Blair urges Starmer to embrace AI to stop UK facing ‘triple whammy of high taxes, heavy debt and poor outcomes’ – UK politics live

Former PM to say new government should embrace technology in speech at conference later on Tuesday

Good morning. During the general election campaign the Institute for Fiscal Studies repeatedly said that neither of the main parties were being honest about the public spending problems the government would face over the next five years. There would have to be higher taxes or deep spending cuts, it said. Today Tony Blair, the former prime minister, is in part endorsing this analysis. His thinktank, the Tony Blair Institute for Global Change, is holding a conference on the future of Britain and it has published a paper saying that, without change to the way government operates, taxes would have to rise by 4.5 percentage points, as a share of GDP, by 2040. It says a 0.9 point rise is already baked in, another 1 point rise would be needed by the end of this parliament to avoid austerity, another 0.6 point rise would be needed by 2040 to compensate for the loss of fuel duty (as people switch to electric cars) and another 2 point rise would be needed by 2040 because of the ageing population.

But Blair says the government can avoid the need for this if it embraces the opportunities provided by technological change, and particularly artificial intelligence (AI). In his speech at the conference he will say:

Britain is facing an unenviable triple whammy of high taxes, heavy debt and poor outcomes. And worse is to come with the demographics of an aging population against us, deep structural health problems and rising numbers of long-term sick.

The simple and unavoidable truth is that unless we improve growth and productivity, and drive value and efficiency through our public spending, we’re going to become poorer. Much poorer.