Ex-PM Blair lays out ‘advice’ to Britain’s new leader’

AFP | London

The Daily Tribune - www.newsofbahrain.com

Former Labour prime minister Tony Blair made an early intervention in British politics yesterday after Keir Starmer’s landslide election victory, urging him to have a “plan to control immigration”.

Blair warned Starmer, who will visit Scotland on his second full day as prime minister, that the anti-immigration Reform UK Party also posed a challenge to Labour, not just the Conservative Party.

The Reform UK party, led by Brexit firebrand Nigel Farage, maximised the damage to the Conservatives at the election by splitting the right-wing vote.

It won five seats in the Westminster parliament and 14 percent of the vote, prompting Farage to warn that it will target Labour voters next.

In a piece headlined “My advice to Keir Starmer”, Blair wrote in the Sunday Times that “all over the western world, traditional political parties are suffering disruption”.

“Where the system allows new entrants to emerge, they are running riot everywhere. Look at France or Italy. “We need a plan to control immigration. If we don’t have rules, we get prejudices,” he added.

Blair, the only Labour leader to lead his party to three consecutive election victories starting with his own landslide win in 1997, couched his “advice” in an article about harnessing the power of artificial intelligence (AI).

He said he believed digital ID technology offered the best solution to controlling irregular immigration, a key issue on the doorstep during the election campaign.