Tony Blair - Larry Ellison's man in Gaza?

Blair's ties to the Oracle founder and Trump booster should disqualify him from any role in Gaza - or in Britain's tech future

Tony Blair at the Austrian World Summit (source: Alamy)

Tony Blair evidently has a thing for following powerful Americans. Two decades ago, he pushed Britain into George W. Bush’s disastrous invasion of Iraq.

Now, the former PM is an integral part of Donald Trump’s Gaza peace plan. Like a modern day vassal - or the panjandrums of the East India company - Blair will sit on the “board of peace” to oversee the benighted strip.

But it’s Blair’s relationship with another powerful American that I found myself thinking about a lot as I wandered around Labour conference this week.

Larry Ellison is firm friends with Blair. The two holiday together on the tech billionaire’s yacht. Since 2021, Ellison, the founder and largest shareholder in Oracle, has given and pledged £257 million to the Tony Blair Institute for Global Change.

Ellison’s cash has had a profound impact on Blair’s think tank. As we revealed last week - with our colleagues at Lighthouse Reports - current and former TBI employees who described its ability to lobby ministers directly, its joint retreats with Oracle and willingness to do “tech sales” for Ellison’s company in the rest of the world.

In the wake of our investigation, leading UK tech expert Rachel Coldicutt suggested we start calling the TBI an “Oracle dealership” not a “think tank.”

But there’s another side of Ellison - one that speaks directly to Blair’s new role in Gaza.

Ellison isn’t just one of the world’s richest men, he’s one of Benjamin Netanyahu’s more influential surrogates. He hosted the Israeli prime minister on his private Hawaiian island - while being sought as a witness in Netanyhu’s ongoing corruption trial.

The 81-year-old reportedly offered Netanyahu a paid seat on Oracle’s board of directors. Netanyahu, in turn, invited Ellison to buy major Israeli media assets. Since then Ellison’s US media empire has expanded to include a major stake in TikTok and Paramount-Skydance, which his son runs.

That Blair’s patron is so close to Netanyhu - and a leading financial backer of the Friends of the Israel Defence Forces, a charity that has directed millions of dollars to support soldiers fighting in Gaza - should strip away any legitimacy from the idea of Blair overseeing Gaza under a US-backed peace plan.

Ellison is also a big fan of another Tony Blair initiative: digital IDs. In the wake of 9/11, the Oracle founder even offered to pay for the US government to make “a national ID card with our photograph and thumbprint digitized”.

He has spoken about using AI and constant surveillance in the near future to achieve a society where “citizens will be on their best behaviour.”

Last week, Keir Starmer announced plans to introduce digital ID - just 48 hours after Blair’s institute published a report calling for their adoption.

As I saw first hand at Labour conference, the UK government’s entire approach to technology is being influenced by advocates with strong ties to a handful of big tech billionaires, and their corporate interests.

In June, Labour Together, the think tank that helped propel Starmer into Downing Street, produced a proposal for a mandatory “Britcard” as a “progressive digital identity” to prevent illegal workers being exploited by criminal bosses, which in turn suppresses wages for legal workers. The same framing used by Number 10 last week.

Labour Together’s report was penned by Kirsty Innes, who is now a special adviser to Liz Kendall, the technology secretary. Innes was previously director of the TBI’s digital government unit. Earlier this month, Blair’s former chief of staff, Liz Lloyd, was appointed as lords digital minister.

Number 10 has said that for now digital IDs will only be compulsory for right-to-work checks, but, TBI’s paper envisages a world in which Home Office data is linked up to tax and benefits systems, NHS care and even local government.

Leaving aside the privacy implications and cybersecurity risks, it is worth noting that Oracle would be well placed to do this work. Ellison’s company already has 185 active government contracts including a £710 million ten-year deal to build a digital back office for the Home Office, Department for Work and Pensions, the Ministry of Justice and the Department for the Environment, Food and Rural Affairs. This year alone, Oracle has earned £100million in revenue from the NHS, according to procurement analysts Tussell.

Britain has previous in handing Silicon Valley proprietary access to health data. The Tories awarded Palantir a £330 million NHS contract. Ellison has publicly spoken of his desire to obtain NHS data -- the last great trove of information not already fed into AI models, which independent experts value at up to £10bn annually.

Ellison’s influence over Blair, clear even to people working in his own institute, ought to bar him from playing a leading role in UK tech policy.

These connections, well known to the White House, are presumably seen by Trump as qualifications for Blair to assume a leadership role in Gaza. They ought to disqualify the former prime minister from being seen as a disinterested advisor on the fate of the Palestinians - or the UK’s tech future.

This piece was co-authored with Daniel Howden of Lighthouse Reports.