Tony Blair is right. Labour has made some big and avoidable mistakes since it came to power nearly two years ago. Keir Starmer had a strategy for winning the election but lacked a coherent plan for what his government would do next. Fair cop.

Blair is also correct when he says that unless Britain tackles some long-term structural issues, it is in danger of being relegated from the “premier league of nations”. Achieving higher levels of sustainable growth is one challenge. Welfare reform is another. And as the former prime minister notes, reversing Brexit is not a solution to those problems.

But, all that said, Blair’s 5,700-word essay published by his Institute for Global Change is a flawed analysis of what the country needs. It is one part nostalgia for a golden Blairite era that never was, one part belief that AI is the answer and one part failure to accept that the current crop of Labour politicians might be on to something.

AI is a case in point. The UK government is trying to steer a middle way – a very Blairite concept – in its approach. It wants to encourage AI startups while providing the proper regulatory safeguards to protect the public. It doesn’t want regulation to stifle innovation, as it does in the EU, but nor does it want a free-for-all. This seems a sensible approach. Blair, from what he says, seems to have drunk far too much of the Silicon Valley Kool-Aid.

He has also been too quick to jump on the anti-net zero bandwagon, a curious stance for a politician whose government........

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