Tony Blair is a multi-millionaire former Prime Minister of the United Kingdom with a track record of lying and was convicted in absentia as a war criminal. He was also named in the Pandora Papers in 2021. Despite all of this, on 31 December 2021, the Queen announced that Blair would be given the most senior knighthood. Now he’s travelling the world trying to resurrect and peddle his digital IDs.
In February of this year, former Labour and Conservative Party leaders, Tony Blair and William Hague, called for the rollout of digital identification (“ID”) as part of a “fundamental reshaping of the state around technology.”
In a joint report published by the two former Party leaders titled ‘A New National Purpose: Innovation Can Power the Future of Britain’, they also called for the acceleration of the implementation of a single digital ID system for all UK residents, in the form of a digital wallet that can be accessed from a personal device.
The report states that “rather than creating a marketplace of private-sector providers to manage the government-issued identity credentials of citizens, the government should provide a secure, private, decentralised digital ID system for the benefit of both citizens and businesses.”
Whether it is the Government that has access and control over all our data – and so what we can or cannot do – or whether it is privately owned companies, makes little difference. With the global push for private-public partnerships, the result is the same – Big State control.
For a good example of this merging of private and public interests, we need to look no further than Fabian Society member Tony Blair. The former British Prime Minister joined the Foundation Board of the World Economic Forum (“WEF”) in 2007, the same year his position as UK’s Prime Minister came to an end.
Although WEF’s website no longer lists Blair as a board member, in January 2023 The Guardian reported that while an anonymous group was planning to oust Klaus Schwab as WEF’s head honcho, Blair was one of the leading international figures who was being linked with taking over Schwab’s role.
He also established the Tony Blair Institute for Global Change, with teams in more than 30 countries around the world, working to “support governments.” Blair’s Institute is an Associate Partner of WEF. The description for the institute on WEF’s website states: “It works with political leaders and governments worldwide on strategy, policy and delivery – with technology as an enabler of all three.”
Digital ID is nothing new. Blair tried to introduce it during his time as Prime Minister but was blocked by the coalition government. As it was back then, it is still controversial today. Its critics are concerned that it would represent a breach of civil liberties, an offensive intrusion by the Big State.
Silkie Carlo, director of the campaign group Big Brother Watch, said the “sprawling digital identity system” proposed by the pair “would be one of the biggest assaults on privacy ever seen in the UK”.
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