The Tony Blair Institute for Global Change, founded by Tony Blair around 2016, presents itself as a non-profit that advises political leaders worldwide, produces policy research and promotes “practical solutions” for governance and economic reform. It styles itself as pragmatic, pro-globalisation and pro-reform.
TBI’s branding = practical solutions for leaders. Under the critical lens it looks more like a globalist consulting firm with soft power: it builds policy templates, supplies ministers and technocrats, and helps states implement digital infrastructure and regulatory models. The 2023 paper 'Future of Britain' reads like an instruction manual for infrastructure: identity, integrated health data, centralised “service delivery” platforms. That’s where policy becomes techno-infrastructure - not just advice but roadmaps for systems that, once built, shape behaviour and limit choices. Private partners and certified providers then become the gatekeepers for who gets access.
A strategic state in sheep’s clothing: how the Tony Blair Institute pitches digital identity as transformation and as cover for permanent governance architecture
What the TBI paper says:
The Tony Blair Institute’s A New Direction pushes a “strategic state” that uses AI, data and a single digital identity to make government faster, cheaper and more personalised. It calls for big state investment in AI-era infrastructure, a national lab for safe AI, treating data as a public asset, and “a single digital identity” used across public and private services.
What it really means:
This isn’t just an ideas pamphlet about better services. It’s a blueprint for embedding a persistent, auditable civic layer into everyday life. A single digital identity plus AI-powered data platforms creates a common key that can unlock (or gate) access to health records, benefits, work, housing, and more, and it gives central authorities the tools to monitor, prioritise and nudge citizens in real time. Framed as “efficiency” and “empowerment,” the proposals also create long-lived infrastructure that normalises continuous verification and centralised data use.
Key levers hidden in plain sight:
A “single digital identity” marketed as convenience and protection becomes the canonical civic key for services and enforcement.
Treating data as a public asset builds the legal/technical basis to pool and reuse large administrative datasets for government aims.
Heavy investment in AI infrastructure (compute, labs, tiered access) centralises capability in state-controlled or state-aligned platforms, raising the bar for who controls powerful tools.
Messaging about “decentralised models” and “privacy-preserving” tech soothes dissent while standardising interoperable systems that still enable cross-checks and audit trails.
Receipts:
“A new 21st-century ‘strategic state’ would harness these technologies.”
“The government should deliver a single digital identity.”
“Remodelling data as a public asset.”
“Single digital identity.”
“A new 21st-century ‘strategic state’.”
Ominous implications:
Mission creep is baked in: Once a single ID and reused datasets exist, extending checks from benefits to housing to employment to health becomes administratively trivial.
Precision governance: Real-time analytics + audit logs mean the state can prioritise enforcement or interventions by person, employer or neighborhood — targeting at scale.
Infrastructure lock-in: Massive upfront investment in compute, labs and national datasets makes rollback politically and technically costly.
Public–private entanglement: The push for “alignment” with private-sector tech and a competitive data marketplace invites corporate gateways into civic identity and data access.
Again, don’t be fooled; this is infrastructure, not a one-off policy. The Tony Blair Institute’s plan repackages digital identity and AI as “service modernisation” while designing a permanent, auditable civic layer that normalises constant verification and cross-sector data reuse. This sits inside long-standing global governance and tech-policy networks; read it as part of a larger governance agenda, not a handful of isolated ideas.
Tony Blair and the Institute operate as contributors to WEF-adjacent global governance and tech-policy circles, so interpret this blueprint in that light. But it doesn’t end with the Tony Blair Institute…