Tag: United Kingdom

Rishi Sunak is a prime minister with a famously full to-do list. At the start of the year he set himself five “pledges” — on all of inflation, economic growth, the NHS, debt and small boats — to work on in the remaining few years of his premiership. He has since undertaken what could be considered a more difficult duty, as he crusades against a stale “30 year” political consensus with net zero target tinkering and by reapportioning HS2 funding.

But there are other more unofficial, and rather more pressing, concerns that will be animating the prime minister right now. Polling shows that in his first year in No 10, Sunak has made little progress on his overarching mission of turning around the Conservative Party’s electoral fortunes; of course, underpinning this central objective is his bid to unite the Conservative Party after the trauma and tailspin of the last few years, while creating a vision he can sell to the public. He must do so against a backdrop of recurrent bad news stories, including in recent days those emanating from the Covid inquiry.

There is little sign Sunak has given up politically — as he continues his post-conference relaunch through the King’s Speech and Autumn Statement; but any prime minister 18 points behind in the polls could be forgiven for looking over the horizon of the next election and into the future. Lest he is remembered as a slightly more stable appendage to the drama of the Johnson and Truss years, Sunak might now need to curate a central, dignified policy mission that future generations can exalt.

Forging a legacy, of course, is the perennial occupation of any prime minister, posterity-minded as they are: Theresa May, after the chaos of the Brexit years, surely had one eye on the history books as she committed the UK to net zero carbon emissions by 2050. Boris Johnson cites a triplet of triumphs on Brexit, the Covid vaccine and Ukraine support. Liz Truss, well, Liz Truss has the Growth Commission. 

And when Rishi Sunak announced in June that the UK would host the “first major global summit on artificial intelligence safety”, it seemed the PM was setting the foundations for his own credible and readily-citable legacy project. 

It has become cliché now to refer to our California-dwelling prime minister as a “tech bro”, but with the Whitehouse occupied by octogenarian Joe Biden, the 43-year-old Rishi Sunak truly thinks he can be an international trailblazer on AI. 

Ultimately, if Sunak can’t save the Conservative Party at the next election, assuming a leading role in saving the world from novel technologies might seem fitting default position.

Thus, when Sunak first announced plans for a global AI summit in June, the PM and his officials quickly went about convincing countries to take the UK seriously on technology. Sunak takes pride in how he has helped repair the UK’s diplomatic standing after the testy foreign policies of the Johnson and Truss administrations. But more than this: he has embraced the international stage in a bid to leverage moments of apparent success over his doubters on the domestic front. The AI summit, No 10 may well assess, could help Sunak burnish his reputation on the world stage after recent bruising by-election losses. 

In this way, the very pledge to organise such a high-profile event inside just six months — with some world leaders already said to prefer existing governance initiatives like the G7 Hiroshima Process — serves as an indication of how keen Sunak is to be seen as a leader in the AI field. And despite the early confirmed no-shows of US president Joe Biden, Canadian prime minister Justin Trudeau, Germany’s Olaf Scholz and France’s Emmanuel Macron, Sunak seems to think his AI gamble is paying off. 

Yesterday, representatives from China and the United States shared a stage as they signed a joint statement, alongside 26 other countries, pledging to establish a new network to research frontier AI risks. The so-called “Bletchley declaration” reads: “Substantial risks may arise from potential intentional misuse or unintended issues of control relating to alignment with human intent. These issues are in part because those capabilities are not fully understood and are therefore hard to predict.”

Securing China’s signature, after the country’s invite caused considerable disquiet among his party’s foreign policy “hawks”, will be seen as Sunak breaking new ground. Meanwhile, science, innovation and technology secretary Michelle Donelan has confirmed that the next AI summit will be held in South Korea in six months’ time, with a third held in France in late 2024. It seems Sunak has set the ball rolling on a series of COP-style tech summits; if they continue long into the future, it could be a worthy legacy. 

Rishi Sunak’s AI dividing line

There is also an argument to say that Sunak is not merely content with an AI legacy, but intends to weaponise his international tech trailblazer status for his own present political purposes. 

The prime minister is, of course, an unashamed techno-optimist; in a speech last week, he declared that his decision “not to rush to regulate” AI — against the apparent instincts of the international community — is “a point of principle”. “We believe in innovation, it’s a hallmark of the British economy so we will always have a presumption to encourage it, not stifle it”, he declared. Instinctively, Sunak questions the need for legislation “for things we don’t yet understand”.

It sets up a dividing line with the Labour Party, which is carefully shadowing international opinion on artificial intelligence and stressing the potential dangers. At London “Tech Week” in June, Keir Starmer warned that AI could worsen inequality and leave some communities poorer.

“Can [AI] help build a society where everyone is included, and inequalities are narrowed not widened?”, he mused, adding: “This moment calls for Labour values, of working in partnership with business, driving technology to the public good, and ensuring people and places aren’t left behind.”

And in the wake of the AI summit, Labour has spotted an opportunity to say it would “urgently” impose new regulations on companies involved in frontier AI, the most advanced type.

Shadow tech sec Peter Kyle invoked Starmer’s “inaction man” jibe to slight Sunak’s regulation hesitation. He said: “It is not good enough for our ‘inaction man’ prime minister to say he will not rush to take action, having told the public that there are national security risks which could end our way of life”.

Labour, here, has arguably put its finger on an inherent incoherence of Sunak’s AI messaging. It is a paradox best summed up in his statement to broadcasters this morning, when he suggested we shouldn’t be “alarmist” about AI — but stressed, in the same scripted spiel, that it could lead to risks on the scale of “pandemics and nuclear war”.

It begs the question: does Sunak’s hesitation to regulate AI cohere with his new “long-term decisions for a brighter future” slogan? It’s something Labour could look to exploit down the line.

There is, of course, a question about whether tech policy is salient enough to feature with any level of prominence in a coming election campaign. But Sunak has found another dividing line with Labour, and Starmer looks set to embrace it. One wonders, though, whether the PM might need to rethink an approach built around light-touch regulation and doomsaying rhetoric. 

Josh Self is Editor of Politics.co.uk, follow him on Twitter here.

Politics.co.uk is the UK’s leading digital-only political website, providing comprehensive coverage of UK politics. Subscribe to our daily newsletter here.

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Elon Musk will head to No 10 for talks with Rishi Sunak after the PM’s AI safety summit ends formally today. 

Musk, the billionaire owner of SpaceX and Tesla, is in the UK for the event at Bletchley Park and he is one of several influential figures warning of the dangers of artificial intelligence. 

It comes as Rishi Sunak will today join world leaders for a further joint statement on how to head off the most extreme AI risks. Yesterday, 28 countries including 15 members of the G20 signed the “Bletchley declaration” on the summit’s first day, which reads: “Substantial risks may arise from potential intentional misuse or unintended issues of control relating to alignment with human intent. These issues are in part because those capabilities are not fully understood and are therefore hard to predict.”

The prime minister hailed the agreement as a “landmark achievement”.

The summit, which closes later today, will be followed by a live-streamed discussion with Rishi Sunak and Elon Musk on X (formerly Twitter). It will take place in No 10 Downing Street. 

The UK PM will not be the first politician Musk has hosted on the platform — as X was the forum of choice for Florida governor Ron DeSantis to launch his US presidential bid. 

At the summit, Musk said AI was “one of the biggest threats to humanity” because it could soon become “far smarter than the smartest human”. 

He added: “It’s not clear to me we can actually control such a thing, but I think we can aspire to guide it in a direction that’s beneficial to humanity.”

In a video address to the Bletchley Park summit, yesterday, King Charles said: “The rapid rise of powerful artificial intelligence is considered by many of the greatest thinkers of our age no less significant, no less important than the discovery of electricity, the splitting of the atom, the creation of the world wide web or even the harnessing of fire.”

He added: “AI continues to advance with ever greater speed towards models that some predict could surpass human abilities, even human understanding. There is a clear imperative to ensure that this rapidly evolving technology remains safe and secure.”

Meanwhile, US Vice President Kamala Harris warned of risks including cyber attacks and bio-weapons, while also pointing to more everyday dangers such as disinformation.

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Kemi Badenoch has argued that “silly things like pronouns” are distracting from core problems like the rise of China.

Badenoch, who serves as both secretary of state for business and trade and equalities minister, made the comments at the conference of the Alliance for Responsible Citizenship, which has brought together right-wing figures from across the world for a three-day event to discuss the direction of conservatism.

She also said the government is challenging “activist groups” like Stonewall after it got on the “wrong track on gender ideology”.

She said the government had got on the “wrong track on gender ideology” over the past decade by outsourcing policy-making to the charity.

She insisted that the government is doing much more to “challenge activist groups that take over institutions”.

She said: “There is an inflexion point coming and we need to be very focused and figure out how we are going to get ourselves into a good place.

“And that means not being distracted by all sorts of silly things like pronouns and what critical race theory is saying and measuring people’s skin colour and so on.”

“All of these things are distractions and whenever I see too much invested in those sorts of things it means that companies and individuals are not dealing with their core purposes and that is why I am sceptical about so many of those things.”

Badenoch also said at the conference in London, according to a Telegraph report: “I think we should take a step back and look at how we got here and this is where I think the Government does need to do a little bit more.

“And it’s about challenging activist groups that take over institutions. … We started going on the wrong track on gender ideology because we allowed other people to start telling us what to do.

“Ideas came from the leftist part of academia, feeding into particular charities – Stonewall is the best example of this but they’re not the only one – where they started advising government, saying this is what you need to do in order to serve a particular community.

“And then it over-reached and started giving people legal advice, or advice that was certainly different from what the Equality Act said.”

She added: “Government needs to be more confident in itself rather than asking other people to mark our homework and wanting to be on Stonewall’s top employers list, that’s when things start to go wrong.

“I think we were able to turn the tide once we stopped being influenced by people who had an agenda, pretending to be neutral, pretending to be charities rather than activists.”

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“We’re going to have to coarsen our language somewhat”, said Hugo Keith KC, lead counsel to the Covid inquiry, as he began his interrogation of Dominic Cummings, yesterday; it would soon become clear why such a warning was necessary — and the same advice stands for this article.

“A bomb site”, “useless”, “feral” “a dumpster fire”, “[a] horrific meltdown”, “terrifyingly s***”, “dysfunctional”, “useless f***pigs, morons and c***s”. That was how Cummings described the various arms of the state he interacted with during the pandemic in private messages revealed yesterday. Boris Johnson’s former chief advisor denied his language contributed to any failings, but apologised for it regardless. Still, he insisted, his language reflected “a widespread view amongst competent people at the centre of power at the time”.

Cue a string of articles outlining the “[insert number here] bombshell revelations” from the Cummings’ appearance before the Covid inquiry. Of course, there can be no doubt, Cummings‘ testimony yesterday was equal parts coruscating and captivating — as he launched into stinging broadsides directed at the culture of Whitehall governance as well as a litany of old foes.

And, as Boris Johnson’s de-facto chief of staff during the pandemic years, we know Cummings was heavily involved in the decisions made at Downing Street during this period. His testimony confirmed as much; in fact, commentators might have hitherto been understating his influence.

One document drawn upon by Keith and brandished before Cummings was an email which appeared to show Johnson’s former chief adviser attempting to control correspondence heading to the prime minister on Covid. The newly-disclosed email, justified by Cummings’ suggestion that No 10 officials were spending “too much time in crap meetings”, read: “Any Chair brief on anything related to [Covid 19] including [the Cabinet Office] and [Treasury] must be cleared by [Tom] Shinner or me — NOBODY ELSE.

“Without radical changes further disasters are guaranteed”, Cummings’ email closed. 

Yesterday, Johnson’s former confidant-turned-nemesis further justified this decision by describing the Cabinet Office as a “bomb site” during the pandemic. “This [was] causing chaos, there [had] to be some — a formalised system to actually grip this, because the Cabinet Office was a dumpster fire, and Shinner was extremely able”, he added. 

He also described the move as “one of the single, probably handful, of best decisions I made in the whole nightmare”.

Step back and, what the British public was made privy to yesterday, including newly-disclosed damning WhatsApps and Cummings and co’s oral testimony, was undoubtedly gripping. But, after the Covid inquiry adjourned one more yesterday afternoon, what had we really learnt about Johnson’s mode of governance in No 10 — and the real process of Downing Street decision-making, perhaps masked by Cummings expletive-laden WhatsApp musings?

One insight into Cummings’ own approach to government, which the ex-adviser was keen to stress early on in his testimony, was that he had told Johnson that he should conduct a reshuffle to “shrink the size of the cabinet back to where it was 100 years ago”. But Boris Johnson was not interested, and Cummings implied such a change would have streamlined decision-making in Whitehall. Keith quickly moved on.

The episode, for Cummings’ cause, was a staging post in a narrative he sought to construct before the inquiry — a rather more serious soap box than his Substack blog — that he and a few other enlightened individuals were singularly responsible for holding back a tide of Whitehall and ministerial incompetence, created by both agent and structural faults. 

Cummings painted a picture of complete chaos in No 10, as advisers, ministers and civil servants battled for the prime minister’s attention with a series of novel tactics: there was, perhaps first and foremost, what Cummings described as the “Pop-in”.

“Pop-ins”, Cummings explained, “are what people in the private office referred to when the prime minister would make a decision about something, [and] some element of the system, often in the Cabinet Office, would not like what had been agreed, and in the best Sir Humphrey ‘Yes, Minister’-style, they would wait for me and other people to not be around the prime minister and they would pop in to see the prime minister and say, “Dear prime minister, I think that this decision really wasn’t the best idea, very brave, prime minister, perhaps you should trolley on it”.

In this way, at the heart of government, Cummings and co had conjured their own vernacular to make sense of Johnson’s apparent personal failings. The verb “to trolley”, for instance, was deployed to describe the PM’s tendency to career and change direction when confronted with a particular dilemma. 

Later, Cummings was asked what, if anything, worked well during the pandemic, he responded, wryly: “Erm … well, in summer 2020 I spent quite a lot of time talking to British Special Forces and I found that they were exceptional”. (The “Erm …” is how Cummings’ response is recorded in the official inquiry transcript). 

Pressed further, Cummings explained: “I would say overall widespread failure, but pockets
of excellent people and pockets of excellent teams doing excellent work within an overall dysfunctional system”. 

The response sums up that if any future government is interested in learning how to handle a novel infectious disease, they would probably be best served looking somewhere other than Cummings’ inquiry testimony.

On Tuesday, in the end — and in spite of all of the headlines — the most revealing exchange did not come during Cummings’ testimony, but in the evidence provided by his cooler colleague, Lee Cain.

Cain, Johnson’s former communications chief, was asked about a section of his written statement to the inquiry, in which he described the central tension in Whitehall between those advisers, officials and ministers who wanted to take a cautious approach to ending  Covid containment measures, and those who wanted to unlock more quickly.

In the statement, Cain outlined how unlocking quickly was the approach favoured by the right wing of the Conservative party as well as in some sections of the printed media; he named The Telegraph newspaper as a key driving force. 

Asked whether such influences played a role in the PM’s decision-making around September/October, when officials considered whether or not to have a circuit break lockdown, Cain responded, simply: “Yes”.

He added: “I think the prime minister was torn in this issue. If he would have been in his previous role as a journalist, he would probably have been writing articles saying we should open up the beaches and how we should  get ahead with getting back. 

And I think he felt torn where the evidence on one side and public opinion, and scientific evidence was very much ‘Caution, slow, we’re almost certainly going to have to do another suppression measure’

But Cain disclosed how the “rump of the Tory party was pushing him hard in the other direction”. He went on to criticise the “Eat Out to Help Out” policy, which now-PM Rishi Sunak patronised and championed. 

On this point, there was another important revelation yesterday which showed how extra-Whitehall factors were influencing key decisions. During Cain’s testimony, an extract from former Chief Scientific Adviser Sir Patrick Vallance’s diaries from December 2020 was quoted. It read: “Chief whip says ‘I think we should let the old people get it and protect others’. PM says ‘a lot of my backbenchers think that and I must say I agree with them!”.

Ultimately, these points of evidence show that the debate over Covid policy was rather broader than Cummings described in his testimony — with his dual focuses on the PM’s failings and the Whitehall “system”. 

Beyond concocting headlines for parliament-deprived journalists, it is the Covid inquiry’s job to unpick and historicise pandemic-era decision-making; and this is a story best told, not only through the prism of the actions of Dominic Cummings or Boris Johnson — or of squandered opportunities to see the cabinet shrunk — but by taking into account a myriad of factors and influences, even those which originate far beyond Cummings’ much-loathed “system”. 

As Professor Tim Bale has noted, there may be a tendency after the testimony yesterday to retreat into a “great man theory” view of Covid governance, where Johnson’s own failings are viewed as the crucial, even sole, determinant of pandemic policy. 

But, as the Covid inquiry is piecing together, the truth is far messier. Any comprehensive view of pandemic-era decision-making will need to include factors far beyond Johnson’s personal failings or the fact, as Cain described, that a novel coronavirus “was the wrong crisis for the prime minister’s skill set”. That, after all, was surely news to nobody. 

Josh Self is Editor of Politics.co.uk, follow him on Twitter here.

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For many disabled people across the country, the clocks going back and temperatures beginning to drop mark not just the start of winter, but the start of an incredibly desperate time. Energy costs have risen dramatically in recent years, forcing many families to make difficult choices about how to stay warm in freezing temperatures without breaking the bank. And it’s disabled people who often bear the brunt.

Disabled households face myriad extra costs costs, from specialist therapies, to higher energy bills to run essential and specialist equipment like breathing machines and feeding pumps. Then there’s the costs of charging electric wheelchairs, paying for accessible transport, running the washing machine several times a day – they all come at a cost.

Heating is especially important to those who are less mobile and struggle to regulate their own body temperature. Disabled people tell us that getting too cold can be devastating – even fatal – for them, making their health and wellbeing worse. And while most families will notice an increase in energy bills during winter months, this will usually follow a ‘relief period’ of cheaper energy bills in the summer. Disabled households may not have had this luxury – equipment still needs power when the sun is shining, and if you cannot regulate your body temperature then sky-high bills for heating will just be replaced by air conditioning units and fans in the hotter months. There is no let-up.

Now disabled people are facing a second winter with insufficient financial support and many are feeling the strain. New research from national disability charity Sense, which supports children and adults with complex disabilities, reveals more than half of disabled people are coming into this winter already in debt, with two-thirds plagued by constant worries about bills.

In the face of spiralling costs and rising debts, people are looking to the government for support. But in Sense’s research, 44 per cent of disabled people said they didn’t feel they’d received enough support from the government with their energy costs – and we’re not surprised. Since the crisis began, the government’s financial support has not been sufficient, and characterised by one-off payments rather than long term support. These payments don’t go anywhere near covering the household costs disabled people need to survive.

Disabled people told us that they feel let down and sidelined and many have been forced to take drastic steps to make ends meet. Nearly one in five (18 per cent) adults with complex disabilities told Sense that they have cut back on charging their vital machinery, like feeding tubes and electric wheelchairs, in a desperate bid to save money. People’s mental and physical health is already deteriorating and as we move into winter, things will only get more extreme: nearly six in ten (57 per cent) people told Sense they’re planning on turning the heating in their homes down or completely off to save money, while half (51 per cent) will resort to ‘warm spaces’ in the community because they can’t afford their energy bills.

This situation is indefensible and more drastic measures are needed before many more disabled people are pushed into fuel poverty and into further debt.

Sense wants to see the government to introduce long-term support to help people through the financial instability caused by the cost-of-living crisis. One way the government could do this is by introducing a social energy tariff, which it was previously committed to consult on. This option has appeared to come off the agenda. A social energy tariff, which has widespread support from the charity sector, would protect disabled households who use more energy and recognise the extra costs that disabled people face through no fault of their own.

The charity’s research shows the majority (86 per cent) of disabled people would value a discounted energy scheme. The autumn budget, announced just weeks before cold weather really starts to take hold, would be the perfect opportunity for government to reignite its previous commitment to consulting on a social energy tariff. We would also like to see the government commit to increasing disability benefits in line with inflation.

We are in the middle of the worst cost-of-living crisis in decades, and government must act rather than watch for a second winter, leaving more disabled people forced into more debt and further ill-health. Proper, long-term financial support is desperately needed; otherwise even more disabled families will be pushed into total destitution.

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Oliver Dowden has dismissed the claim that former prime minister Boris Johnson saw Covid as “nature’s way of dealing with old people”.

Dowden, who serves as deputy prime minister and chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster, said that that account, which was revealed at the Covid inquiry yesterday, was “very partial”.

He told Sky News: “I’m quite sure that when the former prime minister gives evidence, he will give a full account of himself”, adding: “I’m not going to give commentary on one individual piece of information.”

The former PM’s purported comments emerged as Lee Cain, the former PM’s communications chief, and Dominic Cummings, a senior adviser to Boris Johnson in Downing Street, both gave oral evidence to the inquiry on Tuesday.

The specific remark that Covid was “nature’s way of dealing with old people” emerged from notes written by former chief scientist Sir Patrick Vallance in August 2020.

He wrote: “Numbers are going up & up. PM told he has been acting early and the public are with him (but his party is not). He says his party ‘thinks the whole thing is pathetic and Covid is just Nature’s way of dealing with old people — and I am not entirely sure I disagree with them. A lot of moderate people think it is a bit too much.’”.

A further note from August 2020 reads: “[Boris Johnson was] obsessed with older people accepting their fate and letting the young get on with life and the economy going. Quite bonkers set of exchanges.”

Elsewhere Johnson told Cain, his director of communications, via WhatsApp in October 2020: “Jeeez. I must say I have been slightly rocked by some of the data on covid fatalities. The median age is 82-81 for men 85 for women. That is above life expectancy. So get COVID and live longer. Hardly anyone under 60 goes into hospital (4 per cent) and of those virtually all survive. 

“And I no longer buy all this nhs overwhelmed stuff. Folks I think we may need to recalibrate. There are max 3m in this country aged over 80.”

Dominic Cummings’s exasperation with Johnson’s early Covid approach was captured in WhatsApps sent during a 19 March 2020 meeting which included the former prime minister.

“Get in here he’s melting down”, Cummings messaging Cain, in an apparent reference to Johnson.

“I’ve literally said same thing ten f—ing times and he still won’t absorb it”, Cummings wrote in another message.

Asked this morning about Cummings’ testimony yesterday, Dowden told Sky News this morning” didn’t have a great deal of time to watch the entire proceedings” but “caught some of it”.

He said Cummings gave a “full and frank account”, but added: “I think it’s important that the inquiry takes all those bits of evidence, pieces them together, and then gets to the truth of exactly what happened, produces its conclusions, and then the government will respond fully and comprehensively.”

It was also claimed yesterday that Rishi Sunak, then chancellor, had blocked the idea of paying people on low wages to self-isolate to stop Covid spread.

Dowden defended Sunak, saying: “The current prime minister Rishi Sunak will be giving evidence to that inquiry.

“I think he’s got an awful lot to be proud of in terms of the way he conducted himself.”

The deputy PM cited the job retention scheme which saved “many millions” of jobs.

He also insisted to Times Radio that the running of government is now better than it was during the pandemic.

Asked if things were better now than they were then, the Dowden explained: “Yes, it is certainly the case that we have learnt the lessons in many ways.

“First of all I should say when I gave evidence to the inquiry I committed that the Cabinet Office would learn the lessons that the inquiry comes up with in terms of how we conduct ourselves in future.

“But we have not sat still since Covid happened.”

He added: “This is an ongoing process and of course the conclusions of this inquiry will help inform further steps.”

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