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From Sunak to Starmer: What’s next for AI in the UK?
The guard has changed in Britain. For the first time in 14 years, the Labour Party is back in power, led by Prime Minister Keir Starmer, who took office on July 5.
Starmer was set to introduce a long-awaited artificial intelligence bill last Wednesday as part of the King’s Speech, in which Charles III read out the new government’s agenda. But the AI bill was pulled at last minute from the address for undisclosed reasons.
We’ll take a look at Labour’s agenda for potential AI legislation — what they’re planning, when it could come, and how their focus will differ from their Tory predecessors. But first, let’s examine Rishi Sunak’s legacy and whether he accomplished his goal of being a global leader on AI.
What did Sunak accomplish?
Sunak’s crowning moment was the AI Safety Summit in Bletchley Park on Nov. 1-2, 2023. The summit, held at the famed World War II codebreaking facility, was a global gathering on artificial intelligence safety aimed at international cooperation to deter AI’s worst-case scenarios from occurring. The Bletchley Declaration, the resulting document, was signed by the UK, the United States, and the European Union, but also, notably, China, along with two dozen other signatories. (And Sunak got to pal around with tech CEOs such as OpenAI’s Sam Altman, xAI’s Elon Musk, and DeepMind cofounder Mustafa Suleyman — who has since joined Microsoft.)
Bletchley was an important international agreement, but it also signaled that the UK’s leadership — under Sunak, at least — would be light-touch. He didn’t call for AI legislation, preferring to deploy Bletchley as a voluntary global corporate and government agreement.
Nick Reiners, a senior geotechnology analyst at Eurasia Group, said the hyperfocus on “existential risk” of AI is somewhat of a niche Silicon Valley obsession, a crowd that Sunak was interested in appeasing. “He saw AI as a way to build a legacy in a short time and this issue was something that animated him personally.”
What’s on deck for Labour?
Scott Bade, also a senior geotechnology analyst at Eurasia Group, doubts Starmer will follow Sunak’s lead on AI, but said he won’t throw away the standing that Sunak won for the country either. “Starmer does not have a signature global issue yet, and is unlikely to see AI as that issue,” Bade said. “But I'd be surprised if the UK didn’t keep showing up at the table to build on what Sunak did since this is the niche Britain now has in AI global governance. It will just be dialed down a peg or two.”
Compared with Sunak’s existentialist concerns, Starmer should be more focused on the short-term harms of artificial intelligence, Reiners said, citing workers’ rights and bias as examples. And with that comes the promise of actual legislation.
The bill that Labour was set to introduce would have reined in the most powerful large language models — but actual regulation seems to have been pushed off. In his speech, King Charles read off bills about cybersecurity as well as digital information, which seem to have won out over the AI bill, at least for now. “My suspicion is that they opted not to present this [AI regulation] now as they didn’t want to upset their growth narrative,” one tech leader told the Financial Times. Reiners said that departmental limits on parliamentary bills per session could be a constraint as well, and that AI was a lower priority.
When an AI bill is introduced, expect it to still be light-touch relative to the more expansive European AI Act. “I would say the UK is still generally respected as taking a thoughtful innovation-friendly approach to regulation in general,” Reiners noted.
The UK is home to successful AI startups such as Stability AI, maker of the image model Stable Diffusion, Google’s DeepMind lab, and the digital avatar company Synthesia, which we profiled in last week’s edition. And big AI-focused US tech companies, such as Microsoft and Salesforce have recently invested in the country. With the country’s economy on the ropes, Starmer’s challenge is to introduce legislative reforms that won’t totally scare off Big Tech.Keir Starmer Downing Street Leader of the Labour Party Sir Keir Starmer with his wife Lady Victoria Starmer arrives in Downing Street to take the keys to No10 after an audience with King Charles lll as he becomes the UKs Prime Minister after winning yesterdays General Election and taking control after 14 years of Conservative rule.
Starmer storms No. 10 – what’s next?
Reforming Immigration
In his first press conference, Starmer canceled the Conservatives’ Rwanda deportation plan, denouncing it as a “costly gimmick” that failed to deter migrants. He plans instead to enhance border security and dismantle human smuggling networks. Business Secretary Jonathan Reynolds later ruled out digital ID cards, which former Labour PM Tony Blair had suggested could deter migration.
Fixing Healthcare
Starmer pledged to cut waiting times for hospital treatments by introducing 40,000 more weekly operations, scans and appointments. To do so, Starmer plans to implement more weekend services through the NHS and also turn to the private sector. Funding will come from cracking down on tax avoidance.
Keeping Britain united
On Sunday, Starmer set out to visit each of the four nations of the UK — England, Scotland, Wales, and Northern Ireland. He seeks an “immediate reset” of the relationship between Westminster and devolved nations, particularly in light of the collapse of the Scottish National Party.
Boosting NATO, courting Europe
Starmer’s first foreign trip comes this week with NATO’s 75th anniversary celebration in Washington, DC. In his first press conference, Starmer pledged to maintain Britain’s staunch support for Ukraine and grow UK military spending to 2.5% of GDP. Next up, he’ll host the European Political Community Summit on July 18, giving him a chance to begin mending fences with the EU to bolster trade and economic growth Britain sorely needs.
Bringing back stability
Despite Starmer’s mandate for change, 57% of voters expect him to be “a conventional kind of Prime Minister.” In contrast, in 2019, 52% of voters thought former PM Boris Johnson would be “a completely new type of Prime Minister.” After 14 years of Tory rule, Brexit turmoil, and COVID disruption, it seems that novelty has worn off. We’ll be watching how “Prime Minister Hufflepuff” navigates his first term.
British opposition Labour Party leader Keir Starmer attends a Labour general election campaign event, in Norton Canes, Britain July 2, 2024.
The UK is on the cusp of a big change
The United Kingdom is holding its first general election in roughly half a decade on Thursday, and Prime Minister Rishi Sunak – who’s made a series of blunders while campaigning – and his Conservative Party are bracing for a major defeat.
Change is in the air. After 14 years in power and overseeing everything from Brexit to the UK’s pandemic response, the Conservatives are seemingly on the verge of being knocked off their perch. Polling has consistently shown Keir Starmer’s Labour Party with a sizable lead.
What happens after? Starmer, likely the next British prime minister, is a centrist and former human rights lawyer. Though he’s widely characterized as dull, he has been credited with reshaping Labour and making it more palatable to UK voters by shifting the party away from the far-left politics of his predecessor, Jeremy Corbyn.
Starmer has pledged to lead a government that’s “pro-business and pro-worker” but also says Labour will face “hard choices” for public spending. The party’s manifesto says it will focus on “wealth creation” and, among other goals, Labour aims to create a new publicly owned clean power company.
How Ukraine's EU membership would change Europe
Carl Bildt, former prime minister of Sweden and co-chair of the European Council on Foreign Relations, shares his perspective on European politics from Stockholm.
To which extent is the betting scandal overshadowing everything else in the last week of the UK election campaign?
Well, I mean, the Conservative Party has been the one thing after the others. They never really got traction for any of their attempts to have a, from them, positive message in this particular campaign. So it's downhill. I think to be quite honest, the election campaign is now only about the size of the catastrophic defeat for the Conservative Party. And then, of course, the Labor Party is surviving with very high figures without much clarity on exactly what the policies are going to be for the incoming Labor government.
Will the start of the talks about the accession of Ukraine to the European Union impact upon the conduct of the war?
I don't think it will immediately, but we should not underestimate the historic nature of this particular decision. A couple of years ago, the entire thought about Ukraine ever being a member of the European Union was absolutely unthinkable in Brussels among the member states. Now it's become a strategically imperative. And negotiations started this Tuesday with Moldova as well. They will take their time, but it's a sign that the 27 member states of the European Union see the future of Ukraine as an essential part of the future of a democratic Europe. And that is going to have its long term impact.
British Chancellor of the Exchequer Rishi Sunak leaves Millbank Studios after a media interview in London, Britain, May 27, 2022.
Hard Numbers: Sinking Sunak, Mellon's millions for Trump, Israelis bearish on two-state solution, Thousands displaced in Haiti, Chinese carmakers take aim at EU
516: British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak might be on the verge of making history … and not in a good way. He could be the first sitting prime minister to lose their seat in a general election, according to a new poll, which predicts Labour could win a whopping 516 seats in Parliament. Meanwhile, the poll suggests that Sunak’s Conservative Party will win just 53 seats.
50 million: Conservative billionaire Timothy Mellon reportedly sent $50 million to Donald Trump's presidential campaign the day after the former president was convicted on 34 felony counts in his hush-money trial last month. Donations disclosed to the Federal Election Commission show that the Trump campaign raked in $68 million from donors in May. Oddly, Mellon has also been the biggest donor to independent candidate Robert Kennedy Jr.’s campaign, having donated at least $20 million to his super pac in the past.
26: Amid the ongoing Israel-Hamas war in Gaza, just 26% of Israelis think a way can be found for Israel and an independent Palestinian state to coexist peacefully, according to new polling. This is a drop from 35% who said the same last year.
580,000: Nearly 580,000 people have been displaced by gang violence in Haiti, according to the UN, which amounts to roughly 5% of the country’s population. It’s estimated that gangs control more than 80% of Port-au-Prince, the Haitian capital. The country is now awaiting the arrival of a Kenya-led international police force to battle the gangs and lend support to a governing council overseen by a prime minister who was appointed in April.
25: It’s a trade war summer!Chinese carmakers are calling for a 25% tax on large European cars over the EU’s plans to impose tariffs of up to 38% on electric vehicles made in China beginning on July 4. The US also recently moved to hit Chinese electric vehicles with higher tariffs — all the way up to a staggering 100%.
Labour Party leader Keir Starmer and Conservative Party leader and Prime Minister Rishi Sunak debate, as ITV hosts the first head-to-head debate of the General Election, in Manchester, Britain, June 4, 2024 in this handout image.
Sunak vs. Starmer face off on the debate stage
Conservative Prime Minister Rishi Sunak and Keir Starmer, leader of the opposition Labour Party, squared off Tuesday night before Britain’s general election on July 4.
Who are they? Starmer is a human rights lawyer turned politician who has taken the Labour Party from very left-wing to more centrist over the last four years.
Sunak, meanwhile, is the fifth PM in the last 14 years of Conservative rule. He called last month for the upcoming election, knowing he had to call it before the end of the year – and hoping to ride a positive wave of news about falling inflation.
On the debate stage, both candidates shouted over each other about taxation, immigration, the National Health Service, the war in Gaza, and climate change.
Sunak, whose campaign has been trailing Labour by double digits for the last six months, was on the attack. He hammered home the potential costs of Labour’s plans to improve the NHS and schools which he claimed would "put everyone's taxes up by 2,000 pounds." Starmer didn’t deny that he would raise taxes, but he called the 2,000 pounds figure ridiculous and clarified that he would not raise income tax or National Insurance social security contributions.
Starmer was calm throughout, likely because his chances of winning increased the night before when Nigel Farage — a far-right Brexiteer — threw his hat in the ring as the head of the Reform Party, which will inevitably pull votes away from the Tories.
Who won? 51% of viewers polled said they thought the prime minister performed better, while 49% preferred Starmer.Prime Minister Rishi Sunak delivers a stump speech to party members at the MK Gallery in Milton Keynes, Buckinghamshire, while on the General Election campaign trail.
Sunak picks a generation fight
The golden rule of desperate politicians? Find a target, pick a fight.
In Britain, they are frantically rewriting dictionaries to ensure the word “desperate” is spelled “Sunak” after the poll-parched British PM Rishi Sunk – I mean Sunak – launched his campaign for the July 4th election.
Because Ian wrote about Sunak’s quizzical election call yesterday in his GZERO newsletter, I won’t warm over the fandango of foozles that have left Sunak a gaping 27 points behind Labour – from the now infamous rain-soaked “Drowning Street” launch to his follow-up visit to the Titanic shipyard. But desperate times call for desperate policies, so as sure as Pimm’s at Wimbledon, Sunak has predictably picked a target: young people.
“There’s no doubt that our democratic values are under threat,” Sunak said as he sprung a new promise to bring back a compulsory service for young people in Britain decades after the last one was disbanded in 1960. “That is why we will introduce a bold new model of national service for 18-year-olds.” For once, a Sunak policy announcement made more headlines than his campaign clangers.
The plan would require that all 18-year-old Brits give a year of service in the military (up to 30,000 people could do this) or, for the rest of the 700,000 members of that demographic, some other form of community service for one weekend a month, working with organizations like the police, NHS, and fire service.
The plan would cost about 2.5 billion pounds a year and its goal is to unite diverse Britons in a shared mission of values, selflessness, and service.
How popular is the idea? According to a new YouGov poll, 47% of Brits support the idea, while 45% oppose it. Even better for Conservatives looking for a wedge: 63% of folks over age 65 – voters who go to the polls and who often vote Conservative! – support the idea, and 53% between the ages of 50-64 support it. That adds up to a winning issue for Sunak.
Who’s against it? The vast majority of young people, with 65% of those aged 18 to 24 and 47% between the ages of 25 and 49 opposed to it.
This is what you call an intergenerational political war. For a policy meant to unite the country, the first thing it has done is divide it.
Still, to Sunak’s credit, the idea has got folks talking and it has merit. He has finally seized back some control of the agenda with a provocative idea instead of a pratfall. He has pointed out that a similar program has been successful in Sweden and that he is building on David Cameron’s 2010 volunteer program, the National Citizens Service, which is still in place.
There are also similar programs in the US and Canada. Every year over 200,000 young Americans participate in AmeriCorps, getting them to volunteer in community programs across the country, while generations have gone overseas to work in the Peace Corps, the famed international development program set up by President John F. Kennedy in 1961.
In Canada, Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau started a youth volunteer program called Katimavik in the late 1970s. It’s now funded under the larger Canada Service Corps, which gets young people experience in community-based programs.
All these programs are seeds of the Kennedy “ask not what your country can do for you” generation. In principle,it’s a very good thing for leaders to push for public service and to engage with youth, giving them guidance, skills, opportunity, and structure.
However, the difference between AmeriCorps or Katimavik and Sunak’s idea is that the former two are voluntary programs, not mandatory ones. If a government wants to impose mandatory service on a generation, it would be wise to spend a long time socializing the idea, getting support, and, in general, building a consensus. Springing it on the public and using it as a major campaign platform signals to young people that they are the problem Britain needs to fix.
Really? The problem is young people? It’s not the self-inflicted wound of Brexit, which Sunak supported, that tanked the economy? It’s not the struggling NHS health care system? It’s not years of inflation, high housing prices, climate issues, security issues, immigration challenges, or the scandals that have riven the government for 14 years? Nope, forget all that. The problem is the 18-year-olds who inherited this screwed-up world. Now they are being told they must fix it.
No wonder they don’t like the idea. The young people who will be forced to start this program were only three and four years old when the Conservatives took power and steered the country to this desperate point. These same young people already had one mandated behavior policy forced on them during COVID, when they were told they must stay inside their homes for the good of the country. Now, the same folks who made them lose precious years of socializing while they held secret COVID parties at Downing Street and drinking merrily are telling youths they must “get out of the house for the good of the country.” Stay in. Get out. Make up your mind, old people.
Drafting young people into service to clean up a mess they did not make is as old as politics – every wartime draft faces this issue – but it can also point to a deep lack of accountability by governments, especially those that rely on older voters for success.
Encouraging public service is a good thing, but politicians might first want to do their jobs and create a high-growth economy before forcing young people to work (or “volunteer”) to fix the very system the politicians got paid to break.
Here is an idea. Maybe Sunak & Co. should offer to work as volunteers for one full year as politicians – do their job for free for 12 months – as an example of public service to young people.
Is that a fight worth picking? Politicians forced to work for free in service of the country they are leading? Outrageous. No way. Would never fly.
Especially when they can get young people to do the job for them.
Rishi Sunak drowing.
Sunak’s gamble leaves Tories on the edge of defeat
A week ago, UK Prime Minister Rishi Sunak gambled his career, his legacy, and the future of the Conservative government by calling earlier-than-expected snap elections on July 4 – a seemingly no-win decision given that his party has been underwater by some 20 points in the polls.
Speaking of underwater, standing outside No. 10 Downing St. in the pouring rain without an umbrella (not the first nor last piece of evidence that his aides must really dislike him), the utterly soaked prime minister described his premature date with destiny as “a moment for Britain to choose its future.” Sunak argued that the most geopolitically dangerous global environment in decades (fact-check: true) calls for the stability and predictability at the helm of the UK government that only Tories can deliver (although “stability” and “predictability” are surely not the first two words that come to mind when I think of the last several years of mostly shambolic Conservative rule). The address also previewed a bitterly personal campaign against Labour leader Keir Starmer, accusing him of being willing to say anything to win power and then go back on his word (aka a politician).
The prime minister defied calls from a majority of his party’s MPs to wait to stage the poll until the fall, when they hoped (and most analysts expected) voters would start to feel the benefits of an improving economy and public opinion might have moved in the Tories’ favor. Instead, Sunak used last week’s marked drop in inflation to 2.3% – slightly higher than forecast by the Bank of England but still meeting the PM’s electoral promise to halve it – as the springboard for a six-week (Americans can only dream!) election campaign. The PM was told by his advisors that inflation had bottomed out and would rise again over the coming months – and that reduced fiscal space for tax cuts later in the year would reduce his room for maneuver down the line. This made him fear that the economic outlook was never going to look better than now.
Sunak’s decision to go for broke stunned Tory MPs who had expected him to at least wait until after the first flights deporting asylum-seekers to Rwanda had taken off, allowing him to go some way to meet another of his signature campaign pledges: “stopping the boats.” But the prospect of further implementation delays due to legal challenges after getting the law passed through parliament in April, and thousands more refugees crossing the English Channel in small dinghies during the summer months, was another reason why Sunak opted for an early election.
Another factor in Sunak’s shock decision to call the first July election since 1945, against the advice of most Tory MPs and strategists and despite consistently trailing in the polls by 20 points, was his entrenched belief that Starmer is a disingenuous flip-flopper whose soft support would crumble under the intense scrutiny of an imminent election. Hard work and good debate performances, Sunak’s thinking went, could persuade the higher-than-usual number of undecided voters (roughly 20%) to back the Tories – however reluctantly – against the unproven and untrustworthy Starmer-led Labour, creating a pathway to victory.
But that is just wishful thinking. The last time Conservatives had a polling lead was in November 2021. It’s already been a week since the announcement, and the polls have not budged. While polling gaps will likely narrow before July 4 (especially given the high proportion of undecided voters that remain, some of whom are disenchanted Tories who’ll return to the fold), Sunak would need a political miracle to pull off a comeback. After 14 years of Tory rule marred by political scandals, economic stagnation, surging immigration, and the Brexit debacle, Labour is almost certain to capitalize on the British public’s desire for change, win a comfortable majority (albeit short of the landslide secured by Tony Blair in 1997), and make Starmer the UK’s next prime minister.
To be sure, Labour's path to reviving Britain’s fading global clout won’t be smooth. For starters, the new government will inherit a sluggish economy with large structural imbalances and limited policy space. And yet, it should be decently well-positioned to deliver policies and reforms that reduce the current uncertainty about fiscal stability, rebuild relations with the European Union, and ultimately lead to a sustained rise in trade, investment, productivity, and growth.
The future remains unwritten, but a new chapter in UK history is upon us.