Improving talent programmes is not the only thing the next government can do to make the UK a global connector. “The next UK government will be constantly confronted with the question of how much it should align with or diverge from the European Union,” says Walker, and unlike a Conservative government, a Labour government will have “less baggage”.
“Perhaps we can look at this more individually, what might be the optimal relationship for the UK in terms of how it aligns with or moves away from the EU,” Walker says. “I think there will be a closer dialogue and we have certainly seen European institutions like the European Commission already engaging more with the UK.”
Great Britain can still attract more VC funding than France, but Macron’s leadership bid to create a successful generation of AI startups has not gone unnoticed in the UK tech community. The prospect of political instability across the Channel after the French election could provide the novel UK government with an unexpected advantage.
“A lot of the French tech ecosystem has been built on public sector funding and the French government’s investment in public sector funding. If the far-right wins in France, will that funding continue?” says Shaw. “The challenge they’re going to have, and I don’t think the UK has, is that if a lot of your sector is built on public sector funding, if there’s a change of government, that potentially undermines the funding models that have been put in place.”
“France is definitely stealing the march,” Wright says. But the UK can employ its independence. Wright says the UK has “some room to manoeuvre” to move away from the EU’s AI law, which can be seen as quite onerous from a compliance perspective, but it can show leadership in global governance “and the pragmatism that [the UK] are often known to produce the same results as our regulations.”
The industry still needs to maintain levels of international investment, Walker says. “They [Labour] “We talked about this idea of having a big international business summit at an early stage. Then I think there’s a bigger process: How do we open up access to capital markets in the UK? How do we address some of the risk aversion of some UK pension funds to make sure that the capital is there? That’s going to be a critical area that Labour needs to focus on.”
The real question is: Does Labour have the capacity to make all of these changes? Some in the UK tech sector that spoke to WIRED certainly think so. “There’s a lot of excitement about what’s next,” Walker says.
Ultimately, the bottom line is that even if Labor does nothing to change things in the near term, a majority government will have a net positive impact on investment, and therefore on technology. “I don’t think we can underestimate the importance of certainty over the next five years and how much that can lead to people being able to price markets and make confident investments,” says Wright. “It’s the first thing they can do without major intervention.”
Let’s not forget that The Labour Party’s 2022 report entitled Start, Scale, outlined plans to transform the UK into a “world hub for startups” and anticipated many of the issues that continue to affect the industry. Rachel Reeves, then shadow chancellor of the exchequer, anticipated the way forward: “We can continue on a path of managed decline, falling behind our competitors, or we can use bold thinking to propel us forward.”