Ahead of the publication of his book about leadership – definitely not aimed at
Keir Starmer – the former prime minister talks about relinquishing power, why
he’s not fazed about a second Trump term and being an AI evangelist
Were you to board an aeroplane piloted by a man who has never previously sat in
a cockpit, you’d be alarmed. Were you to face surgery by a woman with no medical
qualifications, you’d be frightened. Politics is the one profession that can put
someone in a position of great power and responsibility without any prior
experience or demonstration of ability. “It’s bizarre,” Tony Blair says. “In any
other walk of life, that doesn’t happen.” When he became prime minister in 1997
he was in his early forties and an absolute neophyte at governing. He was much
better at it, he believes, towards the end of his decade at No 10 than at the
outset. So he’s written a book about the dos and the don’ts of leadership
“because government is a science as well as an art”.
In the first flush of taking power, leaders “listen eagerly” because they grasp
that they know little or nothing about governing. In the second stage, they know
enough to think they know everything and become impatient with listening. Hubris
becomes a danger, inviting nemesis. “You’ve got some experience, but your
experience makes you believe that you know more than you actually do. And that’s
the risk. That’s why I say stage two is the most difficult and many people never
get to stage three.” Maturity comes with the realisation that what they know is
not the sum total of political knowledge. Once again, “with more humility”, they
listen and learn.
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Tag - Civil service
Tony Blair’s powerful thinktank asked ChatGPT how AI might affect public sector
jobs. Critics say the results were … wonky
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What will AI do to employment? It is, after “will it kill us all?”, the most
important question about the technology, and it’s remarkably hard to pin down –
even as the frontier moves from science fiction to reality.
At one end of the spectrum is the slightly Pollyannaish claim that new
technology simply creates new jobs; at the other, fears of businesses replacing
entire workforces with AI tools. Sometimes, the dispute is less about end state
and more about speed of the transition: an upheaval completed in a few years is
destructive for those caught in the middle of it, in a way that one which takes
two decades may be survivable.
More than 40 per cent of tasks performed by public-sector workers could be
partly automated by a combination of AI-based software, for example
machine-learning models and large-language models, and AI-enabled hardware,
ranging from AI-enabled sensors to advanced robotics.
The government will need to invest in AI technology, upgrade its data systems,
train its workforce to use the new tools and cover any redundancy costs
associated with early exits from the workforce. Under an ambitious rollout
scheme, we estimate these costs equate to £4bn per year on average over this
parliamentary term.
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