If Euan Blair had his time again, he probably wouldn’t go to university. The 41-year-old tech entrepreneur and son of a former prime minister – Tony Blair, a great proponent of higher education – would have forgone his undergraduate degree at Bristol and master’s at Yale in favour of an apprenticeship in software engineering. “I see education as a means to an end,” he told me when we met at his offices in Paddington on a gloomy day in January.
Blair is the co-founder and chief executive of Multiverse, a tech start-up that runs digital apprenticeships and provides careers coaching. He makes his money persuading people that university isn’t – and shouldn’t be – the primary option. Blair set up Multiverse in 2016 with Sophie Adelman, a fellow entrepreneur. Its aim was to open up apprenticeships to more young people, particularly those from disadvantaged backgrounds. The company was originally called White Hat, but they changed the name to Multiverse in 2021 in a nod to “multiverse theory” – a philosophy that stipulates, Blair told me, “anything is possible because in a reality somewhere, it’s happening”. (The word is also a neat contrast with university.)
Blair has the look of a typical 2000s tech bro: excitable and casual in a branded Multiverse hoodie, jeans and trainers. Perhaps too casual. On a tour of the offices, he keenly pointed out members of the Multiverse team. When we walked past a meeting room with a half-frosted glass wall, Blair began pointing out more colleagues sitting inside, then stopped and said: “You can’t see over that, can you?” I could not; I am 5ft 3in. He marched on, unfazed. Later, he joked of a Multiverse employee – a redhead like me: “Tim loves it when he’s got another ginger to talk to!”
Blair is clearly proud of his creation, and he has reason to be. Its annual sales have grown by 79 per cent over three years. In 2023 Multiverse received backing from the Walton dynasty, the wealthy American family behind Walmart. “We’ve had a couple of record quarters,” he told me. “We’re sort of growing double year-on-year. There are very few companies in our stage that can say that.” As Multiverse’s brand has prospered, so too has Blair’s own. Last year he made his debut on the Sunday Times Rich List and is reportedly worth £375m.
Comparisons between father and son are inevitable: they are both engaging speakers, and their voices are strikingly similar. But Euan Blair champions a vision of education that is at odds with that of New Labour. Tony Blair pledged to get 50 per cent of school leavers into university. His eldest son, however, thinks this was the wrong approach. “They had this idea, his government, that the more people that went to university, the more people that would get access to the labour market,” Blair said. “And it didn’t really happen, right? Partially because the economics of higher education are really troubling.”
The financial situation of British universities is dire and is likely to get worse. In late January, Cardiff announced it will cut 400 full-time jobs because of a major funding shortfall. The University of Durham is also planning to make cuts in order to reduce costs by £10m. Last year, the Office for Students warned that 72 per cent of universities could be operating in a deficit by 2025-26. Moreover, a university education is no longer a straight path to a rewarding, well-paid career. Many graduates are saddled with debt and on a salary that will go little way to paying it off.
According to Blair, now is the opportune moment for apprenticeships. He is adamant that teaching young people practical and digital skills in workplace settings will boost their contribution to the economy. This is surely an attractive prospect to a government fixated on growth. “There has been this obsession that education is something that happens in the classroom, or happens on an academic campus,” Blair said. “But you can use education as a lever to improve someone’s earning potential, to make them better at their jobs and to make them stay in the labour market for longer.” He added: “Apprenticeships provide the most tangible way of doing that.”
Multiverse’s offering is not only aimed at would-be university students – it also offers courses and training for older workers looking to retrain. “Our most enthusiastic adopters are the over-45s,” Blair said. “More employers are saying: ‘We’ve got these staff with incredible institutional knowledge.’ If you can couple that with incredible tech knowledge, then you’re pretty unstoppable” – not a word often associated with those heading towards retirement.
Euan Anthony Blair was born in London in January 1984 to Cherie and Tony Blair, then the recently elected MP for Sedgefield. Thirteen years later, the family moved in to No 10 after Labour’s landslide victory in 1997. They stayed there for more than a decade – during which Blair began a degree in ancient history at Bristol University. He told me that, “Despite obviously Dad being the prime minister and everything else,” he had “a pretty normal” childhood. But growing up on Downing Street meant that “very early on, you sort of think about the world and your place in it”.
Blair “doesn’t really like to talk about” his father. When I directly ask about him, he abruptly moves on. Still, the former prime minister has “always been hugely supportive” of his son’s business venture, and particularly its emphasis on a digital future. Both men share a near-evangelical zeal about the importance of AI. Euan Blair becomes even more animated when he talks about it. He sees it as key to prosperity. Multiverse offers courses in AI skills to individuals and employers, and recently launched “Atlas”, an AI tool Blair described as a “Socratic coach”, which those taking courses with the company can use as part of their training. Atlas is Socratic because “instead of giving people the answers, [it] coaxes them through questioning to find the answers themselves”.
But what sets Blair apart from other AI apparatchiks is his emphasis on people over software. His argument is that – far from overtaking humanity – the AI revolution will fail without adequately trained humans to make use of it. “Make sure you train people to use this technology effectively and make sure it’s specific to the roles and the context in which they’re operating. Too often, we’re focused on the tool and software component, and not the people and skills component. The two need to go together.”
Two days before our interview, Keir Starmer set out his government’s plans to “turbocharge” AI, and a beaming Peter Kyle, the Science and Technology Secretary, espoused its merits on the broadcast round. Starmer made it clear that technology will play a defining role in his decade of national renewal. But for Blair, any drive for efficiency through technology must get the skills part right first. He explained that the public sector “operates in an environment where there is not a lot of money to spend, and resources are tight. Technology can be the solution, but the skills component is what’s going to drive it.”
In their enthusiasm for AI, he and Starmer seem likely allies. Could we see another Blair taking an active role in government in future? Euan Blair isn’t so sure. “We’re always prepared to give our opinion on skills and apprenticeships and how important that is… we’re probably being more helpful indirectly at the moment.”
[See also: Katharine Birbalsingh: “They’re going to destroy our schools”]
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This article appears in the 12 Feb 2025 issue of the New Statesman, The Reformation