The soul of the nation, fought over IDs and immigration

British politics is collapsing into a contest between weakness and insurgency. Labour’s claim to renewal is already fraying, its technocratic fixations reduced to recycled Blairism in digital drag. Reform UK, once dismissed as a protest outfit, now threatens to wipe out the government in the most brutal reversal since 1931. Polls show Farage not just eating Tory votes but tearing out Labour’s heartlands, fuelled by migration anger and a membership surge that mocks the establishment parties.

In the background, Blair re-emerges with Ellison’s millions, selling AI and digital IDs as salvation. Consent is thin, scepticism growing, yet the governing class reaches instinctively for centralisation, surveillance, and vendor capture.

This week’s Contra Brief tracks the fracture: Blair’s machine and its corporate patrons, the stasis of Starmerism, the eruption of Reform, and the sharp edge of migration politics. Britain’s future is being negotiated between a hollowed-out centre and a populist surge. Whether the country finds something more rooted will decide who really owns its soul.

Comment

Peter Geoghegan and May Bulman, writing in the New Statesman, lift the lid on the extraordinary scale and influence of the Tony Blair Institute. Since 2021, Larry Ellison has pledged at least £257m to the organisation, transforming it into a global player with nearly a thousand staff and revenues far beyond Westminster’s other think tanks. Blair preaches AI as the solution to Britain’s productivity malaise, but Ellison’s Oracle has a direct commercial stake in the policies being pushed, particularly the unification of Britain’s NHS data.

The NHS’s patient records are unique, stretching back to 1948, and potentially worth billions annually. The Institute has argued for a “single front door” to that data, often highlighting Oracle’s systems as the best fit. Former staff describe an atmosphere of AI boosterism and tech salesmanship, reinforced by joint retreats with Oracle, secondments into government, and Blair’s own interventions with ministers. Critics warn of vendor lock-in and policy capture, while examples like Rwanda’s expensive break-up with Oracle show the risks of dependency.

Blair insists his motives are altruistic, framing scepticism as fear of progress. But the facts unearthed by Geoghegan and Bulman show how closely Britain’s policy debate has become entwined with one billionaire’s interests. Ellison may not be God, but within Blair’s institute his influence feels close to divine.

The Polemic

Morgan McSweeney, Keir Starmer’s chief of staff, has been cast as the hidden hand behind Labour’s landslide writes Jonny Ball in UnHerd. In the book, Get In, authors Patrick Maguire and Gabriel Pogrund even make him the protagonist of Starmerism — the strategist who broke Corbynism through ruthless discipline and factional warfare. His nickname for the pliant Left MPs who stayed quiet under Corbyn, “the librarians,” captures his taste for hippy-punching. Yet beyond purges and control, what does McSweeney stand for?

Unlike Mandelson or Cummings, he offers no theory of politics, no intellectual framework for national renewal. Thatcher slammed down Hayek; Blair had Anthony Giddens and Marxism Today. Starmer has Roy of the Rovers, and McSweeney has only the instincts of a ward-organiser. He grasps that the obsessions of the millennial Left are an electoral cul-de-sac, but beyond that his project is victory for victory’s sake.

That vacuum is showing. Labour’s “Change” manifesto has produced a government of lawyers and process managers, not insurgents. The promise of “patriotic national renewal” sounds more like managed decline, governing in disjointed bullet points. McSweeney has become the lightning rod for this stasis, his aura of Clausewitzian genius undermined by donation scandals and thin delivery.

The danger is not that he is too Machiavellian, but that he is not Machiavellian enough. A government cannot live forever on hippy-punching alone. Unless Starmer and McSweeney can articulate what they are for, not just what they are against, the librarians may yet have the last word.

Full essay here →

Comment

Keir Starmer has thrown down the gauntlet: Britain’s next election will be a fight with Nigel Farage’s Reform UK over nothing less than the “soul of the country.” His weapon of choice is a policy once thought politically radioactive — mandatory digital ID for every worker.

“You will not be able to work in the United Kingdom if you don’t have digital ID. It is as simple as that,” Starmer declared in London, seeking to close off the shadow economy that critics say enables irregular migration. The move risks reviving memories of Tony Blair’s failed ID card scheme and the civil liberties backlash that sank it.

As David Sheppard and Anna Gross report in the Financial Times, Labour is betting voters will see digital ID as pragmatic enforcement rather than authoritarian overreach. Reform, meanwhile, pushes for mass deportations and withdrawal from the European Convention on Human Rights. Both sides now claim the patriotic mantle, but with starkly different visions of national strength.

Worth watching

In this Institute of Economic Affairs podcast, Callum Price speaks with Andrew Barclay, founder of Land of Opportunity, about why the US economy has surged ahead of Europe since 2008. Barclay argues that America’s bipartisan embrace of the “American Dream” fosters a culture that rewards aspiration, risk-taking and long-term wealth creation, supported by a tax system designed to encourage reinvestment and entrepreneurship. By contrast, Britain’s complex tax code and regulatory instincts create barriers that hold businesses back, from the VAT threshold to welfare-heavy spending. He calls for a cultural and political shift toward a “British Dream” that celebrates enterprise and innovation, insisting Britain still has the talent but must rediscover the pro-growth instincts it exported to America centuries ago.

Quote of the week

Until next time,