Tony Blair: ‘Our Teams Are Embedded in Governments Around the World’

Blair Clinton
Charles McQuillan/Getty Images
Kurt Zindulka

The globalist think tank run by Tony Blair has claimed that it is “embedded in governments around the world”, supposedly advising them on the Chinese coronavirus crisis — despite the former prime minister’s connections to the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) regime.

The Tony Blair Institue said that it has “teams” advising world governments “to keep their people safe during this pandemic — not just in respect of Covid-19 itself but also the political and economic collateral damage.”

The think tank has advised governments to adopt “dramatically increased technological surveillance”, arguing that it is “a price worth paying”.

“In normal times the degree of monitoring and state intervention we are talking about here would be out of the question in liberal democracies. But these are not normal times, and the alternatives are even more unpalatable. This is quite different from the traditional debate about whether confronting security threats to our way of life merits sacrificing the values of freedom and privacy that define us,” said Chris Yiu, the institute’s executive director of technology and public policy.

Similar big government policies, such as compulsory ID cards for all citizens — ultimately defeated — were a key feature of Blair’s years in power.

The former premier has also argued that the UN’s World Health Organization (WHO) should be given “much greater heft and weight” and claimed that without more funding and support it would be “unfair to criticise them” — despite the fact that the WHO promoted Chinese communist propaganda from the outset of the coronavirus outbreak.

The after-office activities of Mr Blair, particularly in the Middle East and China, have drawn widespread criticism. Following reports linking the now-defunct Tony Blair Associates firm with the Saudi oil company PetroSaudi and the Abu Dhabi financial management firm Mubadala, the Iraq War architect resigned from his already controversial post as Middle East peace envoy at the United Nations.

Questions about Mr Blair’s close business ties with the Chinese regime and people connected the Chinese Communist Party have also been raised.

In 2015, an investigation by The Telegraph found that after leaving office Mr Blair served as a liaison between Abu Dhabi and the “highest levels of the Communist Party and state-run corporations” in bringing investment to the Xinjiang province of the country, where it is alleged that millions of Uyghurs are being interned in concentration camps by the regime in Beijing.

It is also known that Mr Blair received £200,000 to give a speech in the Chinese industrial city of Dongguan in 2007 — more than his combined salary for a year as Prime Minister and a Member of Parliament.

In an interview with POLITICO earlier this month, Mr Bair said that Western governments must come to terms with China’s new “dominant position” in the world, and that the West should abandon nationalist impulses.

Follow Kurt on Twitter at @KurtZindulka

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