Tony Blair, a long-time advocate of digital IDs, has voiced his views that technology, especially AI, will help eradicate populist politics by Keir Starmer’s government and other parties, which detract from solution based approaches.
Politics can be awash with ministers trying to appease voters with party mandates while telling them what they want to hear to sway votes.
Widely accepted, the implementation of a national digital identity initiative and facial recognition cameras – so far trialled in London and Wales – would have many benefits to society, not least to tackle the biggest national “grievances” and root causes of populism in politics, which pressure points such as immigration, crime and benefit fraud. The ex-Prime Minister believes new technology can also drive efficiencies in public services, reduce costs and change the public perception on immigration and crime.
With the Reform party, led by Nigel Farage, gaining traction on these issues, they are trying to lobby the current Labour government in power to deliver on their pledges by taking bold action on tech.
Blair says that what populists do is “they take a real grievance and they exploit it but they very often don’t want to have a solution because solutions are much tougher than talking about problems”, talking about party politics.
By harnessing the full potential of artificial intelligence or digital IDs, individuals can be empowered and streamlined interactions across government can also deliver party mandates.
Under his premiership as the former Labour leader, Blair passed laws for mandatory ID cards which were later scrapped by the coalition government. He then founded the Tony Blair Institute for Global Change which convenes regular meetings on digital identity and provides recommendations for policymakers building digital ID systems.
Tackling illegal immigration has been deemed a major challenge facing many governments, which Sir Tony Blair has spoken up before regarding bringing in digital ID cards to improve the situation. 15,000 ID cards were circulated to UK citizens during the first Blair scheme. Yvette Cooper stated ID cards were not included in Labour’s manifesto in July 2024, however, Blair seems to have some believers in Digital ID alongside him, including Lord Hague, former Leader of the Conservative Party.
“That’s not our approach.”
“You’ve got to reorder the government around this technology revolution,” he says. “You should be able to have a state that is smaller, more strategic and providing greater efficiency at lower cost. That is the holy grail of governing, which people have always aspired to. Technology is the instrument that allows you to do it.” – Tony Blair, 2025.
He also supports Starmer going further on public service reform than he did during his time in office.
The UK must be “one of the leaders” in AI and the technology revolution, redesigning government operations and national identification around these technologies, as other countries forge ahead with advancing their own digital economies.
The current government should push ahead decisively with embracing digital ID to unlock the benefits.
Despite the argument protecting privacy still exists, technology has advanced further from the initial scheme by Blair in 2003. It won’t give the government power over our data but Starmer should support technologies that could give his administration an edge.
