Tony Blair gave a powerful speech at the opening of Future of Britain, today’s conference from the Tony Blair Institute for Global Change, co-hosted with My Life My Say.
Blair diagnosed the dire economic and social challenges facing the U.K., emphasizing the significant decline in economic growth and productivity over the past decade. He highlighted the “triple whammy” of high taxes, heavy debt, and poor public service outcomes, forecasting a grim future unless substantial changes leading to growth are made by the incoming Labour government.
His prescription for this lies in the application of cutting-edge technologies such as artificial intelligence to healthcare, education, and government infrastructure, which he believes will lead to substantial savings, higher productivity, and improved outcomes for citizens.
Blair underscored the U.K.’s strengths in this new technological era, including its world-class universities and leading AI companies like DeepMind. However, he warned of the risk of losing this competitive edge without proactive government policies to support AI adoption and integration. The speech called for a comprehensive 21st-century revolution with an AI-powered industrial strategy, urging the new government to embrace innovation and secure a more prosperous future for the country. He suggested that technological and transformational public sector reforms could create £12 billion of annual fiscal space by the end of the first term and £40 billion by the end of the second, and cumulative savings in the first term of around £15 billion and £150 billion in the second.
Blair pinpointed several strategic areas for focus: criminal justice, planning, transport and healthcare. The core technology was certainly AI, highlighting Goldman Sachs’ prediction of a $1 trillion investment in AI over the next decade. He also cited previous reports from his think tank that indicate the public sector could save up to 20% of workforce time, resulting in substantial savings. A specific analysis of departments like Work and Pensions done in collaboration with Faculty AI shows how AI can reduce backlogs, reimagine job centers, and cut benefit fraud.
He claimed that considerable medical science and treatment advances can be accelerated through the application of AI to data and diagnostics, reducing the crippling economic cost of preventable diseases, adding, “For the first time, a healthcare system geared to prevention rather than cure is within our grasp…even a 20% reduction in disease incidents of the six main conditions…would yield big improvements not only in health but in wealth improvements in employment and growth, and improved public finances by increasing revenue and reducing benefits payments.”
There was an awkward silence when he admitted that a consequence of this technological revolution in services would be the reduction of the public sector workforce, acknowledging that some impacts would be controversial. He did not elaborate on the scale or timelines involved in the technological displacement of jobs. Neither did he go into detail about what he meant when he said, “…this revolution offers the best route to a society that is not only more productive but one that is more equitable… a contemporary version of the combination of economic efficiency and social justice.”
He ended on a familiar Blair refrain, calling for digital identity, describing it as an essential part of modern digital infrastructure bringing ease of interaction with government and betterment of public finances, “There we have a little work of persuasion to do; it has to be said.”
Blair made clear that he believes the successful State of the future is a technological State and that an AI-powered technological revolution is on the horizon, that it should be immediately grasped, and that it is the key to Britain’s future.
