ABSTRACT
The conclusion draws out six main themes explored throughout the book to show how these were all continued under the Blair government that came into office in May 1997. These themes are: the nature of modernisation in the British state and the integral role of population data in these processes; the centralisation engendered by this pursuit of data; the reliance on technical solutions to bridge the perceived gaps in the government’s knowledge of the people; the depoliticisation inherent in this data-driven approach and how this was given a huge fillip by the advent of IT solutions; the desire within government to protect its data and its data-gathering systems from what it labelled as fraud and, allied to this, its desire to enhance and use its data systems in its struggle to control immigration. It does this to demonstrate how this government put further impetus behind the six main developments that had been honed by all its predecessors since Wilson initiated Britain’s modernising data turn. Hence, it argues that Blair’s was the latest in line to pursue the same biopolitical agenda.
