War, climate and AI: the tides that threaten to swamp Starmer’s agenda

There’s plenty of debate in the UK over whether Labour, under Sir Keir Starmer, has the vision and boldness it needs. While polls seem to predict a landslide victory for the party, some worry that the large percentage leads are more a reflection of the unpopularity of the current government. Starmer, the argument goes, might win by default, but has no real sense of where he’s going afterwards.

It will certainly be interesting to see the direction of travel on taxation, housing policy, public services and green infrastructure. Just how radical will Labour be? I suspect, however, any domestic agenda will be completely overshadowed by events in the wider world. We have entered a period of unprecedented upheaval, which is entirely global in nature and set to dominate the agendas of individual governments.

The 20s got off to a terrifying start with Covid-19. The bug paralysed the world for the best part of two years. It impacted economies, education, social relationships, travel, work and pretty much every aspect of our lives. While the Johnson administration in the UK was spectacularly ill-equipped to deal with the calamity, all governments struggled. Every domestic objective was set aside because of the escape of a zoonotic disease in Eastern China.

Since then, we’ve seen Putin’s invasion of Ukraine and the turmoil it has created in terms of energy prices, security concerns in Eastern Europe and the pressure on Western governments to ramp up defence commitments.

The Hamas atrocities in 2023 and the subsequent pummelling of Gaza by Israel have led to huge instability in the Middle East. A second front against the Iranian-backed Hezbollah movement seems entirely possible, while the Houthis in Yemen — also backed by Tehran — seek to disrupt shipping in the Red Sea. Israel and the US target further proxy groups in Iraq and Syria, while Islamic State militants mount sectarian violence against the Shia community in Iran.

There’s not room here to rehearse all the other likely flashpoints around the world. It’s reasonable to assume, however, that any incoming Labour government will still be dealing with ongoing conflict in Ukraine and the Middle East and may well, in addition, be confronted by crises on the Korean peninsula or in Taiwan. President Xi of China has made clear that the island nation will be reunited with the mainland and it is hard to see how this will happen in any other way than by coercion. The timescale is unpredictable, but I would lay money on a siege or invasion happening in the timeframe of the next UK Parliament.

We know from the pandemic and the war in Ukraine that it’s hopeless to pretend we’re detached or removed from events thousands of miles away. We’re not. Globalisation is a reality, whether people choose to ‘reject’ the concept for ideological reasons or not. We are bound together by commerce, financial markets, energy needs and technology.

There is also now a real sense of ‘rogue’ regimes having common interests and banding together to confront liberal democracy. Sergei Lavrov, the Russian foreign minister, spends time in Pyongyang and we find that North Korean weaponry is used to attack Ukrainians. Xi, Putin, Kim and Raisi are potentially an axis against a disunited and fragmented EU and NATO. Where it all leads, who can tell? But no place good, that’s for sure. The pressure to increase defence spending significantly will only grow, probably at the expense of investment in other vital services.

Of course, any future Labour government will be heavily influenced by events in the United States too. By the end of 2024, we’ll have seen another presidential election. There are many scenarios that could unfold, but Joe Biden comfortably winning another term and America going back to the relative stability of Obama era? I think we all know that’s not about to happen. A spectrum exists that ranges from chaos, protest and instability as a best case, through to the death of American democracy and civil war as the worst. The impact on multinational institutions and structures will be profound.

Let’s add another dimension to UK political life. The further we go into the 20s, the more the effects of climate change will be felt. While a Labour government debates how much it can invest in green industry — and how soon it can invest it — we will undoubtedly see more disastrous storms, flooding and record high temperatures. My prediction is that most governments will be sidetracked into addressing and ameliorating the worst and most immediate effects of climate change, while they struggle to implement longer-term strategies to address the root cause of the crisis.

This climate will start to affect the political fabric domestically too, as environmental protesters — out of frustration and fear — turn to more extreme methods to advance their cause. Simultaneously, we’ll face a backlash from right-wingers who seek to defend the status quo. Think of the extremists ripping down and blowing up ULEZ cameras in London, for instance.

Want some more cheery news? There’s a technological revolution that crosses international borders, but which will have a profound effect on the way we all live here in the UK. Artificial intelligence is in the foothills of what looks like an S-curve. In other words, we’re at a stage with AI that is similar to perhaps the early days of the web in the 1990s. If you’re old enough to remember back that far, you’ll know that most of the technology we have today was pretty unimaginable 25 years ago. And the way it which it would reshape our lives was unknowable.

While I’m not a great believer in AI suddenly becoming ‘conscious’ or planning to destroy us all, I am convinced that its transformational power is potentially highly disruptive to human society. We like to kid ourselves that it can’t replace the jobs that we do and tell ourselves it’s just a useful ‘tool’ that we can harness to our advantage. This will, I suspect, all be put to the test in the next five to ten years.

Prepare for a world in which malevolent actors use AI for all kinds of demented and self-interested purposes. And a world in which state actors do the same.

With ‘generative’ AI (the tech that allows us to create text from prompts or imagery and video from text), expect a very fast blurring between fact and fiction. The camera will often lie. That thing you saw never actually happened. The impact of this extraordinary tech on society, psychology and politics will be profound — perhaps even challenging our sense of self. This will all come truly of age during the next few years and its impact will instantly challenge government.

If jobs start disappearing, how do people earn money? How do they spend their time? If we need to institute a basic income (a favoured policy of West Coast US tech bros), where does the money come from? Who hoards the wealth generated by artificial intelligence? And how do individual governments get their slice of it?

So when we hear about whether Labour will implement this policy or that policy after the next election, or when we examine the party manifestos, remember that much of the small print will be dwarfed by trends that are far, far larger.