United Kingdom

Last week, the National Archives published new Blair government documents.

Here is what we can learn so far.

UK pushed US to delay Iraq invasion over fears Tony Blair would lose power

Britain asked the United States to delay invading Iraq in 2003 over fears that then Prime Minister Sir Tony Blair would lose power as a result of a large-scale military campaign, according to newly released UK government documents.

“The US must not promote regime change in Baghdad at the price of regime change in London,” wrote Sir David Manning, foreign policy adviser to Blair at the time, in a report on a three-hour meeting he held with his counterpart Condoleezza Rice in January 2003.

In a separate file, Sir Christopher Meyer, then British ambassador to Washington, criticised the Bush administration’s handling of the run-up to war.

In a 2002 US annual review, Meyer said the US had been “ill-served by its rhetoric: at times high-flown, neo-imperialist, moralising, unilateralist, bellicose”.

The push for war had been driven by “factions within the Washington elite, playing on a receptive president”, and had not initially enjoyed broad support among the US public, he added.

https://www.ft.com/content/27ae17b9-b13b-4d44-b6b7-307b1dc6da40

David Blunkett personally warned Blair of ‘explosive’ research into immigration attitudes in 2004.

Lord David Blunkett warned Tony Blair in 2004 that Home Office research into voter attitudes towards immigration and asylum “could be explosive” if published.

The home secretary told the prime minister that focus groups showed the public believed Britain’s borders were “completely open and overrun”

Anti-migrant views were “held fairly consistently across all ethnic groups and all age groups” the document said, with even established immigrant communities expressing hostility.

The findings on migration “could be explosive in the wrong hands” and should be circulated only “in strict confidence”, Lord Blunkett told Blair.

https://www.ft.com/content/934a1830-c54c-4532-b484-38d5cff60a73

The Blair clothes

Tony Blair and his wife Cherie received tens of thousands of pounds in discounts on designer clothing while in Downing Street, documents show.

Between July 2001 and December 2002, Mrs Blair bought clothes worth more than £75,000 – equivalent to £150,000 today – but paid just £31,000 for them.

Downing Street officials were worried these benefits would have to be declared under a new ministerial code, which was then coming into effect, and advised the Blairs to repay thousands of pounds. It is not clear from the papers if this happened.

Sir Tony, who was prime minister between 1997 and 2007, also benefited from a 25% discount from Paul Smith, famous for his suits.

"In terms of public perception," wrote No 10 private secretary Clare Sumner, "the amounts involved are quite large".

https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c0ep09el7jwo

Australia asked Tony Blair to avoid meeting ‘troublemaker’ 1999 Indigenous delegation

Tony Blair’s government was privately lobbied by Australia not to meet representatives of Indigenous communities who were described as “troublemakers”.

A memo written by Blair’s foreign affairs adviser, John Sawers, reveal the level of angst within government circles about the trip

“The Australians are pretty wound up about the idea of you seeing the Aborigines at all,” Sawers wrote in a note to Blair.

"Their high commissioner rang me to press you not to see them: they were troublemakers – it would be like [the then Australian prime minister] John Howard seeing people from Northern Ireland who were trying to stir up problems for the UK.”

The memo suggested: “Can’t we plead diary problems?” while the word “yes” is written in answer to this, in handwriting that resembles that of Blair.

https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2025/jul/22/australia-pressed-tony-blair-to-avoid-meeting-troublemaker-1999-indigenous-delegation-archives-reveal

https://spacehey.com/help/article?id=6

There is a petition to repeal the Online Safety Act, which has a good name but creates a system where we are trading off encryption for backdoors and privacy for age verification. This is literally the opposite of "Online Safety" and I believe it threatens our digital rights as UK citizens.

I'd like to encourage everyone who believes in digital safety and privacy to sign it. The petition is sitting right now at 180k signatures—already past the point for it to be considered for debate in parliament, but higher support would still flag the urgency and importance of this.

Uh oh. He's in the UK....

Source.

Archived

Schools, businesses and communities should be taught to counter cyberattacks, espionage and sabotage conducted by hostile states like Russia, British lawmakers believe

The UK Commons defence committee has called for a new homeland security minister to co-ordinate a “whole of society” response to so-called grey-zone activities which fall short of all-out military conflict.

Tan Dhesi, chairman of the cross-party committee, warned that such threats “bring war to the doorstep” of ordinary citizens.

These can include disinformation campaigns, economic coercion, espionage such as computer hacking, the weaponisation of migration, infrastructure sabotage and assassination.

The committee added that “current grey-zone attacks indicate that Russia already believes it is in an existential struggle with the West”.

[...]

Russia and China have been accused of trying to manipulate public discourse around western elections using “bot farms” that sow discord online. The Kremlin also allegedly sanctions attacks on vital undersea cables connecting European countries, and has repeatedly poisoned people on British soil.

[...]

Dhesi said: “Our adversaries have purposefully blurred the line between peace and war. Grey-zone threats pose a particularly insidious challenge: they unsettle the fabric of our day-to-day lives and undermine our ability to respond.

“These attacks do not discriminate; they target the whole of our society and so demand a whole of society response, in which we all must play our part. We must now assume that any vulnerability will be exploited against us. The industries and technologies we rely on most are clear targets for hostile states.”

[...]

Nordic nations are developing comprehensive “total defence” strategies that integrate military and civilian capabilities to address grey-zone threats. These include strengthening their armed forces and improving intelligence gathering, but also enhancing civil preparedness.

In Finland, pupils are given lessons on detecting disinformation in primary schools. Denmark, Sweden and Norway have also distributed guides to help their populations prepare for and respond to disruptions such as cyberattacks and economic coercion.

The Commons committee said that the Ministry of Defence should do “far more” engagement with wider society “both public and private — for example, critical national industries, schools and communities — to help generate a dialogue around those threats to the UK and build consensus around a common response”.

[...]

The UK and allies should also do more to protect seabed cables and infrastructure, MPs added, including by reinforcing the bows of new Royal Navy destroyers to allow them to operate more effectively in the Arctic.

[...]