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.
Further reading:
Tony Blair prosecution over Iraq war blocked by judges, The Guardian, 31 July 2017
‘War criminal’ Tony Blair’s knighthood branded as a joke, TRT World, 2021
The British Public Has Not Forgotten the Iraq War, Proven by The Fact 1.2 million People Signed a Petition Against His Knighthood, Stop War, 1 June 2022
In February of 2023, 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.”
However, private corporations are attempting to wrestle control of the system out of the Government’s hands and place the system under their control. Katherine Holden said: “Instead of placing an additional burden on government to create a digital ID system, it’s essential that we lean on the deep-rooted expertise and cutting-edge solutions that already exist within the UK’s digital identity market. Industry has invested heavily in developing and deploying robust technological solutions.” Holden is the Head of Data Analytics, AI, and Digital Identity for techUK, “the UK’s technology trade association” with almost 1,000 members.
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.