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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.
NATO Summit: Biden's uncertain future worries US allies
Ian Bremmer shares his insights on global politics this week on World In :60.
What are you watching for at the NATO summit?
Well, first and foremost, it's how all of these allies are responding to a very real political crisis in the United States. US, of course, the country they rely on for leading NATO, by far the biggest military power in the world, their principal ally. And they now know that the likelihood that Biden is going to be able to win, is a lot lower than it was the last time they saw him. And they've been seeing him. They saw him at the G7. They saw him in Normandy. They saw him, you know, at the United Nations and some in bunch of bilats and and everyone I've spoken to, says that they're not all confident that he can win. They certainly don't think he can serve out four more years. And they're deeply worried, especially because what a Trump administration might mean for them, with the exception of Viktor Orbán, almost all the NATO allies are very worried. They know that NATO, the EU, the war in Ukraine, all of that much more uncertain if Trump were to come back as president. So that's what I'm watching for and see how that plays out.
How will the UK's new PM, Keir Starmer, lead Britain?
Economically, not all that different. He's focused unusually for labor, focused on a pro-growth policy. He's promised that he isn't going to raise the major taxes like income tax and VAT. And so, he will probably find some more money in things like inheritance tax, he’s going to try to get more private sector investment into the economy. Certainly, wants to have a consistent policy on Ukraine, consistent policy on the United States as the previous conservative governments. Big change will be tried to reestablish stronger relations with the European Union and particularly Ursula von der Leyen, expected to get the nod for another five years running the EU. Keir Starmer spent a lot of personal time working on that over the past months.
As a Russian missile struck a children's hospital in Kyiv is there still no end in sight for the war in Ukraine?
No, no, there's no end in sight. in fact, while that was happening, Narendra Modi, the Indian PM was being quite friendly in Moscow on his visit with Putin. This is a partner of the United States. Putin feels like right now, especially if Trump is elected that his bet on this invasion in Ukraine will work out well for him. And that is not what NATO allies want Putin to be thinking right now. There's been success in getting them a lot of support, the Ukrainians, over the course of the last six months, and certainly they're going to have more money over the next year. But longer term, there's a huge question about how that plays out. And Putin is showing impunity right at the beginning of the NATO summit by sending all those missiles at civilian targets, including sick kids in Ukraine. Not a surprise. but still pretty sickening.
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UK's new PM Starmer aims for closer EU ties
Carl Bildt, former prime minister of Sweden and co-chair of the European Council on Foreign Relations, shares his perspective on European politics from the Adriatic Sea.
How will the new UK Prime Minister Keir Starmer reset relations at home and abroad?
Well, I think overall there's going to be a lot of continuity in terms of foreign and security policies. They've already sent the defense secretary to Kyiv to say that if anything, it's going to be even stronger support. But in terms of Europe, it’s going to be a new nuance and new attempts. The new foreign secretary, David Lammy, has already been to Germany, he's been to Poland, he’s been to Sweden, and he's talked about a European pact, foreign and security issues, cooperating more closely. And he's been invited to a meeting with all of the foreign ministers. So that's where we are likely to see, some change in the months and perhaps years ahead.
How did Macron survive the snap election in France?
Yep, that remains to be seen. There was, of course, a surprise result in the sense that the extreme right came in third after first the left, which has some extreme element, and then President Macron's coalition. But it's a hung parliament. There's no clear answer who's going to govern. So, we'll have to wait and see what's going to be the governance of France. I think the emphasis has shifted from isolating the far right to isolating the far left and see some sort of stable government can be made out of that. Very much an open question.
In global elections, incumbents are in trouble
Ian Bremmer's Quick Take: Hi everybody. Ian Bremmer here and a Quick Take to kick off your week. Lots going on especially big elections. We have the France results. We have the UK results. We have the Iran results. We have a lot of uncertainty of course, here in the United States. My big takeaway is this is a horrible time to be an incumbent.
It's really challenging and what a huge reason for it that people aren't talking about, because it's already way in the rearview mirror is the pandemic. If I'm talking to you right now, your life was really changed by the pandemic in ways that you never would have expected before, right? I mean, we all had to deal with social distancing and masking and vaccine and not only that, but of course, the global economy seized up and people also stopped moving around for like a couple of years. An enormous amount, trillions and trillions of dollars were spent and that got us through an incredibly difficult time. But on the back of that, you suddenly have no more money that's being thrown at everyone, and you've got inflation that comes from, all of a sudden, the supply chains moving and demand moving. You know that these are costs that people are paying, that people no longer have those checks that were coming in during the pandemic, and those savings have been deployed already if you're working or even middle class. And people are moving again, people are moving not just from city to city, but also around the world. So migration is really picking up. And you really don't want to be the leader who's holding the bag when that happens. That's absolutely a big piece of what happened in France. It's a big piece of what happened in the United Kingdom, South Africa, India.
Lots of these elections are people that are unhappy with their existing leadership because it is such an unprecedented environment, and they're having a hard time dealing with that. There are other issues, too, don't get me wrong. And certainly in the UK, the fact that this also comes on the back of Brexit and a level of perceived incompetence on the part of successive conservative prime ministers who were not elected by the population but were selected by the party. The Labor Party did just as well in 2024 as they did in 2019. I think they picked from 33% to 34% total population. It was hardly a landslide, but the Conservative Party imploded because people were unhappy with them. And that is very much the story. It's that the existing incumbents are not doing well.
Macron is not doing well. He's lost so many seats in France and the far right has doubled their number in the parliament and the far left and the left coalition that is not Macron's centrist have also done far better, far better than anyone expected.In fact, they came in number one. Percentage wise, it's Macron in the center that is falling apart in France. That's the big lesson. It's not that the far right is doing well or badly. Some of the far left is doing well or badly. It’s that the incumbent, whoever they are, are really getting hit. Now that leads to a big question here in the United States.
November is coming up. Our elections are way too long. They're way too expensive. But, you know, four months, it's now starting to really be silly season in the United States. And, even if Biden was an incredibly robust and reasonably popular candidate, he would have a hard time in this environment. And of course, that's not the case. He's by far the oldest person that's run for the position in the United States. And he's showing that age, he is showing it more and more every day. I worry about that, of course, for him and for all of those that support him, certainly doesn't seem as if he's about to step down. But of course, that's what he has to say if he's intending to continue to fight until the moment that he changes.
On the other hand, Trump is also historically unpopular in the United States. If this was another candidate on the Republican side, this would be an easy call. This would be a Republican landslide. And Biden or anyone that the Democrats would put up would have a really hard time. And that's because, you know, immigration issues, inflation issues, anti-incumbency very strong in this environment. But because Trump himself is so extraordinarily unpopular and polarizing, it's actually still pretty close. And most of the polls show that that we're talking about a small number of swing states and a very small number of voters. And if you're Biden, you can convince yourself in that environment, “hey, I'm the guy that's going to be, you know, as useful as anybody else. It's too dangerous this late in the race to bring in another candidate.” I would agree with that. I would, if I really believe that what we saw at the debate was a one-off event and not a condition as former speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi said. I don't believe that, certainly don't believe that on the bases of conversations that I've had with the CEOs, the heads of state, the heads of the multilaterals, the senators, the members of the House that have been engaged with Biden regularly and routinely.
Now, that's different from what the people inside the Biden staff are saying. They are on message. They are very loyal, and they are all saying Biden can do it. If you've seen the schedule, he's so robust, he's so active, he's with it. But anyone outside that who is not like being paid to be completely on message is saying Biden has a serious problem. And in that regard, the likelihood that this doesn't go away, that his principal vulnerability gets worse, I think is very high. So if I were in a room advising him personally and he was willing to listen to me, I would tell him to step down. Having said that, I would have said it a year ago. But, you know, it is what it is.
We'll see what happens this week at the NATO summit with all of these world leaders coming in that are very concerned about what's happening in the United States and going forward, we've got the Republican convention real soon. We’ve got the Democratic convention, and everyone is going to be laser-focused on what's happening in the United States.
So much for that. I'll talk to you all real soon.
Britain's opposition Labour Party leader Keir Starmer and his wife Victoria Starmer walk outside a polling station during the general election in London, Britain, on July 4, 2024.
Brits say bye-bye to Tory rule
British voters put a new spin on the Fourth of July today, freeing themselves from 14 years of Conservative rule. Labour won in a historic landslide, making party chief Keir Starmer the United Kingdom’s new prime minister.
In May, following news that inflation had slowed to 2.3%, then-PM Rishi Sunak called for a July election even though he could have waited until the end of the year. He tried to capitalize on the good inflation news and has spent the last six weeks campaigning up and down the country in a bid to win support.
But polls have consistently favored Labour by a wide margin. In the end, Labour secured 412 seats to the Conservatives’ 120. On Friday, King Charles invited Starmer to form a new UK government.
What will change? Domestically, Starmer has pledged to lead a “pro-business and pro-worker” government while facing “hard choices” for public spending. The party plans to work on “wealth creation” and, among other goals, aims to create a new publicly owned clean power company. In terms of foreign policy, Starmer is pro-NATO and pro-Ukraine, like Sunak, but he will take a different approach to the European Union to rebuild trust in the post-Brexit era.
Will the UK rejoin the EU? Not so fast. Starmer says he has no plans for a “Breturn” and does not believe the country will rejoin in his lifetime. That said he’s still looking to reset ties with the EU. According to Ian Bremmer, Starmer has developed a strong rapport with European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen and intends to expand Britain’s foreign policy cooperation. “He plans to propose a wide-ranging UK-EU security pact as well as bilateral defense agreements with Germany and France,” Bremmer wrote for GZERO.
“Longer term, he wants to return to something akin to a customs union in all but name.”
Britain's Labour Party Leader Keir Starmer addresses the start of the National Annual Women's Conference, ahead of the start of Britain's Labour Party annual conference, in Liverpool, Britain, October 7, 2023.
Who is Keir Starmer?
Keir Starmer will likely become the UK’s prime minister not long after the July 4 election. Over nine years in parliament, he’s helped shift the Labour Party from the ideological rigidity of theJeremy Corbyn era onto a path and platform that can win enough centrist voters to take power.
On Thursday, Starmer introducedhis party’s latest manifesto with a pledge to help Britonscreate wealth: “If you take nothing else away from this today, let it be this,” he told a mostly enthusiastic audience. “We are pro-business and pro-worker. A plan for wealth creation.”
With its de-emphasis on big spending initiatives, some will compare Starmer to former Labour PM Tony Blair. But Blair was a sunnier and more charismatic figure. Starmer, who left work as a human rights lawyer to pursue politics in 2015, must make a virtue of his reputation for seriousness, caution, and a focus on practical means for attaining tangible gains. His own working-class roots help him connect with working-class voters.
As he admitted in arecent interview, “I’ve achieved less as a politician than I have at any other time in my life.” That’s why, he says, he wants to lead a government rather than the opposition.
Starmer is also the biggest beneficiary of voter exhaustion with 14 years of Conservative Party dominance. As a result, we’ll soon know even more about him.
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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.
UK Prime Minister Sunak's push for early election will hardly boost his chances
Carl Bildt, former prime minister of Sweden and co-chair of the European Council on Foreign Relations, shares his perspective on European politics from Halmstad, Sweden.
Does the decision by Norway, Ireland, and Spain to recognize Palestine as an independent state further increase the isolation of Israel?
Not necessarily, but it does further reinforce the determination that is there throughout the international community, I would say, that it's only a two-state solution that over time, can bring peace and stability to the troubled region of the Middle East. In that sense, of course, Prime Minister Netanyahu and his resistance to move towards a two-state solution is increasingly isolated in the global community. And this particular decision is a further sign of that.
Does the decision by the UK Prime Minister Rishi Sunak, to call an early election increases his possibility to retain his position at Downing Street?
Hardly likely, I would say. There are different theories why he decided to do the gamble. And though, it’s early for an election, it's not quite certain it would have been better to, it could have been equally bad to wait. So, he probably said, “Let's just get over with it.” But the Conservatives are 20% behind in opinion polls. It might not be that bad when it comes to the election. Election campaigns tend to have the effect of changing these particular figures, slightly. But the likelihood of, him still being prime minister of the United Kingdom by the end of July, that is, I have to say, very slim.
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