Tony Blair: Profiteer and Emissary of Artificial Intelligence
His entire set of teeth, and gums, must be gold plated by now. Former British Prime Minister Tony Blair has decided to let the world, and more specifically Sir Keir Starmer’s freshly elected government, in on a secret: that artificial intelligence is inexorably majestic, glorious and sovereign. Embrace it and fob off the doomsdayers. Importantly for Blair, embracing it will ensure that the rivers of gold continue to flow into his private purse.
In May, the Tony Blair Institute for Global Change (TBI) released a report that unabashedly embraced the role of AI in influencing the way states govern. It is the accompanying document to Blair’s own address given at the Future of Britain Conference on July 9, which called for reimagining the state through the prism of AI. As he spoke, the sound of money going out the door was palpable.
The former PM would have the new Labour government believe, plucking various numbers out of the air, that technological reforms made to the public sector could see £12 billion of “annual fiscal space” at the conclusion of the first term, followed by £40 billion at the end of the second, with cumulative savings of £15 billion in the first term and £150 billion in the second.
As one has come to expect from Blair’s ruminations, complexity and troubling consequence is obscured by anaemic waffle. He found it hard to avoid the prospect that this enthusiastic embrace of AI by governments would see a contraction of the public sector, offering no details about chronology or severity. Little, as well, on how the revolution could offer “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.”
In Governing in the Age of AI: A New Model to Transform the State, the institute takes a hammer to the traditional caution expressed by the state. “Like all well-established organisations, the state has a bias towards caution. But this is an illusion – a failure to modernise, reform and deliver is a perilous course for a nation and those who govern it.” With a breezy confidence, the report estimates that £40 billion in annual savings will be made as things stand with current technology. “But of course, over time, this technology will accelerate dramatically in its capability, and so will the savings.”
The report is shameless in charting out the institute’s own marketing strategy. Here is the scenario, and we are happy to offer our services in facilitating it, swooping in for the corporate kill. “To access this opportunity [presented by AI], government will need a coordinated strategy to put in place the necessary infrastructure, sovereign capability and skills.” Appropriate data, “interoperable” across departments, will require investment. Models will need to be trained, with necessary computing power to “for AI to run at scale”. Enter the linking of hands between government and the private sector, something the institute is more than willing to facilitate.
Blair’s donor base is impossible to discount when considering his speeches on the subject of AI and the reports of his institute. Over the years, the billionaire co-founder of Oracle, Larry Ellison, has forked out vast sums to the organisation. In 2021, Ellison, through his philanthropic offices, furnished the institute with US$33.8 million, with a promise of US$49.4 million in 2022. These contributions should suggest more than a bit of string pulling by the likes of Ellison over the TBI research agenda, a case of purchasing corrupted advice that can be duly advertised to government and corporate clients the world over.
Benedict Macon-Cooney, the body’s chief policy strategy, is dismissive of the suggestion. “There is no conflict of interest, and donations are ringfenced.” He did, however, concede that the institute did partner public officials with companies to attain their respective goals. “Sometimes the state is the best way to do things, but if we are [to] look around and see private providers which would be better helping with reforms, then we will say so.”
In what seems like a mud wrestle between the mendacious and truth in slant, Goldman Sachs has begged to differ from the TBI’s dreams of technological nirvana in a dampening analysis. On this occasion, the devil is singing in different registers. In its June 2024 report, the investment banking colossus notes that the vast sums being expended – an estimate of US$1 trillion over the next few years is offered – on data centres, chips, AI infrastructure and the power grid has, and will have “little to show for it in so far beyond reports of efficiency gains among developers.”
The report features an interview with MIT’s Daron Acemoglu, who estimates that a mere quarter of tasks subject to AI “will be cost effective to automate within the next 10 years, implying that AI will impact less than 5% of all tasks.” In his interview, Acemoglu observes that numerous tasks currently being performed by humans “for example in the area of transportation, manufacturing, mining, etc., are multifaceted and require real-world interaction, which AI won’t be able to materially improve any time too soon.”
The GS Head of Global Equity Research, Jim Cavello, is even less impressed, noting that AI technology, to be viable, must be able to solve complex problems. AI technology is not the holy grail of company valuations, being simply too costly in terms of building critical products such as GPU chips and unable, so far, to “replicate humans’ most valuable capabilities.”
There you have it. On the one hand, the flowery promises of AI benefits and savings arising from a fierce embrace of technology by governments, as put forth by Blair and his institute. Then we have Goldman Sachs, similarly famed for its ruthless tailoring of advice to swell monetary returns. Neither is encouraging, but Blair’s offerings always come with a barely concealed odour of self-interest masquerading as human salvation.
Terminating Partnerships: The UK Ends the Rwanda Solution
The dishonour board is long. Advisors from Australia, account chasing electoral strategists, former Australian cabinet ministers happy to draw earnings in British pounds. British Conservative politicians keen to mimic their cruel advice, notably on such acid topics as immigration and the fear of porous borders.
Ghastly terminology used in Australian elections rhetorically repurposed for the British voter: “Turning the Back Boats”, the “Rwanda Solution”. Grisly figures such as Boris Johnson, Priti Patel, Suella Braverman, Rishi Sunak, showing an atavistic indifference to human rights. The cruelty and the cockups, the failures and the foul-ups. Mock the judges, mock the courts. Soil human dignity.
All this, to culminate in the end of the Rwanda Solution, declared by the new Labour Prime Minister, Keir Starmer, as “dead and buried before it even started”. Yet it was a sadistic policy of beastly proportion, offering no prospect of genuine discouragement or deterrence to new arrivals, stillborn in execution and engineered to indulge a nasty streak in the electorate.
In April 2022, the then prime minister, Boris Johnson, announced the Asylum Partnership Arrangement with Rwanda, ostensibly designed “to contribute to the prevention and combating of illegally facilitated and unlawful cross border migration by establishing a bilateral asylum partnership”.
Mysteriously, British officials suddenly found Rwanda an appropriate destination for processing asylum claims and resettling refugees, despite Kigali doing its bit to swell the ranks of potential refugees. In June 2023, the UK Court of Appeal noted the risks presented to asylum seekers, notably from ill-treatment and torture, arguing that the British government would be in breach of the European Convention on Human rights in sending them into Kigali’s clutches. In November that year, the Supreme Court reached the same conclusion.
These legal rulings did not deter the government of Rishi Sunak. With lexical sophistry bordering on the criminal, the Safety of Rwanda bill was drafted to repudiate what the UK courts had found by denying officials and the judiciary any reference to the European Convention of Human Rights and the UK’s own Human Rights Act 1998 when considering asylum claims.
The bookkeeping aspect of the endeavour was also astonishing. It envisaged the payment of some half a billion pounds to Kigali in exchange for asylum seekers. The breakdown of costs, not to mention the very plan itself, beggared belief. The Home Office would initially pay £370 million under the Economic Transformation and Integration Fund, followed by a further £20,000 for every relocated individual. Once the risibly magic number of 300 people had been reached, a further £120 million would follow.
Operational costs for each individual kept in Rwanda would amount to £150,874 over the course of five years, ceasing in the event a person wished to leave Rwanda, in which case the Home Office would pay £10,000 to assist in the move.
With biting irony, the UK government had demonstrated to Rwanda that it could replace the supposedly vile market of people smuggling in Europe with a lucrative market effectively monetising asylum seekers and refugees in exchange of pledges of development.
By February 2024, according to the National Audit Office, the UK had paid £220 million to Rwanda, with a promise of another £50 million each year over three years. It was a superb return for Kigali, given that no asylum seekers from the UK had set foot in the country. When asked at the time why he was hungrily gobbling up the finance, Paul Kagame feigned serenity. “It’s only going to be used if those people will come. If they don’t come, we can return the money.”
With an airy contemptuousness, the Kagame government has refused to return any of the monies received in anticipation of the policy’s full execution. Doris Uwicyeza Picard, the central figure coordinating the migration partnership with the UK, was blunt: “We are under no obligation to provide any refund. We will remain in constant discussions. However, it is understood that there is no obligation on either side to request or receive a refund.”
In another statement, this time from deputy spokesman for the Rwandan government, Alain Mukuralinda, the sentiment bordered on the philosophical: “The British decided to request cooperation for a long time, resulting in an agreement between the two countries that became a treaty. Now, if you come and ask for cooperation and then withdraw, that’s your decision.”
In an official note from Kigali, the government haughtily declared that the partnership had been initiated by the UK to address irregular migration, “a problem of the UK, not Rwanda.” Rwanda, for its part, had “fully upheld its side of the agreement, including with regard to finances”. Redundantly, and incredulously, the note goes on to claim that Kigali remained “committed to finding solutions to the global migration crisis, including providing safety, dignity and opportunity to refugees and migrants who come to our country.”
The less than subtle message in all of this: Rwanda is ready to keep cashing in on Europe’s unwanted asylum seekers, whatever its own record and however successful the agreement is. Kagame has no doubt not lost interest in Denmark, that other affluent country keen on outsourcing its humanitarian obligations. While Copenhagen abandoned its partnership with Rwanda in January 2023 regarding a similar arrangement to that reached with the UK, it is now showing renewed interest, notably after hosting a high-level conference on immigration.
In opening the conference on May 6, the Social Democratic Danish Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen, speaking in language that could just as easily have been associated with any far right nationalist front, decried the “de facto” collapse of the “current immigration and asylum system”. Those in the Rwandan treasury will be rubbing their hands in anticipation.
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