Exclusive: Six tech leaders dined with investment minister, documents reveal, underlining growing influence of ex-PM’s consultancy
Tony Blair and Nick Clegg hosted a private dinner earlier this year at which a select group of technology entrepreneurs were given access to a key minister, official documents have revealed.
The former prime minister, who is a champion of the tech industry, held the dinner in an upmarket London hotel in his capacity as the head of the Tony Blair Institute (TBI) political consultancy.
He and Clegg, the former deputy prime minister who at the time was a senior executive at Meta, invited leaders of six tech companies to dine with Poppy Gustafsson, who was the government’s investment minister responsible for persuading firms to invest in Britain.
Blair is an evangelical proponent of the revolutionary potential of technology to transform faltering public services and has long courted alliances with leaders in the industry. His consultancy has echoed much of this zeal through a stream of policy papers arguing that artificial intelligence should be put at the heart of government.
However, critics are concerned that Blair, who is known to be close to Keir Starmer’s government, has been able to set the agenda without enough public scrutiny. There have also been questions over the reliance of Blair’s consultancy on donations from the Silicon Valley billionaire Larry Ellison, a friend of Donald Trump and Elon Musk.
Ellison, who this year briefly became the world’s richest person, has donated or promised more than $300m to Blair’s consultancy.
The documents released to the Guardian under freedom of information legislation show how the 12 diners discussed the government’s evolving policies on artificial intelligence at what was described a “salon dinner”.
