Starmer’s AI gamble risks Labour’s future
Labour is continuing to punch itself in the face over its approach to artificial intelligence. The party has abandoned both its climate pledges and its commitment to public safety as Prime Minister Keir Starmer stupidly embraces the tech industry’s AI hype-train.
Turning a blind eye to harms
In the Senedd, Ms Hannah Blythyn MS (Welsh Labour, Delyn) raised urgent concerns about the rise of “nudification apps” that digitally strip women and girls. She warned that AI-driven abuse is already harming women in politics and could devastate schoolchildren.
Yet in Westminster, Mr Starmer is pressing ahead with plans for a flagship AI hub on Teesside, even as ministers openly admit AI is being weaponised against women and is burning through huge amounts of energy. The project came at the expense of a hydrogen energy plant championed by Ed Miliband MP, who has now been sidelined despite his role as Secretary of State for Energy Security and Net Zero.
Starmer is happily willing to turn a blind eye to the harms of AI, both to women and the environment, in order to appease tech-bros and Silicon Valley investors, rather than taking a stand. Not great for a former human rights lawyer.
Fewer jobs, harsher welfare
The hype around AI has already produced a 30% fall in entry-level jobs since the technology went mainstream, hitting young people and new graduates hardest. At the same time, Starmer has pressed ahead with controversial welfare reforms, trying to force thousands of disabled people off benefits and into the workplace. Mr Starmer is pushing vulnerable people into a job market that simply cannot absorb them. The contradiction is plain, Labour says it wants full employment, but is championing a technology that is hollowing out opportunities.
Begging for leadership
Inside Labour, frustration is mounting. Ed Miliband and Hannah Blythyn MS need to be calling for stronger leadership on climate and women’s rights in the face of AI harms. They are joined by countless voters who watch Starmer capitulating to every passing tech trend while ignoring the voters who won him the general election.
Starmer seems more concerned with winning over the far-right, who will never vote Labour, than with holding on to those progressive voters who only reluctantly backed Starmer last time. If this continues, Labour risks not just collapsing its own vote, but tearing apart the party itself.
The failure of the Online Safety Act
Labour has also hitched its AI agenda to the UK’s Online Safety Act (OSA), which requires intrusive age checks to access millions of websites. Ministers claim this will protect children, but campaigners say it is a lazy, ineffective solution that shifts responsibility away from parents.
Groups like the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) argue the OSA threatens privacy, free speech, and equal access to the internet, while doing little to actually make children safer. We’ve already seen the bill used to crush political speech on the genocide in Gaza. Obviously a genocide isn’t going to be child-friendly, despite Labour also making moves to lower the voting age to 16.
Instead of teaching parents how to talk to their children about online risks, the Act assumes government surveillance is the answer. Many see this as another sign of a political class that would rather control speech online than to actually tackle any root problems, because that would require actual work and introspection.
A dangerous road ahead
The contradictions are piling up. Labour says it cares about climate change, but is replacing green energy projects with energy-hungry AI hubs. It says it wants to protect women, but is ignoring the dangers of AI-fuelled abuse. It says it wants to boost jobs, but is cheering on a technology that is erasing entry-level work.
With so many voters, and I’m sure many back-bench MPs, already questioning Labour’s direction, Starmer’s strategy risks alienating the very people who delivered his victory. If the Prime Minister continues down this path, he won’t just lose the next election, he’ll unravel the Labour Party itself.