Tony Blair is right about one thing: we are living through a historic rupture. The old certainties of the 20th century are breaking apart under the pressure of technological revolution, geopolitical instability and economic insecurity. AI will transform how we work, learn and govern as profoundly as steam power or electricity reshaped the world before it.

Britain needs a seriousness equal to the scale of that challenge – and Labour needs the confidence to shape the future rather than retreat into arguments about the past. The answer to global disruption cannot be a longing for the Britain of the 1970s, nor even the Britain of the 1990s. The task of progressive politics is not to recreate yesterday, but to ensure ordinary working people have power, protection and opportunity in the world now emerging.

But here is the striking weakness at the heart of Tony Blair’s intervention: across thousands of words about technology, geopolitics and political strategy, the defining issue of our age is barely confronted at all. Inequality – the economic, social and democratic fracture running through modern Britain – is treated as peripheral rather than fundamental. But inequality, rather than being incidental to the crises reshaping western democracies, is actually their cause.

People are told Britain is succeeding while they cannot afford a home, and that opportunity exists even though their children face lower living standards than their parents enjoyed. They are told to work harder while wealth accumulates ever-more narrowly at the top. And they notice the unfairness.

A nurse paying back student debt sees a greater proportion of their income taxed than landlords collecting gains from rising property values. People in Britain’s poorest communities fall into ill health nearly two decades earlier than those in the wealthiest. Most private wealth is now inherited rather than earned.

When people believe the rules no longer reward effort fairly, resentment grows. And resentment never remains politically homeless for long.

Across Europe and North America, that anger increasingly fuels nationalism, protectionism and the politics of grievance. The populist right thrives not because people are irrational, but because too many feel abandoned by economic systems that appear to work for everyone except them. The false promise offered is seductive: close the borders, blame outsiders, retreat from change and somehow recover a lost past.

But decline cannot be defeated by nostalgia, and the centre left cannot answer populism merely with managerial competence or technological optimism.

Blair is right that the AI revolution is happening whether we approve of it or not. It will transform everything – already we have seen extraordinary breakthroughs that could extend healthy lives and unlock economic growth. But alongside that promise comes profound danger, whether it’s labour market disruption, technological unemployment or unprecedented concentrations of wealth, data and power.

Policy is not made in a valueless vacuum. And so the real question is whether this new industrial revolution will be governed in the interests of the many or captured by the privileged few.

That means building an education and skills system capable of preparing people for a radically changing labour market; tipping the balance of taxation away from work towards wealth; ensuring democratic sovereignty over data and AI infrastructure; and preventing monopolistic concentrations of power by global tech corporations. Above all, it means recognising that economic growth without social justice is ultimately unsustainable.

Labour succeeds when it combines dynamism with fairness, wealth creation with wealth distribution, enterprise with solidarity, ambition with security. The centre-left’s task is not simply to speak the language of markets more fluently than the Conservatives. It is to ensure markets serve society rather than dominate it.

This challenge is not only domestic. The international order itself is fragmenting. The institutions built after 1945 increasingly struggle to regulate a world defined by multinational technology firms, climate pressures and resurgent authoritarianism. It remains unclear whether democracy or tyranny will define the 21st century.

Britain must stand firmly with democratic allies who share our values. Our alliance with the US remains indispensable and rooted in deep historical ties. But Atlanticism cannot mean automatic subservience.

When US presidents flirt with authoritarian leaders, undermine international law or pursue reckless military adventurism, Britain must have the confidence to act independently. We learned at terrible cost in Iraq what happens when loyalty replaces judgment.

Britain’s long-term future lies in Europe. That does not mean pretending the politics of rejoining the EU are simple or immediate. But honesty matters. We need a new special relationship with Europe based on economic cooperation, security partnership and shared values.

The Labour party will not secure our country’s future by fighting old factional wars or recycling outdated orthodoxies. Nor will it do so through technocratic detachment from the lives people actually live.

The future belongs to those prepared to harness change in the service of justice. That is the real dividing line in modern politics: between those who believe the future can still be shaped democratically for the common good – and those content to leave it to markets, monopolies and fate. The answers must be new, but they must also be Labour.

• Wes Streeting is Labour MP for Ilford North

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