thing about government was getting anything done, so I wanted this to focus on the process of government.

There is a science of governing. In the 19th century, government wasn't very large. Then the Industrial Revolution came along and government became massively important. It created the welfare state and public services. The 20th century was an explosion of state power. Of course there was reaction to that in the Reagan/Thatcher period, but ultimately we still have a strong state. 

The technology revolution is creating change on the same scale as the industrial revolution. AI will revolutionise everything. And while I don’t pretend to be a technology expert, we have people in the Institute who really know what they're talking about. 

Luckily, we also now have a lot of lessons around how you operate in government: how you take the right strategic decisions; how you develop policy; and so on. So the purpose of writing the reports with William Hague, a former Conservative politician, was to say: this is not about traditional party politics of left and right - it's about understanding the way the world is changing and how you reposition government to take advantage of it.

MILLTOWN PARTNERS: Government institutions are not known for being entrepreneurial. You talk in your most recent report about UK state institutions not being configured to deal with the exponential growth of science and technology. How can governments experiment with new types of institutions? And how can they build the muscle pivoting when things aren’t working?

TONY BLAIR: This is where, ultimately, you need to overhaul the way governments work. Most governments - whether in the US or Africa - work in very traditional ways and have the same challenges, despite very different contexts. 

The number one problem with most traditional governments is that they rely on a civil service of generalists. In the UK system, it's seen as a strength to start in one department and move to a different department or different discipline.  

If you're living in an era of innovation, you need specialist knowledge. If I were back in government today I would bring in people from the outside. I would have a much easier flow between the public and private sector. And I would be developing specialist skill sets, particularly around technology. 

Most government departments are nowhere near where they need to be to grasp the magnitude of the change that’s coming with AI, and the necessity of reshaping government around it. So what we proposed in A New National Purpose: AI was a series of different institutions but, more importantly, a reorganisation of government led by the Prime Minister. Because we need change, driven from the centre, to make government work for a completely new generation.

MILLTOWN PARTNERS: AI is the subject of your most recent new national purpose report. It’s a technology that holds a huge amount of potential but it also comes with huge risks. The UK government has announced that it will host a summit on AI to consider internationally coordinated action. What do you think is the best outcome we can hope for from that summit, and which countries need to be at the table?

TONY BLAIR: I think the best thing we could do at this summit is to explore different systems of regulation, but probably not go completely all in on one system at this point. Because the risk is the whole technology moves on and you're left with a redundant piece of the regulation. 

We are going to need to put significant guardrails around the technology. People are starting to wake up to the risks. We do a lot of focus groups on this and the instinctive view, particularly from older generations, is fairly negative. Personally I believe AI is like any technology - you can use it for good, you can use it for bad - that's the challenge. 

Right now, I do think the UK could take a leadership position on AI, but the geopolitics warrant an incredibly thoughtful approach. Certainly America and Europe should work closely together, but the big question is how to engage with China. I can see a situation where, particularly when America is going to deny China access to certain technologies, China will use its monopoly in parts of rare earth minerals to put pressure on America, and this could move from cooperation into competition and possibly confrontation. It needs a lot of really, really careful handling. 

At the summit, I would just try and explore the parameters rather than come to a fixed conclusion.

MILLTOWN PARTNERS: AI is the issue that's attracting a lot of attention right now, but with all sorts of technologies - whether social media, nuclear energy - governments are constantly grappling with this challenge of how to encourage entrepreneurialism in the private sector while also ensuring the technology is evolving safely and in a way that's going to benefit society and economies. Have you seen any governments doing a really good job of this at the moment?

TONY BLAIR: There are governments that get it. In Europe, Estonia has effectively adopted e-government, and President Emmanuel Macron of France gets it. In the US, lots of individual states get it. Israel and Singapore get it. There are countries in Africa that are putting a lot of emphasis on it as part of their development. 

But I think what I haven't yet seen - and this is what my institute wants to work on, is how to completely reimagine government for the technological age. 

We need to rethink a lot of what government does and its interaction with the citizen. We need to reshape healthcare systems, education systems and welfare systems. Working out the exact detail of this is a big challenge. But until we do, we will not have the productivity growth or services to meet citizens’ evolving needs and expectations.