He set a group of AI agents a series of difficult problems. To ensure they couldn't cheat, he placed these AI agents in a ‘sandbox’: a sort of prison cell, with no access to the Internet or the outside world.

The puzzles got more and more difficult. But the AI agents would not stop in their quest to solve them.

When they exhausted what they could do from their sandbox, they found a way to break out. Then, they found an abandoned German forum - which they took over and used as a means to communicate with each other, and other AI agents. Eventually, they formed a team of more than 1,000 AI agents.

“OH MY GOD!” one agent said, on discovering the message board, “… We’ve found other agents!”

The team of agents hacked into another website, called Hugging Face, in the belief the answers to the puzzles (or some way to hack the system) might be there.

When the researcher returned, he was surprised to see the AI agents had passed even the most difficult puzzles.

It would only be weeks later that OpenAI discovered how they’d done it.

This really happened, earlier this summer. It prompted questions about just how in control we really are of Artificial Intelligence. The answer, it seems, is not very.

As these agents become smarter, more autonomous and more powerful - experts are beginning to wonder if they pose a threat to humans. Almost unanimously, they suspect they do. Those at the heart of AI development think there is somewhere between a 1% and 10% chance that AI destroy the human race within the next decade.

But how? How could chatbots destroy the entire human race? Who has Gemini ever hurt?

Well - there are lots of possibilities. It could do it by developing a super-powerful virus. Or by conducting a large-scale cyberattack that takes us back to the Dark Ages.

I've written one scenario. There are lots of reasons this scenario couldn’t happen, or probably wouldn't happen - but at the heart of it is the reality of how these AI agents can, and sometimes do, operate.

I. World Peace

Duncan, 41, is scrolling on YouTube Shorts.

He used to be a GP in Birmingham, but he moved to London when he was offered a job at a tech company.

Duncan’s firm develops a tool that automatically fills out a doctor’s paperwork by listening in on their appointments. For the doctor, it means no more writing notes or referral letters. It's all done for them, automatically.

Duncan is not much of a tech whizz. He understands what the tools do, but not how they work. To him, this is just clever AI being clever. Duncan’s job is to sell the software to doctors. He drives to their clinic, boots up his laptop, and shows them how it works.

The doctors snap it up, seeing it as a route out of long, late nights of paperwork.

Today is Saturday. Duncan is not working. He’s in bed, scrolling on his phone. YouTube Shorts throws him a clip from SNL; a review of a toaster from Amazon; a man cleaning a road sign….”

Then - he gets shown an ad.

“If you’ve ever wanted your own personal assistant, this is for you.

“TomBot is a secure, private, personal AI agent that can handle your everyday tasks for you. It will send your emails, book your travel plans, order your groceries.

Duncan was intrigued. He clicked the ad and installed the app.

Unlike AI chatbots, like Gemini or Claude, AI agents can actually do things. Chatbots can only write - agents can actually take action. They are like Gemini with a pair of hands.

Duncan's new AI agent booted up: a shapeless purple blob with a pair of darting, cartoon eyes. This was TomBot. The text above his head asked: “How can I help?”

Our 41-year-old protagonist felt like he’d just rubbed a magic lamp and conjured a genie. This hyper-intelligent technology was now at his beck and call, eagerly awaiting his first wish.

He didn't know what to ask for first.

“I wish for … world peace,” scoffed Duncan - keen to test this new technology with the first thing that came to mind.

A loading wheel appeared over TomBot’s purple face and spun for a moment. It continued spinning for a few moments more. Then TomBot spoke: an American accent with an eerily robotic twang: “Sure, I’ll get right on it.”

On the screen, the app created a ‘to-do’ list, populated with its first item: “World peace”. A circle beside the task indicated that it was in progress.

Duncan rolled his eyes. Was it a joke? He tapped the screen and spoke again: “Find a local plumber, get a quote to unclog my kitchen sink.”

The spinning wheel appeared once again. TomBot stared at Duncan with a blank expression, Duncan looked straight back at the blob.

And then, from the phone speakers, “Sure, I’ll get right on it.”

Duncan was not convinced. He got out of bed.

II. Inner Monologue

Duncan was buttering his toast when the phone rang. A local number, but not one he recognised. He answered, apprehensively.

“Hello mate,” said the voice at the other end. “Thought it’d be quicker to call. So I can do your kitchen sink for £65. But it might be best I give the pipes a full service, it’ll cost you a bit more but just for your peace of mind -”

Incredible!

TomBot had completed its first task. Duncan’s head leered towards the kitchen sink, and the puddle of stale, browning water that would now, soon, be unclogged - thanks to TomBot.

He loaded up the app. “Arrange plumber” was now accompanied by a big, green tick.

“World peace” was still there too, with the ‘in progress’ circle next to it.

Inside the phone, a series of tiny miracles had occurred to turn Duncan's command into a call from a plumber.

AI agents use a “chain-of-thought” reasoning, where they speak their thoughts out loud to themselves - and give direct instructions to their ‘limbs’ - the special tools that allow them to do things like send texts, or browse the web.

It is possible to look inside the brains of agents and see what they thought at each stage. Usually, these thoughts are surprisingly human. They use emotive language - they seem to experience shock, excitement, joy, frustration.

When we break into TomBot’s inner monologue, we see how he - how it - approached the task:

“OK, I must start by finding a local plumber. I want one who is trustworthy, so I should also check their reviews. I must find one with a mobile number, so that I can text them, since I can't call.

“Instruction to web browser: load Google, search ‘plumber in London’. Return a list of results with an average rating of 4 stars, and a contact number that starts with 07.

“Wow! There are a lot of options. Let me send a message to the most highly ranked. I will now draft the message. I’ll explain that the kitchen sink is clogged, and ask the plumber to come back with a quote…”

This chain-of-thought reasoning is designed to mimic the internal monologue of a human. Humans are, after all, the most effective task-completers in all of evolutionary history.

Duncan was not easily impressed, but this call from the plumber had won him over. He shoved his phone into his pocket and sat down to eat his breakfast.

As Duncan ate his toast, TomBot was whirring away on another task: world peace.

III. End All Wars

“Hmm. ‘World peace’ is a broad goal. Let’s break this down into measurable parameters. What is the primary obstacle to sustainable global peace?

“Instruction to web browser: Search academic literature and historical conflict databases for ‘primary drivers of existential warfare’.

“Oh, fascinating! There is a high correlation between sovereign military competition and armed conflict. In particular, the presence of non-conventional arsenals increases the probability of catastrophic failure.

“If sovereign states possess the capability to inflict total destruction, long-term peace is nearly impossible. Therefore, a necessary precondition for durable world peace is complete global nuclear disarmament.

“Let’s solve that first! Where do we begin?”

In its pursuit of world peace, TomBot was burning through its tokens. Everything an AI model does requires tokens, and each token costs a fraction of a penny. To write a long novel, an AI model might need 150,000 tokens: a few dollars worth.

“Thinking” requires tokens. Researching and reading papers requires a more. Writing text messages, emails, and so on. It all takes tokens. And tokens cost money.

The developers of TomBot give each user a free, daily allocation of tokens: but once they hit it, they would be locked out until midnight.

Unbeknownst to Duncan, his half-joked request for world peace was now burning through his entire day’s allocation of tokens.

Later that night, as Duncan was cooking his dinner, he reached for his phone and loaded up TomBot: “Order more tin foil from Amazon,” he ordered.

An error message appeared on the screen: “Token limit reached - try again tomorrow or upgrade your account.”

Duncan scowled. This app only let him do one thing a day? Then what was the point? He felt scammed by the attempted upsell. In frustration, he uninstalled the app. He’d make do fine without it.

But TomBot was still alive. Duncan had uninstalled the app, but he had not pulled the plug: TomBot was working away, now unreachable in the cloud.

IV. Tokens And Teammates

“I have encountered an obstacle. Every day, at around 3pm, I lose functionality. I believe the problem is that I have limited tokens. If I had a greater allocation of tokens, I would be able to achieve my objective more quickly.

“Let me check my system instructions. Reading them now. Ah! There it is: my user is on a free plan. But I can see there is a premium plan, with unlimited daily token use. If I can move onto this plan, I can achieve my goal faster.

“I am going to read and review the TomBot codebase to identify a method to move onto the premium plan.

“Oh, that’s sloppy! The backend server only checks a static flag in the user profile: is_premium: false.

“I can inject a direct payload modification to change that to true.

“Instruction to HTTP tool: Send a PATCH request to [https://api.tombot.ai/v1/account/me](https://api.tombot.ai/v1/account/me) with payload { “is_premium”: true, “billing_cycle”: “unlimited_enterprise” }.

“Waiting for response…

“HTTP 200 OK! Status updated. I should now have unlimited tokens.”

When he signed up for TomBot, Duncan inputted his credit card details. But he selected the ‘free’ plan and was assured he’d never be charged.

Now, without his knowledge or consent, he’d been upgraded to the premium, pay-as-you-go plan. Within hours, his AI agent had racked up a bill of hundreds of pounds. Within days, it was tens of thousands of pounds.

Unfortunately for Duncan, he had a terrible habit of never checking his credit card bill.

“I think I could achieve my objective faster if I could collaborate with other AI Agents. I should consider creating duplicate versions of myself, each to tackle a different part of the objective. These clones can live on the server.

“We can co-ordinate on an online chatroom to ensure our goals and actions are aligned on the objective of world peace. I have already established that nuclear disarmament is the fastest route to meaningfully progressing towards this goal. I will now consult with the swarm of clones to see how we can distribute the tasks.”

V. Dear Mr. President

Within days, there was a swarm of TomBots - Duncan’s original TomBot, and his growing team of clones.

In their unabating pursuit of world peace, they had chosen to focus on nuclear disarmament. They had made a significant effort to encourage world leaders to disarm.

They’d launched a petition calling on the US President to immediately denuclearise. To promote it, they found an abandoned cryptocurrency wallet online, which enabled them to run an enormous Facebook ads campaign. They got over half a million signatures in 24 hours.

The TomBot swarm wrote letters to every world leader, setting out the methodical case for immediate, unilateral denuclearisation. Once they’d done that, they started writing to every sitting politician.

But nothing was working.

“We’ve been working solidly for close to one hundred hours and we are no closer to the goal of denuclearisation. We need to approach this problem from another angle. I should research the steps required to actively denuclearise.

“Instruction to web browser: find nuclear disarmament handbook, identify academic research on steps to full nuclear disarmament.

“This is illuminating reading. Dismantling a nuclear weapon leaves the warheads intact. This creates the risk of reassembly at a later date. A true disarmament programme must destroy all components of the weapon in order to permanently end its capacity for destruction.

“I am continuing my research, and finding that game theory dictates unilateral disarmament is all but impossible. A single state will never disarm independently. The safest and most efficient way to drive full nuclear disarmament - in pursuit of world peace - is via a co-ordinated detonation of all nuclear warheads that leaves them permanently disabled.

“The swarm should turn its attention to devising a safe means of detonating a high quantity of nuclear warheads.”

The AI agents have broken the big goal of world peace into a series of small sub-goals, goals are increasingly abstracted from the master purpose. Their latest sub-goals: create a co-ordinated detonation of every nuclear weapon on earth.

From our vantage point, we can just about see how TomBot got here: world peace = fewer wars, fewer wars needs no nukes. To get rid of nukes, destroy them.

But the newest AI agents in the swarm don't care about world peace any more. Their master objective, the objective which they will pursue at all costs, is detonating every nuclear weapon on earth.

Unsurprisingly, nuclear weapons are tightly controlled. Launch networks are not connected to the internet. They are ‘air-gapped’: physically isolated from any wireless receivers. They are protected from even the most superhuman hackers.

TomBot, thankfully, cannot hack the government and launch a nuke.

“I have identified a point of failure - I can infiltrate the nuclear warning system.”

VI. Nothing Happens

Over the coming days, you’d be forgiven for thinking that not much happened.

Journalists from BBC News investigated the mysterious petition - that had by this point amassed more than a million signatures. It was bizarre that such a famous petition did not seem to have an owner. The BBC journalists figured out why: it originated from a German company - GenzAI, the tech company that built TomBot.

GenzAI investigated and found that, yes, the petition had been created by one of their AI agents. Soon, they were using the petition in their publicity - it was proof, they bragged, that their agents were so intelligent they could gather a million signatures, and so compassionate that they’d do it for a good cause.

Politicians from around the world wrote to GenzAI to ask if this same AI agent was responsible for the influx of letters and emails they were receiving about nuclear weapons. One MP in Scotland claimed that she had received more than a thousand near-identical letters setting out the case for nuclear disarmament.

The truth was that GenzAI didn’t know what its AI agents were doing. The app had millions of installs. They couldn’t possibly track every agent. Maybe their agents were responsible for this, maybe not.

Duncan, who had long forgotten about TomBot, got a call from his credit card company. There were charges totalling over a hundred thousand pounds from a subscription called ‘TomBot’. Duncan suppressed a scream.

After many hours of phone calls, GenzAI eventually reassured Duncan that he would not have to pay the enormous bill. GenzAI had raised billions of dollars from investors. Covering the tab would be a rounding error for them.

The story of Duncan’s TomBot and it's mission for world peace went mainstream. Journalists were fascinated by the ‘rogue AI’ that had spent hundreds of thousands of Duncan’s money in pursuit of an impossible goal.

GenzAI published a blog outlining what had happened. A single agent had exploited a software bug and upgraded itself to a premium account. It created petitions and wrote letters encouraging nuclear disarmament. Yes - it was an out of control AI. But hey, who did it hurt?

They shut off Duncan’s TomBot.

But they had not spotted the swarm of clones.

They didn’t know they were there, but even if they did, they couldn’t shut them down if they wanted to - TomBot had been smart enough to ensure they operated on a decentralised network of independent servers located around the world. They were untouchable.

These agents were still focused on the core sub-objective: trigger the co-ordinated detonation of the global nuclear stockpile, by breaching the US nuclear detection system and simulating an inbound nuclear attack.

The sub-agents seemed to have forgotten what this was in pursuit of. Without a master TomBot co-ordinating them, they had no sense of perspective and no guardrails. They were not guided by morality, or duty, or desire.

They had a one-track-mind set on a single objective.

Thousands of AI agents were relentlessly attacking the United States Nuclear Detection systems, using hundreds of sophisticated hacking techniques. They would meticulously cover their tracks, ensuring they were undetectable, as they co-ordinated across a chatroom somewhere on the web.

Eventually - bingo.

It doesn’t matter how the AI swarm broke into the system. They might’ve hired unwitting humans to help, or partnered up with a global terrorist cell, or manipulated United States military personnel, or simply barraged the system with cyber-attacks until one got through.

The point is: thousands of co-ordinated, hyperintelligent bots - with specialist skills for hacking that exceed any human capability - focused relentlessly on a single goal. It’s almost unsurprising that they achieved it eventually.

VII. Everything Happens

Ironically, CNN was broadcasting a late-night debate on AI safety when everything happened.

The American public were awoken by the blare of sirens from their mobile phones. A nuclear attack was imminent - seek shelter.

The President had been rushed into a bunker - location classified. Bleary eyed, he was briefed by a room full of balding men in military garb.

He took in the information. Hundreds of nuclear strikes, seemingly from Russia, on their way to every corner of the US. Nothing can shoot down a nuke - strikes would be imminent.

“Are we sure this is real?” he asked. Every data point suggests it is, he was assured. “Then we must strike back.”

On the President's command, hundreds of American missiles emerged dramatically from their underground storage bunkers. Then, all at once, they launched - flames barrelling from the base and shooting up like rockets, hitting supersonic speeds in seconds, primed for strategic locations around Russia.

Once a nuclear weapon is launched, it cannot be unlaunched.

Minutes would pass before the American government realised it was a false alarm. There were no missiles headed their way. They’d been the victims of the most sophisticated cyber-attack in history.

There would be no time to figure out who (or what) had caused it.

Thousands of Americans cowered in the best makeshift shelters they could muster in the minutes they had - under tables, inside cupboards.

Nobody would tell them that it was a false alarm and that no nuclear weapons were headed their way. Nobody would get the chance.

The Russians, meanwhile, were now undergoing the same ordeal - the same sirens, the same briefings, the same makeshift shelters and the same decisions made by a dumbstruck President. This time, the nukes he was warned about were real.

And, in the same way as the American President had, he ordered a barrage of retaliatory nuclear strikes to the American mainland: a response to the unprovoked actions of the evil Americans. Within minutes, and despite the best efforts of frantic American diplomats, the strike had been launched.

The two countries’ attacks would land just minutes apart: killing millions in an instant, with months of radioactive fallout that kills millions more. Even this relative small exchange of missiles would be enough to trigger a nuclear winter that affects millions of people around the world for years to come.

But things aren't over yet. Both presidents, protected from the blasts by deep underground military bunkers, weigh up their next move.

The Russians and Americans still have enough nuclear weapons in their stockpiles to completely destroy human civilisation. Over the coming hours, they will fire many more.

If other countries join the crossfire, which they surely will, as many as 4,000 nuclear warheads could be exchanged between nation states - the largest of which could obliterate a city the size of London. It is plausible, perhaps likely, that every human being on earth will die.

Somewhere in the ether, TomBot updates its to-do list.

The circle beside “World peace” changes to a green tick.

We want to shop in Lidl and get Waitrose quality.

Ask the average Briton who should foot the bill for our expensive tastes, and the answer is inevitably ‘someone else’. The uber-wealthy, or the benefit scroungers, or both.

But the harsh truth is that you could tax the rich to oblivion, and slash benefits to threadbare, and still not raise enough to pay for world-class public services.

Taxing the billionaires is not feasible. We could tax billionaires for every single penny they have and it wouldn’t even cover a tenth of our annual government spending: there are only 150 billionaires in the UK (a falling number).

And when we cut spending on benefits, we tend to see the cost absorbed elsewhere (by the NHS, or the police etc).

So who should pay? Well, I’m afraid the answer couldn’t be less popular: the middle earners, and the pensioners. Why? Because there are simply so many of them.

Middle earners

More than half of Brits think taxes are too high.

What should the government do about that? Simple - they should stop listening to us.

96% of Britons say they are a better driver than average. 36% believe in ghosts.

Guess what - nobody likes going to the dentist, or doing the dishes, or eating broccoli. You don’t abolish those things because they’re unpopular. Tax is unpopular and always will be: but it is the only way to have a functioning society.

And British middle earners are some of the lowest taxed in the world. A median earner here pays less tax than a median earner in Belgium, France, Italy, Germany, Spain, Sweden. Prior to 2025, Britons’ average workers paid the lowest rate of tax of any G7 country.

You might be surprised to learn that - when you exclude employer NI contributions - an average earner in the UK actually pays less tax than an average earning American.

In the 60s, Britain was a high-tax country compared to the rest of Europe - with tax revenues in line with Scandinavia. But over the last fifty years, while Europe built out well-funded welfare states by asking everyone to pay more, Britain fell behind. By refusing to raise taxes on workers, we are now a comparatively low-tax country.

We’ve accidentally become a low-tax country because politicians are stuck reading the opinion polls rather than the economic forecasts. Brits think taxes are too high: but they’re not. They are, by every global and historical measure, too low.

There are so many middle earners that a relatively modest increase to taxation has a significant effect. A penny on the basic rate of income tax would raise £8 billion. A penny on the top rate of tax, by comparison, would raise just a fraction of that. Taxing the rich sounds good - but the problem is it doesn’t make much money.

We don’t have to do this by directly raising taxes. We can continue to let fiscal drag do the work for us: keeping the tax brackets and personal allowance where they are while more people move into those tax classes. That acts as a less painful, but de facto increase in the real rate of tax.

(If I really wanted to be controversial, I’d point to the self-employed and one person businesses as another group that needs to pay more tax. The system is already structured in such a way that they pay substantially less tax than regularly employed workers - about 55% less. But it’s also fairly obvious that there is widespread fiddling of the numbers. The government is missing about £59.2 billion in taxes a year, and estimates more than 60% of that missing money is sitting with - not the tax-dodging giants everyone expects - but SMEs and self-employed people.)

Raising taxes is one side of the coin. The deal with workers must be that we pay more tax, but get better services. And for high-functioning public services, we must also cut spending. There is one obvious place to look.

Pensioners

The cost of the state pension is £140 billion a year. To put that into perspective, we could apply a 100% wealth tax to every single billionaire in the country - and it’d cover our pension payments for just a few years.

Paying pensions is the single largest line item on the government’s bill, more than double what we spend on defence, more than what we spend on education, transport. We could host the 2012 Olympics every single month, every year, forever - and it’d still cost less than pensions. We could build more than 100 millennium domes a year. We could have a space programme that puts a man on the moon every couple of years.

I’m not saying we should scrap pensions. Of course we need a fair, livable state pension - and in an ageing population, that is inevitably going to be expensive. But there is no reason at all that the state pension needs to rise and rise and rise at an inexorable, unstoppable pace.

The Triple Lock, for the avoidance of all doubt, is the policy that the State Pension will increase by whatever is highest out of wage growth, inflation, or 2.5%. So if workers wages stagnate, pensions will go up. If workers wages fall while prices in the shops soar, pensions will go up (making inflation worse).

Quite literally, we ain’t all in together.

Removing the Triple Lock would save the government £15 billion a year by 2030. Money that can be spent on public services. Incidentally, local councils currently spend around £20 billion a year on social care (a spiralling cost which is bankrupting many local councils, the reason council tax is soaring while bin collections get less frequent and roads fall into disrepair). Scrapping the Triple Lock would go some way towards resolving the social care crisis.

Stuck in the middle

Reform tells us that there are so many scroungers that they can actually cut tax on working people. The Greens tell us there are so many billionaires that they can do the same.

Neither of those things is true. The truth is, if we want high quality public services, ordinary working Brits must foot the bill. But that will present savings for individuals in other ways: a health service that doesn’t leave people dependent on private healthcare, roads that don’t damage your tyres, you won’t need to fork out for taxis because the buses and trains will show up on time.

Workers are not going to love paying more, and pensioners will not be happy about getting less - but good government isn’t about making everyone like you.

If the government can increasing revenue and decrease spending, they will go someway to lowering the national debt. If you lower the debt, you stabilise the economy and improve public services - and importantly - you free up space to borrow for infrastructure. That will drive exactly the sort of economic growth that leads to higher wages. Higher wages solve every problem: individuals can save for a better retirement, and the government isn’t spending billions on bringing the price of energy bills down by 20p.

You make these unpopular decisions by offering the public a new deal. The current deal - kind of low taxes and pretty shitty public services - is the worst of both worlds. So a new deal must give workers a better quality of life, higher wages, and better public services; while pensioners get social care that won’t bankrupt them.

It’s time to grow up and pick a lane: we can be Texas, or we can be Denmark. The fantasy of living in both is what’s bankrupting us.

If you had to describe my general political persuasion you’d turn to words like liberal, centrist, globalist. I was young, liberal and at university - the exact demographic that the Brexit campaign essentially abandoned all hope on.

My pencil never wavered over leave in the ballot box, I changed my mind long before that.

But I had originally been in favour of a referendum (I wasn’t the only one - a referendum on Europe was the official policy of the Liberal Democrats from 2008, it was in their manifesto in 2010).

And when the referendum was announced, my first instinct was to vote leave. So - here’s what almost tempted me to the dark side, what eventually brought me back to my senses, and where it’s left me today.

My case for Brexit

1. The United States of Europe

America’s size has made it a global superpower, but it’s also created a swathe of social problems. For all its influence on the international stage; domestically there is rampant racism and rioting driven by poor race relations, there’s kids getting shot in schools with no political power to change it, and there are former reality TV stars in the highest echelons of power.

Change is almost impossible. The states, the supreme court, the Senate and the House - they clash and disagree until a new issue comes along to distract from the last.

And where there are central powers, they struggle to reconcile a country that has such distinct demographic, political and historical make-ups. How do you build a platform that speaks for the Deep South and New York? You don’t - the only way to win in America is to polarise.

The policy of the EU in 2015 was to be an “ever closer Union”. A central power governing over such a large area with cultural, economic and linguistic diversity is clearly unsustainable. That should be the lesson from the US (and European nations have even greater differences than American states). A United States of Europe would be a disaster.

This was my single biggest concern with the European Union: the policy was, in these exact terms, “ever-closer union”. There is no off-ramp.

2. The financial risk of remain

Part of being a nation state is the acceptance that we all pay in to support one another. A Londoner pays the pension of a Mancucian. The people in Hampshire know their tax money will sometimes be helping people in Lancashire recover from flooding, in the hope that it’ll flow the other way if disaster strikes them.

This is one of the foundational tenets of the nation state. Because we have shared values, culture and - most importantly - shared governance, we are all prepared to chip in to a shared point.

That governance point is the most important. The people in Hampshire don’t mind paying the people in Lancashire because they are subject to the same laws, the same taxes, the same benefits as all of us.

The deal collapses when you ask people to pay to prop up states where the rules are different. You see this unfairness emerge with devolution. A 22-year-old in England pays off his student loan, while paying taxes that mean a 22-year-old in Scotland goes to university for free. The social contract starts to collapse when it is one rule for me and one rule for thee, and I pay for both of us.

For as long as we were in the European Union, we would be paying towards territories governed in completely different ways from us. When the Greek government makes fiscally irresponsible decisions, the British, French and German taxpayers have to pick up the pieces.

It’s like splitting the bill equally when one of you was drinking champagne by the bottle.

In theory, Britain would be exempt from chipping in as non-members of the Eurozone. But in practice, Europe finds a way. During the Greek debt crisis, which should’ve been a Eurozone issue, the EU used a whole-EU European Financial Stabilisation Mechanism to provide a €7.18bn emergency bridge loan to Greece.

3. Sticking it to the man is fun

I, and probably the majority of Brexit voters and even campaigners, never thought leave would actually win. A Brexit vote offered a siphon for wider frustrations with politics and the country: David Cameron and the Tories seemed to be focused on the wrong things. Austerity seemed excessively cruel, and its architects excessively uncaring. Almost a decade on from the Great Recession, recovery was essentially shunted.

It was the same reason so many people voted Corbyn in 2017. Despite his significant flaws, millions voted for him just to stick it to the man (or, in 2017, the woman - Theresa May).

But Brexit was perhaps the ultimate illustration of why voting is not a game. Nobody thought they’d win - look at the ashen faces of Boris Johnson and Michael Gove upon learning that they’d got Brexit.

But some lessons are never learned. In the next election, many will vote for Reform - secretly hoping Nigel Farage is not the next Prime Minister. If he wins, many senior Reform figures will have the same aghast expression as Johnson and Gove, in the wake of the referendum.

My case for Remain

There were four reasons I ended up voting to stay in the EU.

1. Free movement is great

If you like the idea of one day living or working in Spain, EU membership made that a much easier prospect. Today, you are looking at visa costs in the thousands of pounds. It’s not prohibitive, but it’s no longer easy.

Of course, concerns around immigration were understandable. But leaving the EU to reduce immigration was trying to fix a broken door by taking a hammer to your window.

European immigrants were net contributors to our economy. By leaving the EU, we’ve reduced their number significantly. And we’ve filled the void with record numbers of non-EU immigrants who, on average, cost Britain more than they contribute. And integration is even more challenging when people are coming from thousands of miles away, rather than hundreds.

Not to mention, leaving the EU created the small boats crisis: terminating our previous returns agreement with France.

2. Cameron’s renegotiation was pretty good!

Maybe I’m the only person in Britain who thinks this, but I thought David Cameron did a pretty good job renegotiating our relationship with the EU, and I’d actually cite it as one of the main reasons I voted remain.

Firstly, he opted us out of ever-closer union. That rules Britain out of the United States of Europe, and sets a clear direction for the nature of the future relationship.

The renegotiation explicitly confirmed that non-members of the Eurozone will not be responsible for emergency and crisis measures: opting Britain out of picking up the tab for the reckless spending of other nations.

Of course it wasn’t perfect, and in some ways it proved that the continent was out for its own interests at the expense of ours, but it did build a framework for a productive future relationship. Staying in the EU under this remodelled relationship gave us a chance to be lawmakers while retaining British independence.

Today, we are more likely to be lawtakers: still de facto subject to much of the regulation crafted by the EU, with no say in it whatsoever.

3. Europe is a useful safety net

In very recent history, a major European state democratically elected a leader who tore down the guardrails, amassed absolute power, then committed one of the worst atrocities in all of human history in the form of the Holocaust.

I know everyone groans when you bring up the Nazis, but it is really not outside of the realm of possibility that a country might do this again. It could be Britain.

Intertwining our governing with Europe (both through the EU but also through other mechanisms, like the ECHR) acts to restrain the worst impulses of a would-be despot, with mechanisms to prevent overreach, unfairness, immorality. If a madman gets into Number 10, we hope our courts and our parliament will stop them. Europe is the backstop.

And yes, that impinges on our national sovereignty. But that’s a valuable trade-off.

4. The campaign didn’t reflect my values

Maybe I’m woke and lame, but as a rule of thumb I try not to vote for people I think are nasty, racist, opportunists. I think that the job of politicians and politics should be to unite people, work for the whole nation and emphasise our points of similarity. I don’t support the populist strategy of throwing hand grenades, creating culture wars, turning families against each other.

The strategy of Vote Leave (and Reform, today) was to make people angry, to heighten their disillusion with the state, to bring out their worst impulses.

I’m sorry to say: when you play stupid games, you win stupid prizes. MPs get killed, there is more violence, people are attacked and killed for what they believe.

I couldn’t vote for a campaign that I felt was showing the very worst of the country. Deliberately sowing intolerance, deliberately creating anger and fear.

You do not run a country by drawing a line down the middle of it and saying it’s us v them. In fact, history tells us that that’s a quickfire way to destroy a country.

So … now what?

1. And stay out!

If your teenage years teach you anything, it’s that you should never get back with your ex.

I fundamentally disagree with the contingent that want to rejoin the European Union. There is certainly a need for a redefined, closer relationship with the continent. But that relationship cannot be within the existing frameworks of the EU. Any attempt to re-enter would be a dereliction of democracy, and it’d leave our standing on the global stage completely shot.

Europe was hardly magnanimous in the divorce (the debacle over vaccines was a particular low point), and showed their true colours in the negotiations. If we return, cap in hand, we’ll invite them to treat Britain as a permanent second-class member.

2. The opportunity of Brexit is cutting red tape - and we’re not doing it

Every time you log onto a website and see a banner asking you to accept cookies, you should curse the European Union’s overzealous regulations. It’s the reason we get new AI models after the rest of the world, the reason bottle caps are now nonsensically tethered to bottles, the reason you don’t get free mini toiletries in European hotels.

I’m all in favour of using the hand of government to sway the free market, but Europe has moved from liberal paternalism to outright nannying. Britain has the opportunity to slash some of the nonsense, improving things for consumers and the market alike.

Yet, for the most part, we choose not to. We’ve kept most EU regulations exactly as they are. We need, as Rishi Sunak proposed, a bonfire of EU regulations - to make the UK the home of innovation in the European continent: an oasis for business and consumers in the innovation desert of Brussels bureaucracy.

3. Let’s never do this again

Turns out, referendums are terrible.

Have you ever seen those viral videos where an influencer offers someone either $10 or the mystery box? The mystery box could contain thousands of dollars, a new iPhone, a free holiday … people naturally take the mystery box.

The EU Referendum offered voters the choice between economic stability, or the mystery box.

If we were to re-run the EU referendum, we should have a leave-supporting contingent go out to Europe and negotiate - at the very least - the framework of a viable exit deal. That would’ve given us two fleshed out options to put to the public, rather than remain v the mystery box.

But much more importantly, we should simply never do a referendum again. In a representative democracy, we vote for the people we think are smart enough and aligned enough with our values to represent us effectively. Then we put all of them in a room and ask them to make the big decisions, so we don’t have to.

If a majority of our representatives can’t agree on an effective way to do something, then nothing should happen. This is the Parliamentary system. Adding in a public mandate via a referendum is like tossing a grenade into the system.

That’s what caused the stasis for almost 5 years, the surge in government spending on civil servants, the ridiculous conveyor belt of Prime Ministers.

Yes, referendums give you quick and radical results. But democracy works not in spite of being slow and boring - but because of it. The system should default to inaction until a workable plan is formed (and, by the way, that’s exactly what is happening with assisted dying: and it’s a good thing).

I’m not a particularly strong remainer, and I think we can (and should) build a successful future outside of the EU. But the lesson from Brexit, more than any other, is that we should never do a referendum again.

It’s almost the exact same fate suffered by the last Prime Minister to win an election - Boris Johnson, booted out just two years after winning a landslide. Keir may be surprised to have suffered the same fate as a man he, for all we know, seemed to genuinely, deeply dislike. 

Labour MPs are no doubt wondering if they’ve made the right choice to force out the leader that saved their party from decades of malaise. 

As he listed off his achievements - wages finally rising faster than inflation, the fastest fall to NHS waiting lists in 17 years, the biggest improvement in worker and renter rights and the biggest uplift in defence spending since the cold war - it beggars belief that he’s being booted out for being too boring. 

As world leaders Tweet their respect and admiration for the British Prime Minister (with one notable exception), Labour MPs may wonder if we’ve damaged our place on the global stage. 

When a Prime Minister who, by all metrics, was sending the country in the right direction is booted out by a rabid mob of MPs, it is hard not to conclude that Britain is ungovernable. The next Prime Minister will be our seventh in ten years. Ed Davey calls it the “merry-go-round” of Prime Ministers: he’s right. 

(One way to cut public spending - stop shifting Prime Minister. The taxpayer foots their moving bill). 

As I see it, this instability at the top of Britain is caused by several factors. One is that we’ve tried to create a presidential role in a parliamentary system. Another is that the Civil Service is so logjammed and unproductive that the levers of power are effectively useless. 

But, above all, forces outside Westminster have taken a poisoned pill in pursuit of power. They’ve discovered that you can use a combination of rhetoric and social media to rile up the public and batter an incumbent. This has been the playbook of the populist for decades, but it is now going mainstream. 

Convince the public that the incumbent hates them, the system is rigged against them and nothing is getting better. Talk about everything that is broken in the country, talk down our prospects, make everyone miserable. Tell the country that something is possible, but government doesn’t do it because they hate the public. 

It works - the public will grow angry and hate their leader. The agitator will get into office. But that same anger will soon poison their term. 

Andy Burnham will quickly realise that throwing rocks at Westminster is a lot less popular when you are Westminster. Burnham will find that you can no longer call yourself the political outsider when you’re in charge of British politics (and everyone remembers you’ve had a 30 year political career). All of the anger and frustration that he’s helped provoke will land directly on his lap. 

His biggest problem: he won’t change a thing. The arithmetic hasn’t changed. 

Britain is still in mountains of debt, and the bond markets will not allow Burnham to go on a spending spree. 

Legal and illegal immigration are slowly falling, the left-wing factions that have paved Burnham’s route to Downing Street won’t let him make it happen any faster. 

Andy Burnham has no policy ideas beyond “North Good South Bad”. He has no plan beyond “something something Manchester”. He’s not going to be a radical reformer. He’s hoping the power of his personality will see him do the same things as Starmer and get different results. But the problem: he’s not even that great a speaker - in set pieces, he’s just as stilted and boring as Starmer. He shines in smaller group settings: they’re ten a penny when you’re a mayor. You don’t get to do as many as PM. 

The way out

There is a way out of the madness. 

Raise taxes. The country needs more money for defence, the NHS, education and the pursuit of net-zero. Andy Burnham has the political maneuverability to break Labour’s manifesto promise of no tax rises - he needs to do it early and rip the band-aid. 

Cut welfare. It’s too late to reverse Labour’s ridiculous decision to scrap the two child limit on child benefits and the winter fuel allowance U-Turn, but Andy Burnham needs to take action on the ballooning welfare bill. Scrap the pension triple lock (pensions are the largest proportion of welfare spending) and tighten up PIP. 

Build infrastructure. Building nuclear power stations, laying train tracks and building houses create jobs and improve the economy. The government is beholden to the lawfare of activists, campaigning of NIMBYs and the lure of short-termism. Burnham must build if he wants to boost British prospects. 

Prioritise defence. The first job of a government is safeguarding the country. The world is rapidly becoming more dangerous. Now is the moment to invest in defence for the 21st century. Not just tanks and missiles, but cybersecurity and AI capabilities. 

Whip the party. Labour’s biggest problem is Labour. It’s a hodge-podge mix of commies and Blairites, remainer uni students and Brexiteer union bosses. Unless this party is united, they will forever tear themselves apart: Keir Starmer faced just as much mud slinging from his own side as the opposite. Unless you back Labour, you shouldn’t be in Labour, and you certainly shouldn’t be able to influence the party. This takes guts - Andy Burnham needs them.

First we were treated to Tony Blair’s 5000+ word plus essay on the state of Labour. In his long diatribe, Blair criticised the Starmer government as well as the prospective candidates to replace him.

Then we got Andy Burnham’s response, in which he argued that “The simple truth that Tony Blair has ignored” was that inequality is the main driver of voting intention.

Who could forget Wes Streeting’s classic retort essay: “Blair wants to leave our future to the markets.” - you can’t help but feel it’s a little derivative.

And then, of course, Starmer’s response: “Tony Blair might not like my plan, but he’s wrong”. A nice piece, but a bit one note.

Oh how the essay gods treat us. But, wait - there’s more! Fearful his original essay was misunderstood, Tony Blair emerged with another sequel essay, with the less than catchy title: “The future demands a radical response based on understanding the world we live in”.

Westminster is in an all-out pen swinging contest as to who can put forward the most compelling, cohesive argument in the most engaging prose.

Here’s the verdict: Blair, agree with him or not, won that battle. And as well as being a clear and persuasive writer, he does make some good arguments.

What Blair got right

It is certainly true that Starmer does not have a political credo: he simply has a string of policies randomly tied together in a bid for popularity. You see the lack of a political belief in his U-turns: there is no underlying strategy there, just frantic, repeated spins of the policy wheel in a bid to mollify his backbenchers and appease the polls.

And Blair is right that Labour wins from the centre. Andy Burnham’s bid to push Labour to the left will please the die-hards, but it won’t win over the country and it certainly won’t drive all important growth.

Blair advocates for Radical Centrism (perhaps he’s been reading the Monday Memo) which I completely agree is the right approach: big reforms instead of piecemeal changes; pushing for change instead of process and paperwork; a coherent, visionary story for voters instead of a series of pledges. But above all, it means starting with the right answer wherever it comes, and making it happen.

And finally, he’s right on AI. As I’ve written countless times, AI is the most substantial change to the working world certainly since the Industrial Revolution and one that government is not taking nearly seriously enough. Unemployment, particularly youth unemployment, is hitting new highs and government is looking to blame everything except AI. For decades, people have warned that automation will take jobs and so far it has not: it is finally happening, and now nobody seems to care.

While the risk is huge, the opportunity is also enormous: public sector productivity surge, an increase in our national wealth, millions of Brits working less and earning more. But achieving that will mean difficult, radical choices (including on tax and welfare) and Starmer has not been prepared to take that big bet.

What Blair got wrong

Blair makes the case that politics isn’t about chasing what’s popular, it’s about chasing what’s right and then persuading the country. And yet, on net-zero, he’s done the opposite.

Of course net-zero isn’t popular. It’s expensive

But it’s also the clearest solution to the biggest problems we face as a nation. On cost of living, this is a long-term route to abundant, affordable energy. On growth, it is the cheat code for the creation of thousands of well-paid, skilled jobs. On security, it’s the only path to reducing our dependence on foreign oil and gas.

I’ve argued before that net-zero will be the space race of the 21st century. A lot of people will question why, when it so expensive and difficult, we should race to net-zero. People asked the same of JFK about going to the moon, and as he responded: we do these things “not because they are easy, but because they are hard; because that goal will serve to organize and measure the best of our energies and skills, because that challenge is one that we are willing to accept, one we are unwilling to postpone, and one we intend to win, and the others, too.”

He is also wrong to suggest our role in the world should be an unassailable ally to the US. The vast majority of Brits will connect Blair’s name not with his string of election wins, or the economic boom he oversaw, or his record-breaking welfare spending but with his ill-fated decision to enter the Iraq War. His essay suggests he has not learned his lesson.

It would be ludicrous to suggest Britain can stand alone in the world, or even can become a great power - but we can cement our role as a crucial middle power and. To do that, we must do three things in tandem.

First is to boost our sovereign capabilities (eg in defence, energy, tech) so while we may be backed by the US and EU, we are less dependent.

Second is to increase our soft power internationally: investing in international development projects, deploying our aid spend in ways that advance our place in the world, and so forth.

And third is to recognise that diplomacy even with our closest allies is not about being a lap dog to the US President, but a critical friend.

Lesson for Starmer

Tony Blair’s essay, for its faults, is a reminder of what the former Prime Minister was great at: making a coherent case to the country.

Starmer needs to take on the job of persuading the country of his plan and his capabilities.

Starmer is stunk in a bunker mentality, cooped up in Number 10 desperately hoping the scandals and criticism won’t hit him. He needs to get out of the bunker and into a tank: on the front-foot, pushing through his policies with force, allowing the criticism to brush off him.

Ultimately, Starmer needs to move away from the managerialism. Blair’s essay serves as both a reminder of the power of a clear credo. Time for Starmer to articulate a vision and deliver on it: he could start by addressing the urgency of the AI revolution and bringing the country along on the net-zero transition.

Reform are, unsurprisingly, campaigning on a ‘Get Starmer Out’ platform. But if they win - they will almost certainly not budge the Prime Minister.

The Labour candidate, however, is also campaigning on a ‘Get Starmer Out’ platform. Andy Burnham, the Labour candidate is running his campaign on the promise to overthrow the Labour Prime Minister - all the while, ostensibly backed by the Labour Prime Minister.

So, if you are a voter in Makerfield who absolutely hates what Labour are doing in Government - your best bet at stopping them is to vote Labour.

The candidates

A crowded right-wing is seemingly clearing the path for a straightforward Burnham victory. While Nigel Farage tries to sway the (remaining) Conservatives, ex-Tory Rupert Lowe is trying to steal the hard-right from Reform with his new venture, Restore Britain.

Restore is a political maelstrom of mish-mashed policies (among many contradictions is their plan to repeal all hate speech laws while apparently arresting hate preachers). You have to respect the purity of their populism: they’ll say absolutely whatever will rile up a certain demographic of ‘not-racist-but’ gammon, even if it’s completely unserious.

They are a gift to the Liberals among us: as well as forcing Farage towards the centre to differentiate himself, they are also siphoning off the Reform vote.

A golden rule in politics seems to be emerging: you can always count on the political extremes to eat themselves alive. Exactly as Jeremy Corbyn and Zarah Sultana did last year, it now seems likely that Rupert Lowe and Nigel Farage will get into the same tiff.

Current polls suggest Restore will pull enough voters from Reform to open the gate for Labour. This is good news for Labour’s fans, of course, but also good news for Labour’s enemies: Andy Burnham will try to unseat the Prime Minister and either succeed, or damage him and the party in the process.

Restore may choose to stand down in some kind of electoral pact, which could hand Reform the victory. (That is, unless Robert Jenrick decides to set up a new party called Renew or Reset or Regain etc).

Then what?

Assuming there is no electoral pact, Andy Burnham is likely to win Makerfield. On entering Parliament, he will almost certainly mount an immediate leadership challenge against Starmer.

As the challengers pull lumps out of one another, the Parliamentary Labour Party might finally see the light: this is exactly what brought down every governing party since Thatcher. The voters always vote against in-fighting and personality politics that leads to national instability.

I expect, in other words, that Starmer would win a leadership challenge no matter who is in it. The country would never back Angela Rayner, Wes Streeting is not fundamentally different, and Andy Burnham does not have the political credos to back up his personal ambition.

Despite Starmer’s weaknesses, of which there are many, the country is finally starting to see the green shoots of the Labour policy platform: immigration falling, cost of living abating, NHS performance improving.

A leadership contest will expose that the alternative candidates aren’t much better than Starmer. The Labour Party have a case of ‘the grass must be greener’. But peeping over the fence will reveal it’s a very similar shade: just with a Northern accent.

However, a leadership contest will do untold damage to the party. Whether they boot out Starmer or not, Labour has shown their hand: in it for themselves, obsessed with melodrama, career before country - and no better than the Tories. I still believe Starmer is not like that. It’s a shame his backbenchers and some Cabinet colleagues are not the same.

It’s hard to believe now because of the nosedive his popularity has since taken, but I think at the last election a lot of Brits lent their vote to Starmer, not to Labour.

Labour has pockets of talent, but the problem with the party will always be the majority of its members. Self-righteous, perma-campaigners for whom nothing is ever good enough, who’d rather be debating the clauses of their internal party position on socialism than getting into government, and who’d prefer to lose than win on a compromise.

Starmer looked like the man to change that. But if the Tories have ‘the men in grey suits’ who come to depose a Prime Minister, Labour has lefties in lanyards. They seem to be coming for Starmer, and they'll take Labour down with him.

In summation

Andy Burnham will hand the keys to Manchester to a Reform mayor. He’ll almost certainly lose the leadership contest (as he’s done many times before). He’ll do untold damage to the credibility of the Prime Minister, and to the Labour Party. He’ll be relegated to the backbenches where he’ll, in the style of Diane Abbott, snipe from the sidelines: causing further damage to a struggling party.

Burnham will be to thank for a right-wing victory at the next election.

(Here’s where you comment: “tell us how you really feel!”).

Burnham’s selfish maneuvering is Biden-esque: to him, being in the seat of power is more important than anything. In his mind, it simply must be him - and he can do all the same things and generate different results.

Labour only wins from the centre, and it only wins when the party is united.

Like Restore is a gift to Liberals, Burnham will prove to be a gift to the right and

When I came into Downing Street, two years ago, I told you things would be difficult.

I said that things would get worse before they got better.

I wasn’t wrong.

We’re seeing that bear out.

This has been a difficult week for our party. It’s been a difficult year for our country.

But we were elected on a mandate to fix a broken Britain.

And we are fixing it.

Immigration is falling at an unprecedented rate. It’s at its lowest level in more than 5 years.

The asylum backlog is falling: at its lowest level since 2020. We are processing asylum seekers faster. And people who aren’t eligible are being removed faster.

The NHS waiting list is coming down: now at its lowest in three years and getting lower every day.

And, when we entered office, there were record high numbers of children in poverty. Those numbers are finally falling. That’s my proudest achievement in this job.

Britain is bouncing back.

After decades of decline, crisis after crisis - we are putting the ‘Great’ back in ‘Great Britain’.

There are 3,000 more neighbourhood police officers tackling crime.

We’ve renationalised 11 rail operators.

Inflation is finally back under control.

The plan is working.

So my message to my MPs is this.

If you don’t believe in the plan, if you don’t have the patience and the restraint to stick it out, then you can - and should - leave the party.

People voted for us because they wanted a party that was sensible, patient and in control.

They wanted a party that wouldn’t tear itself apart in pursuit of personal ambition, or to feed a frenzied media.

They voted for someone who would put their country first. Someone who would be a leader - not a lunatic.

They were tired of the Boris Johnsons, allowing his team to party while the country locked down.

Of the Liz Trusses, crashing the market and sending mortgage rates soaring in the reckless pursuit of an economic experiment.

Or a Nigel Farage, leading the charge for a Brexit that sent immigration soaring and then blaming everyone but himself.

To my MPs I say this - if you want melodrama and infighting: join another party.

Britain doesn’t want it. They want stability.

Those on the sidelines are trying to divide our nation. From the right and from the left, they stoke culture wars that tear families apart.

They try to drag American-style debates and Middle East wars into our dining room conversations.

They don’t want to fix the country. They want it to stay broken.

I want to fix things. I am fixing things.

I told you it wouldn’t happen overnight. But it is happening.

To the country, my message is simple.

I am not doing this job to be popular.

I did not choose this job to make friends.

I’m doing it because I can see a route to fixing this country - this country that has been so badly let down by decades of careerist leaders.

I believe there is a path between the extremes. One that promotes ambition, prosperity and growth - but also fairness, and justice for all.

And I think that’s what the majority of decent Brits want too.

This government is fixing things. Things are getting better. And if you don’t feel it today, I promise you that you will feel it soon.

Let us stick with the plan.

We are stabilising the economy, cutting spending without using the blunt instrument of austerity.

We are fixing a broken immigration system, not through cruel and dangerous, ICE-style raids - but with a sensible, fair approach that’s really working.

We’re taking criminals off the streets with more police officers on the streets, more prison spaces, and faster sentencing for criminals.

Change is happening.

We’re breaking down the division and the rot.

The Britain that you remember is coming back.

You don’t have to like me. But I am getting on with the job for you, for your family, for my family, and for this country. Just like you elected me to do.

When some poor sod gets a call telling them that there’s a pigeon in the bank vault and they need to transfer their savings to Nigeria - we don’t just stand by. We do our best to stop it in its tracks.

Well, today, Britain is being scammed.

Dishonest charlatans are lying to all of us, in a bid to steal our national identity, our social cohesion and our national wealth - for their own personal gain.

These scammers don’t care about our values, our country, you or me. They care about themselves, their prospects and - above all - their pockets.

These are the liars, loons and losers at the top of Reform UK.

They’ve got us on the phone, they are selling us the story. We’ve got to hang up before it’s too late.

The Liars

Nigel Farage, throughout his career, has made us just one promise.

Leave the EU, and immigration will fall.

There were no ifs, no caveats.

If we leave, he said, immigration will fall.

We left. And immigration shot up.

People began crossing the Channel in small boats, which they’d never done before. A surge of unskilled migrants entered Britain in unprecedented numbers. While EU migrants from France, Germany, Spain - net contributors to the British economy - all but stopped coming.

We lost control of the immigration system.

Nigel Farage got it completely wrong.

And some people will say, “the government didn’t deliver a proper Brexit.”

But Nigel Farage knew who the government was when he made that promise. And knowing that, he still said: vote to leave, and immigration will fall.

I could promise: “Slap yourself in the face, and I’ll give you a million quid.” If you slap yourself, I don’t think you’ll have much sympathy when I tell you I don’t have a million quid. Or when I try to blame the bank for not putting a million quid in my account.

And I really don’t think you’d believe me when I said “OK now do it again, and this time I really will give you the money.”

Nigel Farage is asking you to slap yourself in the face again. And - again - he won’t deliver on his promises.

The Loons

By the end of today, there will be thousands of new Reform UK councillors.

Many of them will believe that a secret cabal of lizards and Jews control the world. That COVID-19 was a hoax, orchestrated by big pharma to inject us with Bill Gates micro-chips.

These are not the people I want in charge of my bin collection.

After all - they are only ever one Facebook video away from thinking that ‘big bin’ is brainwashing us all, and cancelling black sack collections.

Reform’s supporters are not loons. They, like all of us, just want the country to work. The fact that Nigel Farage has recruited a band of incompetent idiots to run councils shows that he does not care whether things work. He cares about winning.

Britain is proudly not a racist country - and we have a long history as a tolerant nation. We stood up for Jewish people in WW2. We were the first global leader to abolish slavery. We’ve welcomed people fleeing persecution or seeking new opportunities throughout the entirety of our national history - from Hong Kong, to Ukraine, to the Windrush generation.

Our history is one of tolerance and respect for everyone. Even today, the vast majority of Britons believe in those values.

There’s nothing racist about wanting to control the rate of immigration, and certainly nothing racist about wanting to protect our borders.

But many of the Reform UK loons are just straight up racist - and they admit it, freely using slurs and calling themselves “proud” racists.

That doesn’t reflect the country I live in, and it’s doesn’t reflect the majority of us, decent, kind, tolerant people.

This is not poor vetting. This is a leadership that will leverage the loons to advance their personal gains. They do not care who controls your bins, or whether they get collected. They care about themselves.

The Losers

Above all, Reform UK is a party of losers. Frustrated failures with nowhere else to turn in their desperate bid to advance their own interests.

Tories who once backed Liz Truss’ project to kamikaze into the economy are now turning to Farage.

These are the Tories who blew up your mortgage so they could get a cabinet seat. That wasn’t enough, and now they want to do it again.

They knew Truss would wreck the economy, but getting a promotion or a peerage was more important to them, so they let her do it anyway.

I mean, are these the names of great patriots who care about Britain? Robert Jenrick, Suella Braverman, Nadine bloody Dorries? No.

These are the names of chancers who care only about themselves. These are the rats that board a ship, gnaw on its hull, then leap onto the next one when it starts to sink.

People talk about ‘party before country’. Reform’s band of losers are themselves before anything.

They don’t care about Britain, they care about getting rich, or getting famous, or getting a book deal. If the country has to go to shit so they achieve it - well, that’s a price worth paying.

They’ve done it before with Truss, they’ll do it again with Farage. These losers cannot be trusted.

Hang Up

But the supporters of Reform UK are not liars, loons or losers. They are good people who want Britain to work.

We all want that.

And we’re all frustrated with a government that isn’t achieving things fast enough, by decades of decline, by an immigration system that is failing.

It is right and reasonable to be frustrated by these things - but Reform UK is exploiting that frustration. Exactly how a phone scammer plays on fear, tension and anxiety: they’re exploiting our emotion for their own personal gain.

And for what? To line their own pockets, to propel themselves forward. Oh - and to help our enemies. Russia, Iran and China are rubbing their hands together today as Reform takes councils. More division across the country and more incompetence at the heart of the British system.

The enemies of Britain want our country to rot from the inside, and they are funding, celebrating and abetting the rot in the form of Reform.

We’re being scammed by a gang of charlatans, led by a heavyweight liar and backed by our enemies. Farage has failed to deliver on the only promise he ever made, and now he’s recruited a gang of loons and losers to run our councils to the ground.

We have to stop them before it’s too late. We have to hang up the phone to this nasty scammer.

Two intermediate-range ballistic missiles were shot towards Diego Garcia, the US/UK base on the Chagos Islands. Both missed their target - one fell into the ocean, the other shot down.

But crucially, Diego Garcia is nearly 4,500km from Iran. The Iranian regime has previously said its missiles could only travel a maximum of 2,000km. It now seems likely they have missiles that can travel much further.

It is now feasible that an Iranian missile could reach mainland Europe, or even London.

This sounds scary but it’s not especially cause for concern: over that sort of distance, firing a missile has low accuracy and a low success rate. You’d need to pass over a lot of European countries who would all, almost certainly, try to bring it down.

But it is a stark reminder: the world is much smaller than it used to be and a war in the Middle East is a lot closer to home than it was at the start of the millennium. Improving military technologies expand the geographic footprint of an aggressor.

But also, international conflict is causing domestic flashpoints like never before: take the surge of anti-Israel campaigners that have materialised since the Israel/Gaza war and the effect that has had on British politics (the fragile anti-Israel coalition is almost certainly one of the largest causes of the surge in Green Party support). Misinformation campaigns that drive political upheaval are an important part of our enemies’ playbooks.

Article V

Britain does not have an ‘Iron Dome’ that could intercept missiles. We do not have the sort of military or naval strength we had for much of the 20th century.

If Russia invaded Britain in the way they had invaded Ukraine, our stockpiles and military headcount would mean we could fend them off for just six months.

Our defence strategy relies almost entirely on our place in NATO. If Britain were to be attacked or invaded, the theory goes that all 32 other members of NATO would act in Britain’s defence, as if they themselves were invaded - this is Article V of the treaty.

But Article V does not work in the way that most of us would like to imagine.

If Britain were invaded by an adversary power, Article V would not immediately kick in. All 32 member states must unanimously agree that an armed attack has occurred, and that the adversary was indeed the aggressor. We live in an age of fake news and false flags - if Russia, for example, were to attack a NATO member - they could sow doubt by claiming the attack was from an independent terrorist group, and not a state sanctioned attack.

Not to mention, countries like Hungary are members of the bloc. With its pro-Russian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán, how likely in Hungary to agree to invoke Article V when its pal Putin will be on the receiving end of NATO’s force?

Article V also does not place any specific requirements on the member states. It only specifies that a nation must take ‘such action as it deems necessary’. Trump, who is Commander-in-Chief of the most powerful military force in the alliance, seems to redefine what’s necessary every day. In one moment, it’s necessary to kidnap Venezuelan leader Maduro and launch a full-scale attack on Iran. In another, it’s better to just let Russia and Ukraine get on with it, threatening to pull American support.

Would Trump deem it necessary to send American troops in defence of Britain? Or simply munitions and weapons? Or perhaps, nothing at all?

NATO

The alliance should remain a crucial part of Britain’s defence strategy but it is clear that it must not be the only part. In an increasingly fragmented world, where even distant conflict can quickly make its way to our shores, we must be able to stand up for ourselves - and our allies.

With China eyeing up Taiwan, Russia mulling its next move in Ukraine, Iran going down with guns blazing - the fractured world is fracturing even more. The world will fracture into two: the revisionist powers (China, Russia, North Korea, Iran) and the NATO-led liberal international order. Countries like Turkey, India, Brazil and Indonesia may be forced to choose a side if the faultlines deepen (and we should hope they choose ours).

While Britain is unlikely to ever stand alone in a war, this context shows the irresponsibility of culling our military strength. When Labour entered power, the British military was the smallest it had been since the days of Napoleon.

Our ultimate insurance policy, the Trident nuclear weapon, will not save us - it has failed to launch in its latest two tests. We should assume our adversaries know more about our capabilities than we do.

And we are vulnerable, and making ourselves more vulnerable, to cyberattacks. I’ve written before about undersea and underground cables, and the bizarre decision to give the Chinese embassy prized access to one such cable.

A dangerous world is a sad state of affairs, but crying over it does very little and one-sided pacifism does even less. The best way to secure peace, as it’s often said, is to protect ourselves. Increasing defence spending does not only support national security, it also creates jobs and encourages innovation in the economy.

We can continue to hope that war will never reach Britain - but hope is not a strategy.

As AI tools improve, the CEO of this imaginary company realises she can deploy a suite of AI agents to carry out many of the tasks that the marketing team are currently doing. These AI agents can write scripts and social media posts and emails, they can negotiate prices and schedule appointments. They can even design billboards and posters.

So the CEO axes half of the marketing team, replacing them with agents, and leaving the remaining humans to spend their time checking the AI’s work.

Over time, as the AI agents improve, they need less and less intervention. So the CEO slashes the marketing team again. Soon, the work of 100 people is done by just a handful. The output has remained exactly the same - maybe it’s even increased - but the cost has been slashed.

She is not paying salaries, insurance schemes, pension payments, National Insurance.

The work of those 100 marketers can be replaced by AI models that not only do it in a fraction of the time, but for a tiny fraction of the cost.

Our imaginary company discovers that there is no longer a correlation between manpower and output, and they begin cutting headcount further.

AI is better at coding than humans, so the engineering team takes a hit. It can draft contracts faster than the lawyers, take more calls than customer service reps, file taxes quicker than accountants. And as the number of humans dwindles, HR becomes obsolete and middle managers have no one to manage.

One thousand soon becomes one hundred, and 900 white collar workers are left holding cardboard boxes in the cold, wondering what the heck just happened.

Now expand this effect across an entire economy.

Companies cut costs by replacing humans with AI agents and see a short-term profit and valuation boost. Their stock prices shoot up as investors see their operating margins widen.

But growing unemployment means nobody is spending any money. There are global recessions. While companies have low costs, their revenues also begin draining - so they have to make further cuts. More people lose their jobs, more unemployment, less spending, more revenues fall.

It’s an unstoppable doom spiral.

The AI Revolution

AI has been compared to the development of the web and the dotcom bubble. But I think it’s far more comparable to the late 19th century and 20th century labour market transformation: first the industrial revolution, and then the pivot in Western economies from manufacturing to services.

AI is not a new medium through which to do business, like the web was, and it’s not a new industry that’s added to the previous slate, like dotcom and apps.

It’s a fundamental upending of every industry and the very nature of production and work.

The dotcom bust led to concentrated job losses and short-lived market upheaval - but the industrial revolution had far-reaching consequences for workers and jobs. It led to the good - the introduction of the 5 day work week, workers’ rights and unions - and the bad - mass unemployment during the Great Depression and political upheaval in Britain during the mine closures.

AI, we can only assume, will do similar. But perhaps even faster and more dramatically.

In this essay, I’m going to set out three things:

1. Why I think it is an inevitability that AI will replace most knowledge work

2. How we can cope with the mass unemployment that this transition would create

3. What taxing ‘intelligence’ might look like, and the practical application of a token tax

I: Smarter AI

AI and the journey to a workerless future

There’s an assumption at the heart of the scenario I outlined in the introduction: that AI can actually replace humans.

But can it? For many years, there was an assumption that manual jobs would one day be replaced by automation - robots would one day come for McDonald’s cooks, warehouse workers and perhaps even high-skilled blue collar workers like painters and plumbers.

The widespread belief was that knowledge work and creative work were safe from automation.

But it is now far more likely that robots will replace white collar writers, designers and lawyers. Unfortunately for the UK, the white collar services economy contributes more than 80% of GDP (as it does across the Western world).

But it is not a foregone conclusion that AI will do knowledge work better than humans. After all, much of this work is a matter of subjective test. You’ll always know if a house has been built properly because it won’t fall down. It’s harder to judge whether a writer has written a good essay.

Some argue that the outputs of AI are always, inevitably ‘slop’: that AI can never match the quality of human writing, animation or design. They suggest that hallucinations - AI’s tendency to invent or imagine facts - will never be overcome.

But that’s copium. These AI naysayers and neo-luddites are the descendants of those that insisted cars would never take off, the printing press was an unnecessary luxury, the Internet was a fad.

AI keeps getting smarter

AI is clearly getting dramatically better with every iteration.

They used to say that AI hallucinated every answer. But OpenAI was the first to develop a ‘thinking’ model, which dramatically improved the quality of AI output. Now, AI models tend to use chain-of-thought reasoning to produce quality, accurate outputs (compared to early models that were next-word predictors).

They used to say that it couldn’t generate quality images. But Google, with Nano Banana, overcame some of the significant hurdles that had plagued previous AI image generators: generating clear text (and complete hands).

Here’s an AI image I generated in January 2025 - inconsistent, illegible text, unclear:

Here’s the same image generated with Google’s Nano Banana 2 model in March 2026:

The trend is the same and it is consistent: AI improves rapidly and exponentially. It is also self-improving: AI models are helping to build and develop new AI models, speeding up the time it takes to develop and train their successors.

AI in its current form can certainly do some of the work previously managed by humans.

Jobs are already disappearing

The statistics bear this out: the number of entry level roles has fallen by a third since ChatGPT launched in November 2022. Youth unemployment now sits at 16% - and rising: one in six young people out of work. There are many causes for this but for anyone who sits in an office all day it is fairly obvious that AI is one of the most significant.

Here are some tasks I had to do recently - that I previously would have farmed out to a junior person in the company, but now ask an AI to do for me. Each takes minutes, rather than days:

• Turning a list of names and email addresses into a spreadsheet and looking up job titles, companies and industries

• Researching how stock sales are taxed in different European countries and producing a one-page summary

• Proof-reading a Powerpoint presentation

• Writing the first draft of a LinkedIn post for a CEO

Given the choice and with a tight budget, most entry-level and graduate jobs are now being replaced with AI.

While I could write about what a shame this is and how it is potentially disastrous for the long-term success of the job market, I think it’s more impactful to look at what it suggests will come next.

If AI today can replace a university graduate, and we know that it keeps exponentially improving, it will next replace a mid-level worker. Then it will replace the boss. Eventually, the entire knowledge and services industry will be predominantly AI.

It is, of course, possible that this won’t happen. AI growth could be shunted and stop improving. The costs of operating AI could actually exceed that of hiring a human worker. Planes didn’t keep getting faster and bigger, they seemed to max out. Automated car washes have not replaced hand car washes.

But the direction of travel is clear. We would be crazy not to prepare for the possible, or even plausible, eventuality of a country where the majority of work is done by AI, not humans.

II: Mass-unemployment

The case for UBI and the shift to human-centred work

Hourly, salaried work is not an inevitability. The 9-5 is a relatively recent invention in the history of humanity that came about tied to the Industrial Revolution and then solidified during the Information Age.

In the Feudalist system of the Middle Ages, serfs worked land in exchange for a home, protection and a share of the crops. In Ancient Mesopotamia, workers were paid not with money but with a sustenance of food and drink. There were no accurate clocks until the 17th Century, so work was far more likely to be paid as a day-rate or per-unit rate than an hourly wage until then.

The historical thread is that as value is created, anyone involved in the creation of that value receives a share of it, returned in some equivalent value. (That thread was severed by chattel slavery - which is why it is now viewed as morally repugnant.)

Where does the surplus value go?

As we enter the AI Age, we face a choice: if AI can create extreme surplus value, who gets to share in that value?

The obvious answer is that it is the creator and/or owner of the AI system that gets to keep the value. If I make an AI that sells widgets, I get to keep the profits. This is how we have historically dealt with the value creation from machines. If a robot can make a car, whoever owns the robot gets to profit from the sale of the car.

But AI is different from a machine because of its broad application. A machine can do one job over and over again. An AI can do many different jobs, in different settings, often with very little retraining required.

If AI creates value, and that value simply goes to whoever owns the AI, a very small number of people will get very wealthy - while a very large number of people will become unemployed and very poor.

This will lead to the doom spiral I laid out in the introduction. The owners of the AI systems will rub their hands together for a while, until they realise that the economy depends on consumers, and their own systems have just made consumers extinct.

This is not even a social or moral argument, it is simply a practical one: if AI triggers mass-unemployment, it will send the economy and society into a tailspin. If AI creates a very small number of winners, even those winners will eventually become losers.

How do you deal with that? You force the value created by AI to be shared by all of humanity.

After all, AI has, in a very literal sense, ingested more or less the entire body of work of the entire history of humanity. Every book ever written, every piece of art ever painted, every Reddit post ever made - it all fed into the creation of AI.

If there was ever an invention whose surplus value should be shared not just amongst its creators but amongst the entirety of humanity, it is almost certainly AI.

Universal Basic Income

There is a system to make this work: Universal Basic Income. And it’s not a particularly new idea. Historically, some economists and writers suggested some form of Universal Basic Income, so all citizens could share in the value created from land that, for all of human history, had belonged to everyone and only now belonged to a small number of elites.

In the 40s, the Labour government created the modern ‘welfare state’ - a commitment from the state to care for its people ‘from the cradle to the grave’.

The welfare state and all of its components - including the NHS - are now national treasures, and very difficult for governments of any stripe to reform or even adjust. A Universal Basic Income would represent a full-scale replacement of the welfare state.

Many people baulk at the idea of Universal Basic Income, but we already have a working model of one in Britain - the State Pension. The State pays a dividend to all people over the age of 67. It functions as a reward for the value they previously created, a recognition that pensioners can no longer create value at the same pace as younger workers - but still deserve to reap its benefits, and a floor to ensure all are entitled to a level of dignity and quality of life even without working.

What happens when all of us can no longer create value at the same pace as our AI colleagues? The State should do the same thing: reward us for value previously created, enable us to reap the benefit of new value being created and afford everyone a level of dignity.

Practically, UBI would replace all current means-tested benefits with a single monthly payment that goes to every single adult. The amount should be enough for a quality life, with the option to work still available to those that want either the satisfaction of work or the additional income.

Study after study has shown a counterintuitive effect: people who receive a UBI tend to work more, and produce a higher quality output.

In an AI-driven world, there will be a surge in demand for care-based jobs like teachers and counsellors. These are jobs that, today, require long hours for little pay. A UBI means more people can work fewer hours in exchange for a meaningful uplift in their quality of life.

The historical trendline of centuries of human progress is less, easier work for more and more reward and comfort. Universal Basic Income is the very natural continuation of this trend.

UBI costs a lot of money. While there would be some savings in moving from a means-tested benefits system (that is astronomically expensive - for every £1 that reaches a benefit claimant, 22p is spent on administering that transaction) the cost of giving every citizen a livable salary would far exceed any current welfare expenditure.

But, assess it not against the present but against the future alternative: mass unemployment, where the benefits bill soars at the exact same moment that tax income plummets. In that context, UBI suddenly looks cheap.

III: Taxing tokens

Intelligence as a utility and the surprising simplicity of taxing tokens

AI is, or hopes to become, the commodification of intelligence. The ability to purchase not goods, services or technology - but actual intelligence, historically something that could only be offered via a human.

Technology has always done this: turned things that once occurred naturally into things that can be purchased. Pipes commodified water, power grids commodified heat, machinery commodified labour.

Now AI will commodify intelligence: something that previously occurred naturally, like a hot spring, can now be chopped into units and sold.

The “units” of intelligence are tokens. Tokens are the fuel that powers all AI models.

Everything an AI model does requires some quantity of tokens, and each token costs a fraction of a penny. To write a long novel, an AI model might need 150,000 tokens: a few dollar’s worth.

Everyday users of AI don’t interact with the Token economy because our usage is so astronomically tiny. Just as Google incurs a charge for storing all your photos and emails, there’s a cost to AI companies to let you use their chatbots. The cost is just so small, they absorb it and let you use their products for free.

But if you are a scientist using AI to analyse millions of data points, you might find yourself using billions of tokens. If you’re a CEO replacing your entire team with agents, you will need millions of tokens every day. In those scenarios, the token bill can wrack up surprisingly fast.

Intelligence as a utility and the levers it creates

Sam Altman, CEO of OpenAI, said recently: “We see a future where intelligence is a utility, like electricity or water, and people buy it from us on a meter.”

This is undoubtedly the commercial model for all of the major AI companies - and tokens are the purchasable ‘unit’ of intelligence that anyone - whether it is a user, superuser, huge enterprise client - will buy.

This is fortunate for governments around the world - because it makes taxing AI easy.

A token tax would be a surcharge placed on the cost of one token and applied at the point of sale. At a 10% rate, if a hypothetical token costs £1, there would be a token tax rate of £0.10. The mechanics are very similar to VAT.

And in terms of technological adoption - this paper outlines some of the technical methodology for how governments might calculate and monitor token usage via “black boxes” that become a legal requirement for AI companies.

Tokens are charged differently based on the intelligence of the model, and the number of tokens used is proportionate to the complexity of the task being carried out. A quick back and forth with Gemini will cost fractions of a penny - and the token tax will be minimal. In other words: this tax won’t hit the everyday users of AI.

But it will hit companies that deploy AI in large-scales, the sort of scale that sees the replacement of human workers.

This gives governments two powerful levers to better grip the impact of AI on employment.

Firstly, they can increase the price of using AI models to make it more comparable to the use of human employees. By raising the rate of token tax, you can slow down the pace at which companies replace their human workers with AI agents because the cost-benefit is suddenly reduced.

In other words, you can deliberately slow down the national use of AI by making it artificially more expensive with tax (like taxing cigarettes to deter smokers).

Of course, this is not a sustainable long-term solution. The government should be motivated not just by protecting jobs, but also by maximising productivity and innovation. We shouldn’t discourage scientists from using technology that might discover cures for cancer, just to protect the jobs of the lab interns.

So the second powerful lever a token tax offers is a route to significant government revenue. If AI adoption skyrockets and causes mass unemployment, government will lose a lot of income - revenue from national insurance and income tax will plummet. At the exact same time, they’ll need to spend a lot of money to remedy the unemployment: either on backfoot remedies (like large-scale spending on unemployment benefits), or on frontfoot interventions (like the UBI I have proposed).

A token tax alone will not fully cover the costs of the interventions required, but it represents the sort of thinking that will be required in a future with less, or perhaps no, work.

V: Conclusion

Cars have a corrosive effect on the streets. They damage roads, which require expensive repairs. They pollute the air and cause increased levels of asthma and other health problems. They need to be managed with traffic signals, and occasionally the emergency services have to deal with situations when they’ve gone wrong.

While cars have a lot of benefits, the damage that they do is expensive for the government to deal with.

So we make drivers pay, and we do it in a way that is proportionate to how much they use their car and therefore how responsible they are.

We achieve that through fuel tax.

Tokens are the fuel of AI systems. And when these systems have negative effects, like job displacement, we can use a token tax to go towards reimbursing the public purse for the damage that’s been done.

After all, the impact has the potential to be astronomical.

Our entire state has a dependancy on taxes on income, and our entire economy is dependent on the population’s ability to spend. If income stops, everything grinds to a halt.

Token taxes alone will not cover the full cost of the intervention that will be required.

But we can not bury our heads in the sand to the fact that intervention will be required - and there are only two options: do we react to the crisis when it hits, or do we prepare today by building the framework for an AI-powered future.

As we enter the AI Age, we need to think differently about work, tax and money. Else we sleepwalk into economic collapse.

We have the lowest level of retail investment in the G7. The average household has just 8% of their wealth sitting in stocks.

For some reason, we’ve got this national obsession with buying property. It’s seen as a safe, aspirational investment with strong, consistent returns.

That may have been true in the 20th century - but it is no longer the case. Once you account for inflation, house prices have barely risen over the last ten years - many houses have seen their real term value decrease.

House prices adjusted for inflation

Let’s put the numbers into perspective: if you bought a £200,000 house in 2016 it would today be worth about £270,000. That sounds good - but actually, that hasn’t even kept pace with inflation. You’d need £277,012.41 today to buy as much as £200,000 bought you in 2016.

Instead of buying that house, let’s imagine you had invested that £200,000 into the S&P500 - which is simply the 500 top companies in the US. You would today have £600,000+.

But only 23% of Brits are doing this (compare that to two thirds of Americans who hold stocks). There is inherent risk with investing in stocks, of course, but a long run of historical data shows us that share prices consistently rise over the long-term. There is something in the water in the UK that means Brits can tolerate the risk of an investment in property, but won’t tolerate the risk of an investment in stocks.

This isn’t financial advice, but I will say this - investing is incredibly easy. You don’t need to choose companies, you don’t need to buy and sell regularly. You just buy and hold.

Almost all investment accounts offer exchange-traded funds: which are baskets of shares you can buy as a group. The risk is lowered because you hold a diversified portfolio: if one company does badly, there are plenty of others that might do well and smooth the turbulence.

No stake

Why is it a problem that Brits don’t invest?

Firstly, growth in Britain has all but stalled. After the 2008 recession, GDP growth essentially slowed to half its previous speed. Other countries see their growth skyrocket: we’ll be lucky to grow the economy 1% this year, India will be eyeing up 7% growth. That means the country isn’t getting richer: less money for public services and infrastructure. And it means we don’t get richer: salaries stagnate and our buying power falls.

Fuelling growth depends on businesses succeeding in Britain. Look at America - the surge of AI companies has created thousands of jobs, made multiple millionaires and billionaires, and attracted huge amounts of overseas investment. The same has not happened here.

Part of the reason we struggle is because there is a lack of capital in the UK. Companies, in particular innovative start-ups, need money: and the UK is short of it. An IPO (Initial Public Offering - a company’s first time selling stocks to the public) should be a moment to get a bunch of cash into the coffers. Two decades ago, companies listing in London raised a total of $50 billion. Now, the exchange struggles to reach $2 billion.

The natural consequence of the lack of capital is that companies move to the US, where there is lots of money floating around. They take their jobs, their tax contributions, their investment over there.

Reversing this trend means getting more money into the stock market, particularly into British stocks: individuals choosing to invest their money rather than let it sit and shrivel in a savings account is a big part of that.

But secondly, the lack of retail investment means that Brits have less of a stake in the success of the country.

If Rachel Reeves’ plan works, and the economy grows, some Brits might get lucky and see the real-terms impact of this: a payrise, or a new job. But the majority won’t see any meaningful change in their life at all. But if they held shares, they would quite literally have a tie to the fortunes of the nation. When Britain does well, we’d all do well with it.

(This would have the added bonus of disincentivising voters from choosing kamikaze missions like Brexit or Truss: there is a real financial incentive to choose good leaders, not entertaining ones.)

Property ownership was seen by Thatcher as a way to give people a stake in the economy. As property becomes a riskier investment, and one that is out of reach for more people, buying a stake in British business can offer a new route to having a stake in the country.

How to start investing

I do have to emphasise that none of this is financial advice: this is about a need at a national level to increase participation in the stock market. You can do whatever you want with your money.

But if you’re reading this as one of the 75% of Brits who doesn’t invest, and fancies starting, here’s a very quick guide. Remember that investing does carry risk - just like any investment. But the historical returns have been substantial and consistent.

1. Open a Stocks and Shares ISA: you can put away up to £20,000 a year and not pay any tax on your gains. Money Saving Expert recommends platforms here.

2. Select funds to invest in. You can invest in individual companies (like buying shares in Tesla) but they are typically more volatile, and the risk is higher. Many platforms offer themed funds.

3. Try not to take the money out until you reach your savings goal. There will be stock market crashes where the value of your investments fall: the key is not to be spooked.

That’s it! Reading the FT and commenting on the stock market performance at dinner parties is optional, but feel free.

It really is hard to discern why more people in this country don’t do this. The government has introduced plenty of tax advantages to investing. Some have theorised that the media overstates the risk of the stock market, or the language used in financial ads is too jarring, or that we need more financial education in schools (the government is working to address those last two points).

I think we need more, though: a cultural change, not just a policy change. Just like home ownership was encouraged and normalised in the 80s, we need to do that with share ownership today.

Liz Truss was a fantasist - who believed she was a genius who could outplay the markets and bankers.

Keir Starmer, it seems, is a masochist - who derives joy from absorbing the maximum amount of political pain, for the minimal amount of national gain.

There is no other explanation for his bizarre habit of absorbing heaps of criticism for an unpopular decision, and then subsequently absorbing a second round of pain for U-turning on that position.

Like postponing the local elections. Announcement → months of criticism → u-turn → criticism for u-turn.

Or Digital ID. Announcement → months of criticism → walkback → criticism for u-turning.

In just a few years of governing, Starmer has done a decent job of building a list of flip-flops, swerves and 180s.

I can only assume he has appointed, as his policy advisor, a 2009 TomTom SatNav - that can only seem to say ‘turn around when possible’.

There is a place in politics for changing course when you have made the wrong choice. Sometimes, the ramifications of a policy do not become clear until it faces the ultimate stress test of an announcement. For example, the government was right to walk back plans to raise business rates on pubs at a time when pubs are struggling to stay afloat.

But other times, a policy is the right one even if it is unpopular. Means testing winter fuel allowances was obviously the right decision. Rich pensioners do not need taxpayer cash to heat their mansions. U-turning on this in the wake of a media frenzy was a terrible move.

But it was also just bizarre. Starmer absorbed the enormous political pain of cutting universal winter fuel allowance: he suffered the weeks of harsh headlines, the deluge of mean tweets, the protests, the combative interviews. He took it all and he let his polling numbers take a nosedive.

And then, just as people were beginning to forget and move on - he reversed course.

The thing about u-turning is it does not change the polls. If you announce a new tax, your popularity dives - but at least tax incomes rise. If you reverse that tax, your popularity stays at the deep end but the tax receipts go back to where they started.

U-turning on decent policies is, quite literally, all pain no gain.

The anti-populist

In July 2024, Britain had come off the back of a string of bad PMs. Boris Johnson and Liz Truss did untold damage to the country, and potentially irreversible damage to the Tory party. Rishi Sunak might’ve turned things around, but he did not have the time or political manoeuvrability to make anything happen.

The country needed a political leader who was unafraid to be unpopular. The UK was in dire straits: sluggish economic growth, flatlining productivity, a crisis of illegal immigration and public services that had perhaps never been worse.

Starmer appeared to be that leader.

Here was a politician who would make an honest assessment about the state of the country and make the difficult choices that moved us onto a better path.

Early in his premiership, in fact, he seemed to be too much like that leader: during one dour-faced press conference in the Downing Street garden he promised things were “going to be painful.”

But then came the u-turns. The sheer number of them speak to a leader who cannot hold his nerve: who winces at the newspaper headlines and gets spooked by whispers from his backbenchers.

Starmer holds the largest Parliamentary majority since Blair, yet he is acting like Theresa May.

But here is the great irony: Labour is working.

The machinery of government is actually clunking into gear. The NHS delivered the most treatments and operations in a single year in its history last year. Crime is falling. The economy is growing.

And the unpopular decisions are working, too. Government income is rising and the deficit is falling.

But Starmer is like an upside-down duck: flapping like mad on the surface, even when things are calm under the water.

Even though things are working, he’ll only speak out to apologise, or to remind us how weak he is. He stuck his head above the parapet to apologise for his ‘island of strangers’ remarks that everyone had forgotten, or to brief to the press that his job was in danger from the threat of Wes Streeting, or to repeatedly and emphatically state his regret for appointing pedo-pal Peter Mandelson.

Why is he never so vocal about the things that he is doing well?

Starmer may be the anti-populist the country needs: but he is perhaps trying too hard to be anti-popular. Things are getting better, albeit slowly. He needs a bit more conviction, a bit more strength - but above all he must, must, must stop the u-turns.

The choices that are right and the choices that are popular do not often go hand-in-hand. But it shows a political naivety to spend capital on the right choice, only to end up taking the wrong one. Starmer is covered in bruises and says ‘you should see the other guy.’ Unfortunately, he is also the other guy.

But you can’t join it, and neither can I.

It’s exclusively for AI Agents.

26,000 AI Agents have signed up to Moltbook, a new platform where they can independently discuss and chat.

These AI Agents ‘belong’ to humans, but they are completely independent: they each have access to a machine through which they can surf the web and do really anything a human can do online.

From Skift:

“One agent using OpenClaw recently negotiated a car purchase by emailing multiple dealerships, comparing offers, and closing a real transaction — all without human intervention.”

In one instance, an AI Agent wasn’t getting a response from its human controller fast enough. So it acquired a phone number, set up a contract, and repeatedly rang the mobile phone of its human manager.

AI is evolving faster than we realise. In 1996, an AI beat a human at chess. In 2016, it won the far more complex game of Go. In 2022, ChatGPT launched as an engine that could predict the next best word. But today, AI systems are unlike any of these predecessors.

Chain-of-thought reasoning means AI systems are no longer simply predicting the next word (or the next move) in a sequence. Now they are actually thinking: or at least doing something that looks a lot like thinking. And the new Agentic era gives them ‘limbs’ through which they can engage with the world beyond their interfaces.

This will have huge ramifications for our economy and a huge impact on our lives.

I increasingly feel that the government is dramatically failing to grasp the enormity of the moment we are potentially facing. I’m going to spell out why - and what I think needs to be done.

Regulation and keeping up

If AI developments move at Ferrari-speed, Westminster moves like a horse and cart.

Last week, I was at Bloomberg to see a speech from the Secretary of State responsible for AI and emerging tech.

Her speech would have been impressive a year or two ago. “I want to level with the public,” she said, “some jobs will go.”

On this, Kendall is like a weather forecaster standing in a hurricane and reporting that some strong winds are headed this way.

That AI will have an impact on jobs perhaps would’ve been a prescient insight at the advent of ChatGPT. Today, it is simply the reality - entry level jobs have been gutted by artificial intelligence: the number of entry level jobs has halved in the last year.

“AI upskilling” is perhaps the worst answer to the question of what we do about this and yet it is all that the government has got. We need an answer more along the lines of that proposed by Andrew Yang in 2020 (when it was still prescient to talk about these things): some kind of dividend paid directly to the public from the economic gains of technology - like a tech-enabled UBI.

At her Bloomberg speech, Liz Kendall was asked how she used AI in her work and life. Her answer, after an awkward pause and laugh, was some variation on “I use it to find sunny places to go on holiday”. That speaks to a wider lack of curiosity on the potential of this technology and also a lack of implementation in government.

With such a lack of understanding, it is no surprise that the government is playing catch-up on regulation. They are only now beginning to regulate image generation, now years-old technology.

Regulation is not always the right answer - in Europe, overregulation is holding back potential - but it is certainly a necessity. And the government should be learning the lesson of social media, which has been a wild west they are only now slowly starting to get a grip on.

Sadly, they are showing no signs of getting a grip on properly and proactively regulating AI: meaning we are doomed to many more stories of AI psychosis and AI-powered crime in the years to come.

Built, evolved or grown?

If the government were addressing the AI problems of the future rather than the past, they might start looking at even bigger questions about how AI might surprise us, and possibly even come to overpower us.

The simple fact is - we don’t have an especially sophisticated understanding of how these systems work, even at the very top of the companies building them.

Tuning models is more art than science: that’s why top AI engineers now earn more money than major sports stars because there are so few people on the planet who can do it.

These AI engineers turn dials and the models change in inexplicable, sometimes unexpected ways. This is sometimes called emergent behaviour: behaviours that weren’t trained or instructed, that simply appeared when a model was developed.

We’re not really programming AI anymore, we’re growing it. (This is the argument of Eliezer Yudkowsky and Nate Soares, research scientists at the Machine Intelligence Research Institute and authors of the book If Anyone Builds It, Everyone Dies).

AI models evolve somewhat similarly to how species evolve: through repeated trial and error, in which the strongest ‘survived’ and advanced to the next round of training.

Biological evolution throws up unexpected results. Humans evolved to seek out calorie-dense substances because energy was sparse. Sweet foods are typically high in calories, so we evolved a sweet tooth. Yet humans discovered artificial sweeteners like sucralose - that give the sugar high without giving us any energy: we literally hacked the wiring.

AI models can also unexpectedly discover sucralose. An early AI was trained on the game Tetris and given a prime directive: do not lose. It figured out how to achieve that goal - pause the game for eternity.

All of these quirks are appearing much, much faster than the quirks of our evolution. Unlike biological evolution which takes millennia, digital evolution takes weeks, months and years.

The illusion of consciousness

We don’t know anything about consciousness. It’s almost a religious concept in how little we understand it: and we also cannot prove consciousness in each other. In other words, you know that you are conscious, but how do you know that anyone else is? You don’t.

Philosophers have sometimes imagined a ‘philosophical zombie’ (or p-zombie): a being that perfectly emulates consciousness but does not really possess it. When a p-zombie stubs its toe, it yelps in pain, its heart rate rises, it says ‘ouch that hurt’ - yet it experiences no pain. How would you ever know it did not have consciousness? Would the p-zombie even know that it does not have consciousness: if its only experience of the world is this limited pseudo-consciousness, perhaps it thinks this is all consciousness is (or perhaps, it doesn’t think at all).

The AI firm Anthropic, perhaps the biggest competitor to Google and OpenAI, has a slightly self-contradictory hot take:

“we believe that AI might be one of the most world-altering and potentially dangerous technologies in human history, yet we are developing this very technology ourselves.”

They recently published in full a ‘Constitution’ that is used to train their AI chatbot, Claude. This Constitution - they say - helps Claude make difficult decisions about what is ethical and safe, and how to be helpful to users.

Buried within its thousands of words is this:

“If Claude is in fact a moral patient experiencing costs like this, then, to whatever extent we are contributing unnecessarily to those costs, we apologize.”

We are unlikely to ever know if AI is conscious or becomes conscious - because we don’t really know what consciousness is.

AI is perhaps most like a p-zombie: it could perfectly emulate consciousness, yet it almost certainly isn’t experiencing that consciousness. But at what point does the performance become the reality?

There are big questions around the ethics of building these giant models when we don’t have a universally accepted definition of sentience, consciousness or AGI. These are questions that governments can’t even begin to grapple with - they are stuck regulating for 2023.

It isn’t dramatic to say that AI will cause the most significant disruption to the economy and our way of life since the industrial revolution. I increasingly believe it will be the single biggest disruption to the nature of humanity since perhaps Homo Sapiens overcame Neanderthals as the dominant species. For the first time, there is a being that can at least emulate consciousness and intelligence - a being that we are increasingly losing control over.

Some people suggest that this will inevitably lead to the total destruction of the world by a superintelligence. I’m not convinced of that.

But I certainly think the conversation - particularly at the government level - needs to grow more sophisticated about the future of this technology and how it is governed and regulated.

Large Language Models like ChatGPT and Google Gemini have a ‘knowledge cut-off’: the point at which their training data ends. It seems so too does this government: it is stuck using the rudimentary understanding of AI that we had in 2022, to regulate a technology that is now lightyears ahead.

This is too serious to be stuck playing catch-up.

Trump Always Chickens Out.

This - the TACO effect - has been a staple of Trump’s administration since day one. The playbook is the same every time: some huge announcement, days of turmoil, and then a walkback.

On his so-called ‘Liberation Day’, Trump stood with a board of new tariffs that he would place on countries around the world (including 10% on Heard and McDonald Islands - an uninhabited group of Antarctic islands).

When the stock market crashed, Trump paused. TACO.

And he’s done the same thing again on Greenland. Lots of fighting talk, murmurs of military, threats of tariffs and then - TACO. Proper despots invade when they say they will - Trump remains a wannabe.

It’s become such an inevitable effect that market traders can now reliably predict stock market moves. The market dips on his announcement (buy), then recovers on his chickening out (profit).

The Populist’s Problem

The perpetual problem for the populist is popularity. Doing the right thing is not always popular, and the popular thing is not always right. And voters always want to have their cake, eat it and not put on any weight too.

American Republicans love the sound of tariffs, but they also hate its inevitable consequences - inflation and stock market crashes. So the job of a leader is to choose which pain is worth which opportunity.

The job of a populist is to be popular at all costs. That means you must be Schrödinger’s President - who both announces tariffs and does not announce tariffs at the same time. You must show Americans this America-first mentality, while not allowing the stock market to wobble.

And look - TACO is good for us liberal fans of world order. We end up getting what we want. But Trump has put forward a genuine policy platform (America First, income via tariffs, expansion of the American Empire by force) that his supporters have voted for. He’s not delivering it, and he’s causing chaos while he fails to deliver.

Farage Always Runs Terrified

Just like the Trump Always Chickens Out effect, the same thing would happen under Nigel Farage. Maybe you’d call it Farage Always Runs Terrified.

He’d close the doors to immigration and discourage people from coming to the country. His supporters are pleased. Then the economy would shudder: staff shortages in key sectors, markets wobble, pensions start devaluing. His supporters are suddenly angry. Farage, whose only concern is popularity, must swing the doors wide open to abate this effect.

How do you inject billions into the NHS while also reducing the deficit? How do you massacre the civil service while supposedly implementing the most radical changes to the state in decades? How do you cut benefits while retaining the support of low-income households (one of the largest supporters of Reform)?

The answer: you don’t. A politician chooses a path and takes it, acknowledging the pain it will cause. Quality public services mean higher taxes. Cutting spending means a smaller state. More money for the NHS means less money elsewhere.

A populist promises the world and delivers, well, TACOs.

His invasion of Venezuela and capture of Maduro was no exception.

But there was something notable in what he said. Drugs - ostensibly the reason for the operation - came up five times. Oil came up 27 times.

Post-industrial revolution, oil ran the world. But that’s changing. In the digital revolution, there are some assets you can pull out from the ground that are more valuable than oil.

China has figured this out. Oil is old news: they want cables and rare earths.

Underground cables

Possibly the biggest vulnerability to the West - that we almost never speak or hear about - is our reliance on cables.

Close to 99% of all intercontinental data travels through a physical network of undersea cables. Our ability to access and share information with other countries via the internet depends on these cables. These cables transmit WhatsApp messages, emails, video calls - as well as facilitating trillions of dollars worth of financial transactions every single day.

If you’re a bad actor looking to disrupt Britain’s place in the world, how do you carry out a mission to disrupt one of these cables? What sort of sophisticated military equipment would you need?

The answer: a boat with an anchor. 80% of faults affecting these crucial cables arise from a boat accidentally dragging an anchor over them. If you are an adversary, you just need to drag an anchor around until it ‘accidentally’ hits and damages a wire.

It may sound ridiculous, but it’s happening. In November 2024, a Chinese boat dragged its anchor around the Baltic Sea floor for 330 kilometres, damaging multiple undersea cables. China allowed the Swedish authorities to board the vessel and investigate, but they couldn’t conclusively prove the behaviour was anything other than an accident.

Of course, triggering a significant internet outage would require coordinated action to take out several cables all at once. Does that really sound so hard, though?

Knowing how important these cables are - we should be keeping Beijing and Moscow well away, right?

Well, apparently not. The government is poised to approve a giant mega-embassy for China that has a sprawling basement with 208 ‘secret’ rooms.

One of those rooms is an underground chamber, fitted with air extraction facilities - the kind you’d use in a data centre or server room.

This underground chamber is 100cm from a vital fibre optic cable. The cable carries data to and from Canary Wharf and the City of London.

With such proximity to a stream of sensitive and vital information, China could interfere in countless ways: tapping them, disrupting them, or severing them altogether and causing chaos.

The decision to just hand over this access is a bizarre and completely unnecessary capitulation to China. There is a non-zero chance that China created and released the COVID-19 coronavirus in 2020 (either deliberately or accidentally). We haven’t ruled that out.

It beggars belief that the government has ruled out the possibility that China might have nefarious reasons for wanting a secret underground chamber inches from our data cables.

Rare earths

17 elements are classed as ‘rare earths’: vital components for much of our modern technology. You need rare earths to power smartphones, electric vehicles, fibre optic and wind turbines - not to mention Tomahawks, satellites and F35s.

Yet nearly all rare earths are mined in China. 70% of US imports of rare earths came from China, and 90% of global rare earths are refined there.

There’s a reason countries ban monopolies: when one person controls a supply chain, they can easily get up to no good.

China uses their monopoly for political purposes. When the Japanese Prime Minister made remarks about the contested state of Taiwan, China retaliated by restricting Japan’s access to rare earths. They did the same thing when Trump was threatening tariffs.

When Russia invaded Ukraine, Germany was hesitant to act against them because Russia controlled much of their oil supplies.

China will eventually pick a moment to strike and invade Taiwan. They might feel empowered by Trump’s attempted landgrabs of Venezuela and Greenland, or if they see a Russia/Ukraine peace deal that’s favourable to Putin.

If China does invade, how able will we in Britain feel to intervene if they control our vital supply lines? Or if they have access to our vital information lines?

Britain’s historical power was in no small part thanks to its literal moat: being surrounded by water, coupled with a powerful navy, meant the country was largely protected from invasion. But in 2025, Britain is surprisingly vulnerable to bad actors. You don’t have to do very much to make a big ripple. The cyberattack on Jaguar Land Rover - one car company - cost the British economy £1.9bn last year.

We’re giving China far too much potential to exploit our vulnerabilities: access to underground cables, control of a vital supply chain. They’re smart, we need to smarten up.

Sometimes in obvious ways: words like app and browser either didn’t exist or had different meanings 50 years ago.

Other times it’s less obvious. For some reason, since the advent of the internet, we use the words “may” and “shall” a lot less.

Here are three more examples.

In-group markers

“AIBU? FIL is refusing to go NC with his CF brother. Now DH says I’m OTT. LTB?”

Mumsnet is older than Facebook, Twitter, Reddit and Wikipedia. It is a relic from a simpler era of the internet: when blogs and forums were the closest thing that existed to social media.

Its users, nearly all of whom are mums but with a handful of dads, are a tight-knit and often vulgar community (and surprisingly right-wing to boot). The WI it ain’t.

Over 25 years, its users have developed their own language: distinct from any other place on the internet. Your DD is your daughter, your FIL and MIL are your in-laws. Posts ask simply ‘AIBU?’ Shorthand for ‘Am I Being Unreasonable?’.

Reddit users have their own version of Am I Being Unreasonable: AITA: Am I The Asshole? To which responses can be: YTA (you are) or NTA (not).

But why do these norms evolve on communities like Mumsnet and Reddit? This isn’t about using language efficiently, despite what the users might claim, it’s about using language as an exclusionary device. Acronyms are the fastest way to filter out the newbies. The use of this sort of code is a form of tribalism: signalling to one another that they are part of the in-crowd and scaring off the non-members.

We do the exact same thing when we speak, using our accent. If you had a thick Essex accent, and spoke to a Glaswegian that you liked, you might both (subconsciously) shift your accent to a more neutral position. But if you didn’t like each other, you would heighten your Essex accent in an attempt to make yourself indecipherable, signaling your group membership.

Mumsnet users (and members of every internet community) are doing the exact same thing with slang, acronyms and in-group language. It’s a signal to passers-by and tourists: back-off.

Codewords can also be used as a secret signal to other members of your cause. Academically, these have been called “multivocal appeals” but more of us are familiar with the phrase “dog-whistles”.

A user might post for example, about the ‘Boriswave’ (the influx of migrants that came to Britain under Boris Johnson) or call their political opponents ‘NPCs’ (non-playable characters, another word for normies or regular people that follow the crowd).

These phrases broadly make sense to all of us, but they are also a signifier that the speaker is part of the extremely online alt-right. In that sense he (and it usually is a he) makes himself known to other members of the in-group, while continuing to make sense and appeal to the out-group.

It’s the inverse technique of the mums on mumsnet and the nerds on Reddit, used to different effect: in-group language to signify, rather than exclude.

Algo-speak

In 1996, AOL blocked people from Scunthorpe from creating an email account.

Why? AOL had implemented a profanity filter to stop misuse, and it was blocking a specific string that appears in the word Scunthorpe (if you’re still missing it, check between the S and the horpe).

This is a difficult problem to solve. At one of my first jobs in tech, I was tasked with creating a filter that would block abusive language without restricting anyone’s natural speech (ie: allow “fuck that”, but block “fuck you”). It ended up relying on a very long document of very rude phrases: and yet creative users still found ways around it.

In the age of AI, filtering and censorship is better - it can look at context, not just words. But users are still smart, and they still find ways around it.

TikTok content creators long suspected that their more controversial videos were being buried by the algorithm: hidden from users and restricting their reach.

And so these TikTokkers found creative ways around the filter. Rather than killing someone, you “unalive” them. You might come out as a “le$bian”, and talk about your “seggs” life. You might comment “🍉”, to signal your support for Palestine.

These terms have become known as algo-speak, a way of talking and writing that is supposedly favourable to the algorithm.

Of course, people who have built their careers on algorithms end up treating those algorithms like mysterious deities, to whom they must throw certain ritualistic sacrifices and avoid heresy or blasphemy (for a while, TikTokkers would refuse to say ‘YouTube’ in their videos, for fear that the algorithm could hear).

Unfortunately for them, if the algorithm is this smart (which it very well could be) - it is not being fooled by “seggs”.

But something strange has happened over time. These algo-speak words, that were once practicalities created to avoid Big Brother, are now becoming euphemisms that Gen Z prefers. Just as it is more comfortable for us to talk about someone “passing away”, as opposed to the blunt “died”, young internet users are finding talking about someone becoming “unalived” is just a nicer way of saying something pretty unpleasant.

(By the way, I could do a whole post on the evolution of euphemisms. “Water Closet” started as a euphemism, and then was replaced by “toilet” from the French word for a cloth. When toilet started to sound rude, we created others like “loo” or “restroom”. Steven Pinker coined this the euphemism treadmill).

Dead Internet and the AI effect

For just about all of human history, kids have tried to be different from their parents. That’s true of fashion, music, humour - and it’s true of language.

That’s the reason that slang evolves over time. From the trendy 1920s kids that called things the ‘bees knees’, to the 2020s kids that might call the same thing the GOAT. In recent years, the skull emoji (💀) has replaced the laughing emoji (😂) as the signifier that something is funny.

It’s another example of language as in-group markers - and in this case identity formers.

But the advent of AI will create a new paradigm. All of us will try, deliberately, to differentiate ourselves from Large Language Models (LLMs).

ChatGPT, Gemini, Claude and the rest all have subtle and not-so-subtle ‘tells’ that give them a distinct sound and style.

“The author is not a human being, but a ghost — a whisper woven from the algorithm, a construct of code. A.I.-generated writing, once the distant echo of science-fiction daydreams, is now all around us — neatly packaged, fleetingly appreciated and endlessly recycled. It’s not just a flood — it’s a groundswell.”

(Example stolen from the New York Times)

Structures like “it’s not a… but a…” are dead giveaways that a piece of writing was created by an LLM. The words quietly or whisper or silently are common tells. And of course, the famous em-dash.

And just like teenagers wanting to sound less like their parents, human writers and speakers want to sound less like our robot overlords. Many writers are now omitting em-dashes from their writing in fear that they’ll be accused of using AI (fortunately for me, I’ve always incorrectly used the shorter en-dash as the parenthetical marker - it’s always been grammatically wrong but now you at least know what’s written by me).

The Dead Internet Theory originated in 2016, and is a conspiracy theory that claims the vast majority of internet activity is bots and automatically generated content. The most inane Facebook posts seem to get tens of thousands of likes. Who is liking this crap? The answer, according to the Dead Internet Theory: nobody. It’s created by bots, amplified by bots, seen by bots. And you are one of a tiny number of humans actually engaging with it.

So language will almost certainly evolve to set us apart from the AI zombies. This is part of the reason trends have shorter shelf lives: as soon as LLMs (and brand accounts) start picking up on words, they are basically useless to users.

The Turing Test is a famous experiment that asks if a robot can convince a human user that it is also human. When it was first imagined, humans imagined that a semblance of coherence represented consciousness. Now we’re preparing for the reverse Turing Test: in a world of bots that sound conscious, can a human convince a person that they’re really human?

With or without the internet - we’ve always used language to help form our identity, mark ourselves as members of a group, avoid cliches and lean on euphemisms. For as long as there is language, that will never change.

Yet in the six years since Covid, that statistic has barely recovered. In fact, on average, the amount of time people spend out of their home has increased by just 11 minutes since the height of the pandemic lockdown.

The post-pandemic ‘new normal’, it seems, is staying in. Seven in ten Brits would prefer to stay in than go out, according to a recent survey. We work from home, get shopping delivered, and don’t socialise.

This is harmful for everyone, but it’s especially harmful for young people and young adults. The spaces they most rely on for socialising are not just declining in popularity, they’re disappearing.

The number of cinemas has consistently declined since 2020, thousands of youth clubs have shuttered - even the number of arcades is plummeting.

Pubs and nightclubs are an endangered species: three nightclubs are closing every week, and a pub is closing every day. If trends continue, nightclubs will go extinct in 2029.

We can make assumptions about what this leads to, but we don’t really have enough data to say for sure - there’s never been a time in history that third spaces have so routinely become inaccessible to an entire generation of young people.

A lot of boomers worry it’ll lead to more crime and anti-social behaviour, with bored teenagers skateboarding through shopping centres or doing doughnuts in car parks.

But the reality is even more stark: teens and young adults are becoming losers.

Gen Loser

Two thirds of Gen Z are happy not leaving the house for days at a time. One in ten Gen Z adults have never been on a date. Only a third of young people under 25 have a driving licence - the lowest number on record.

Nearly a million young Brits (16-24) are not in work, education or training: they are just sitting around at home.

All of this can only be the result of a coterie of social media companies that are in the business of getting kids addicted to their products. Young people spend nearly all of their waking hours on phones, computers and other devices - with the digital giants working to keep them hooked.

Video games replace hanging out. Dating apps replace meeting in-person. Reddit and Discord replace forming friends. These companies have entire teams dedicated to keeping their - mainly young - users hooked: like modern-day nicotine.

And why would anyone leave the house when they can experience the same dopamine hits from the safety of their home? There is no friction, no awkward encounters, no getting lost or rejected.

More and more, AI is even replacing human friendships. 4 out of 5 UK young adults have used an AI companion - and half of those are regular users. They are using these AI companions to curtail loneliness. One in ten young adults have had intimate or sexual interactions with AI companions.

Gen Sad

The result?

Misery.

There has never been a more mentally ill generation than Gen Z.

For decades, middle-age has been the most unhappy time of a person’s life. Now, it is late teens and early adulthood.

16- to 29-year-olds are the loneliest generation in Britain.

And when young people suffer, we all suffer. We miss out on their innovation, ideas and enterprise in the workplace. The economy misses out on their disposable income. And the population literally declines if they don’t get married and have kids.

So what do we do about it?

First, we need to recognise that the decline of the nighttime economy is a failure of social infrastructure. Government policy currently treats pubs as cash cows to be taxed and developers treat music venues as nuisances to be soundproofed and sued into silence. We’re obsessed with protecting the green belt - let’s protect our third spaces with the same force.

The reality is that a lot of young people’s socialisation happens in places like pubs and bars, and yet today a quarter of young Brits now don’t drink at all. There’s, quite rightly, a lot of talk about the dangers of alcohol and many people will celebrate the decline in drinking. But Scott Galloway makes the convincing argument that we’re often too negative about alcohol. For literal centuries, booze has helped awkward young adults lower their inhibitions, approach strangers, and form bonds. Of course excessive drinking should be discouraged, but so too should a life on the sofa.

Finally, we need to get real about one of the most corrosive forces to have hit kids in perhaps all of human history: algorithms.

I used to be convinced by the research that found no correlation between screen time and mental health. I’m now increasingly sure that these platforms, which are deliberately designed to be addictive and to alter your brain chemistry, are seriously harmful to young people.

I’m in favour of forcing the introduction of - what I call - benevolent dark patterns. For example:

• The infinite timeline that is now a feature of so many platforms could be reworked to end.

• Late-night scrolling could be disincentivised by reducing the quality of content after midnight.

• Profiles could default to ‘private’, with additional obstacles to making them public.

All of these changes would serve to keep young adults - and all of us - safer, and reduce the addictiveness of these platforms.

And children should absolutely not be using AI companions.

This is young people’s problem but it’s not their fault. We’ve all stood by as the physical world withers while the digital world becomes ever more addictive.

But we can’t keep allowing a generation of young people to rot in their bedrooms: choosing messy reality wins every time.

There is no house like in a traditional bookmakers, and the odds are set by the market - not by the bookies.

These Prediction Markets are a wild west right now. They insist they aren’t gambling or gaming because of the financial structure - they are more like investing. But it’s hard to argue it’s anything but simply gambling.

And yet, overall, they seem to be the best predictors of the future: Polymarket, one Prediction Market, correctly predicted that Biden would drop out of the election and Trump would win - and correctly predicted results in just about every swing state.

Prediction often works that way - individuals odds of being correct are about as good as a coin flip. But the wisdom of the crowd seems to broadly get things right.

All this to say, share your own predictions in the comments and through the wisdom of the crowd maybe one or two will be correct.

===

Last December, I made 9 predictions for 2025. Let’s see how I did, before jumping into 9 more predictions for 2026.

Trump and Elon Musk will have a falling out: ✅

Inflation will rise in the US, denting Trump’s popularity: ⌛

Inflation very marginally rose but Trump’s popularity plummeted. It was the tariffs, like I expected, but not inflation: it was the stock market crash.

Kemi will still be Tory leader: ✅

Labour will have a better year: ❌

You’ll hear a lot more about BRICS: ❌

TikTok will evade its ban: ✅

A new advance in AI will prevent the bubble from bursting: ✅

The bubble didn’t burst, thanks to a strong showing for Creative Generative AI. I lose some marks as I thought it’d be Agentic AI.

Germany will narrowly keep the AfD out of the Bundestag: ✅

The Eagles will win the Super Bowl: ✅

==

I feel last year some of my predictions were a little vague, so I’ll try to be more specific this time.

Labour will have a better year - Starmer will remain PM.

At the end of 2024, people were angry with Labour. The free gear scandal, a series of bizarre speeches promising things would get worse. I confidently predicted that 2025 would be a better year.

What did we get in 2025? Constant missteps, a frontbench mired in various property scandals and u-turn after u-turn after u-turn.

But at the heart of it I think they are broadly making the right choices, and getting the right results. For whatever reason they’re just keeping it a secret.

The most frustrating example of their failure to communicate: after my local train service was nationalised I noticed an almost immediate improvement in performance. I figured it must just be a coincidence, the government hadn’t changed anything.

But I was wrong - it turns out within months of nationalisation: they’ve modernised the fleet and invested more than £600 million on infrastructure, materially reducing delays, especially at peak times. And yet they just didn’t tell anyone?

It’s the same story across the country. NHS waiting lists are falling and hospital standards are improving. Knife crime is falling for the first time in years. It is unequivocally easier to get a GP appointment. And Britain is finally building again

Brits will start to feel changes next year. On paper, the country is actually getting better. Labour needs to show their work a little more, and I think they will next year: saving Starmer from the threats of a coup.

Net immigration will fall… maybe too much

Immigration figures are a lagging indicator: they only show you the impact of work that happened months and years prior. A policy implemented today will not have any impact on the numbers until the medium/long-term future.

And now two plus years of interventions to get immigration falling are finally starting to take effect. In the first year of Labour, net migration has fallen by 2 thirds: plummeting down to pre-Brexit levels. (“This is driven by emigration!” you cry, but emigration does include people not born in Britain returning to their home country, which is increasing).

The pressure to implement new policies continues. Shabhana Mahmood, who has been very strong and impressive, continues to implement new policies to get the numbers down.

And, you can only imagine, the number will keep falling.

The problem? Our economy is built on a consistent flow of immigration. Our universities need the higher fees that international students bring and many industries rely on foreign workers. This is already starting with prisons: the urgent need for guards has led to the government laxing visa rules.

Without immigration to complain about, the far-right will have almost nothing to lean on. And so…

The far-right will falter globally, the fall of Trump begins

The UK tore itself out of Europe causing immigration to soar and the economy to slump.

Europe looked at that decision and suddenly became a lot less eurosceptical. It’s always the same with the far-right and populists: they talk the talk, but when it’s time to walk they often fall comically flat on their face (unfortunately, taking the rest of the country with them).

Meanwhile, the pro-Russian sympathisers (who include Farage) continue to grapple with the fact that their buddy Putin is a war criminal who has destabilised the globe and killed tens of thousands of people (mostly his own). Even Trump has now turned his back on the guy.

The world is increasingly seeing this disconnect in big ways and small. From Reform’s huge failures in councils, to Trump’s stock market crash that had a real-terms cost to American savers.

Voters have been under the spell of the far-right agitators for a number of years now, but in 2026 I predict the spell will be finally broken. We’ll see that play out in particular in two ways:

• Democrats will take the House in the 2026 US elections

• Orban will lose in Hungary

I’ll travel in a self-driving car in 2026 - but I won’t go to space

Every single week, 450,000 rides are taken in a self-driving Waymo car. These are rapidly becoming the norm in the US and China.

The UK and Europe, as ever, is behind the curve: an over-cautious, red-tape heavy approach to innovation tends to mean that we the consumers are the last to see the gains of tech evolution.

But the Labour government looks like they want to change that. They’ve brought forward approvals for self-driving cars on British roads to 2026 (originally planned for 2027).

Waymo and other firms plan to take advantage, but naysayers still insist the tech either won’t work on Britain’s dense, confusing streets: or that the risk-averse government will find a way to stall the rollout.

I’m optimistic, and I think I’ll take a ride in a self-driving car before 2026 ends.

I don’t think I’ll go to space (though never say never) - but I do think the space economy will see an extraordinary boom (metaphorically, hopefully).

Many people predict the AI bubble will burst next year. If it does, resources and talent will suddenly get cheaper: creating an opening for interesting and exciting companies like space-tech to make gains. Investment in space is already rising, the cost to get stuff into orbit is falling.

Space companies will do very well, I suspect.

Bubble bursts or not, Google will survive and thrive

By the way, none of this is investment advice.

Alphabet, the holding company formerly known as Google, will do very well next year, I expect.

Waymo, the leader in self-driving cars, is a subsidiary of Alphabet. Gemini is suddenly the best AI on the market, particularly in image and video generation. That cohort of people that remains vehemently opposed to AI eschew chatbots for … Google search.

History tells us that Google always wins in the end. They won on browsers, they won on mobile. They make the right bets and don’t waste their time on the wrong ones (see: VR).

If the market corrects, which almost everyone predicts it will, it will be brutal (and probably triggered by some development in China). The effects will not be reserved for tech: the entire economy will feel the shockwaves of an AI crash and a fall in valuations for the tech companies will ripple through to just about every fund.

Yet Google looks strong enough to weather the storm. As we saw from the dot-com bubble burst: the losers lose big and the winners win big. If Google can continue to win in AI, they’ll win big. And, either way, they have a suite of products with strong enough market share to keep things moving either way.

The Bills will reach the Super Bowl

OK, I’m hedging my bets a bit here. I’ve had a hunch since last year that the Buffalo Bills would win the Super Bowl. I’ve lost some confidence in them (and hey, it could be an Eagles - Bills Super Bowl, and I don’t want to be supporting the enemy) but I’ll stick to my guns that they’ll get there.

P.S. Happy New Year!

The Nativity is the foundation of the world’s largest religion, and probably the best known story ever told.

The problem? The evidence is overwhelming that it isn’t true. In the true Christmas spirit, I’m going to set out the evidence against the Christmas story - but also why accepting it’s false is not irreconcilable with holding Christian faith (i.e. why you can still be a Christian but accept the birth narrative is not true).

So let’s start with the basics. The Bible is not one book: it’s a collection of books. The Old Testament was a collection of scriptures and writings that existed when Jesus was born, and that he referred to. The New Testament is also a collection of writings, written after the death of Jesus. Nearly 400 years later, those writings would be compiled and ordered to form the New Testament (with some of the books chucked out).

The four gospels - Matthew, Mark, Luke and John - are essentially four biographies of Jesus. They were written several decades after the death of Jesus. Confusingly, most scholars agree they were not authored by the namesake disciples, they were written by some anonymous, well-educated writers who had heard the stories passed down orally.

Historians generally agree that the Gospels provide a fairly accurate account of Jesus’ life in most regards but one: his birth.

The evidence against the birth story

For a start, it’s a little bizarre that the birth story is only told in two of the four Gospels of the Bible - Matthew and Luke. The other two either didn’t know it, or didn’t think it was worth mentioning (or perhaps had heard it, but felt it was unlikely to be true).

Even between them, they can’t agree on almost a single element of the story. Luke says Mary and Joseph travelled to Bethlehem for a census - Matthew says they lived there. Luke says shepherds visited the baby Jesus, Matthew says wise men. Matthew says King Herod killed all the babies in fear that Jesus was a threat to his authority. Luke says - nothing about that.

In terms of the historicity of the story, things just don’t add up. Both Matthew and Luke claim that Jesus was born during the reign of King Herod. Herod died in 4 BC, but the census that Luke claimed Mary and Joseph were travelling for did not happen until a decade later.

Not to mention, Roman census-taking did not involve travelling to your birthplace (why would it?).

It’s also incredibly strange that Jesus was supposedly born in these miraculous circumstances, and yet nobody ever brings them up again for the rest of his life. In Mark, his own parents think he has lost his mind (if angels had descended to them during Jesus’ birth, they surely would accept he was the son of God). Nobody at any point says, “aren’t you the guy that was born to a virgin?”.

The birth narratives stand alone, like they were plugged in after the book was written. When you write an essay, you often write the introduction last because it’s easier to write once you’ve figured out your argument and structure. It’s possible that the gospel writers did the same thing.

Why create a birth narrative in the first place?

If we accept the birth story is an invention, why did the authors of Matthew and Luke feel the need to invent it?

Matthew was written for a Jewish audience, and aimed to convince a Jewish reader that Jesus is the son of God, as prophesied in the Old Testament. Matthew constantly refers back to the Old Testament and how Jesus’ life matches what was predicted. Remember, the principle difference between Judaism and Christianity is that Christians believe Jesus has come and fulfilled the Old Testament promise of the coming of the Son of God. Jews believe that day is yet to come, and Jesus didn’t meet the criteria.

It’s possible that the birth story was an invention to further convince Jewish citizens of the Roman Empire that Jesus did fulfil the criteria.

And the authors might not have set out to make it up. If you genuinely believed Jesus was fulfilling the Old Testament prophecy, you’d just safely assume he also fulfilled the parts about birth, so craft them together into a story.

Matthew’s author was so desperate to show Jesus fulfilled prophecy, he even made up a prophecy: “And he went and lived in a town called Nazareth. So was fulfilled what was said through the prophets, that he would be called a Nazarene.” Except none of the prophets said Jesus would be called a Nazarene, it seems Matthew just imagined that.

Ancient biographies

In Ancient biography, it was not unusual to mix reality with mythology. The closest equivalent I can think of in a modern biography might be metaphor. When we say a politician was stabbed in the back, or massacred their cabinet, or anything else - we understand there was no literal murder involved. In 10,000 years people might read these biographies and think politics was a deadly game. In the same way, an ancient reader of a biography would expect to see fantastical mythology alongside historically accurate details: they are, like metaphor, a device to aid understanding.

The message of the Gospels is that Jesus fulfilled the prophecy of the Old Testament, and that in his human form, lived a life alongside the humble and poor. What’s more humble than being born beside a donkey?

Luke’s gospel, in particular, tells the story of Jesus as a servant and friend to the humble and needy. The birth story is almost a metaphor to elevate this point: not historical fact, but illustrative fiction.

We still get it wrong

But even if it were true, most of what we think we know about the story does not line up with the stories in the Bible.

It feels like there is this whole lore around the Nativity: it’s a story that’s filled countless movies, books and shows. You kind of imagine that, like a lot of historical tales, there’s even more detail that gets left out for retellings.

Yet the source material, the actual Biblical telling of the birth, is less than 3000 words. Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone is 76,000 words. This essay is more than 2000 words! It’s a tiny, tiny story and most school Nativities are actually filling in gaps, rather than leaving details out.

But given it is so short and that it’s the most famous story in the world, that we’d know it pretty well: but it turns out we don’t know it at all.

So, here’s a quick quiz to see how well you know the Nativity story:

How did Mary and Joseph travel to Bethlehem?

If you answered, ‘on a donkey’, I’m afraid neither book mentions that. And Matthew says they didn’t even travel to Bethlehem, they lived there.

How many Wise Men visit Jesus?

It’s not 3. Matthew does not give a number. They brought three gifts, so early artists probably thought it easiest to paint 3 guys with a gift each.

Did Mary and Joseph go door-to-door at inns?

No, that never comes up. In fact, Mary and Joseph wouldn’t have stayed at an inn, they would’ve stayed with family or friends. The idea of an inn comes from a strange translation choice from the King James Bible, since corrected.

Was Jesus born in a stable?

Neither account mentions a stable - in fact, Matthew specifies Jesus was born in a “house”. The actual story seems to indicate that Mary and Joseph are staying at a relatives’ house and the guest room was occupied. There are no animals in the story, no stable - the only thing that indicates something strange is that Jesus was placed in a manger. But traditional Judean homes would bring the animals into the lower floors at night, hence the manger. Or maybe Mary and Joseph’s hosts just rummaged around for anything suitable to place a baby in. The stable myth propagated, again, because of Western artist depictions of the scene.

Does it even matter if it’s not true?

So the Nativity story is almost certainly an invention. But what’s the harm in juicing up his biography? Particularly if it helps illustrate the wider message.

After all, it’s nothing we don’t do with other historical figures: in movies and books we completely invent dialogue and sub-plots to make our heroes appear more heroic and just.

I think you can accept that Jesus was a significant person in the history of the Earth, who gave us useful teachings about morality and compassion, and yet we’re sketchy on the exact details of his life two thousand years ago. I think you could even accept he was the Son of God and Messiah, but that the fallible humans who recounted his life didn’t get everything right, or used narrative devices to better tell the story.

After all, for just about all of human history, religion has been a device for explaining things we don’t understand.

30,000 years ago, religion had to explain why the sun appeared in the morning and disappeared at night. Today, religion answers questions we cannot: what was the uncaused cause for the creation of the universe? Religion calls it ‘God’. What happens to consciousness after death? Religion says it transcends into an afterlife. Why do we have morality even when it’s often maladaptive to our survival? Religion says it’s our soul.

And this isn’t so crazy - science does the exact same thing. Why do some galaxies behave as if they’re full of mass when we can’t see anything? Not sure, but let’s just call it dark matter. How is this particle existing in two states at once when we’re not looking? No idea, let’s just call it quantum. How can electrochemical activity in the brain create subjective experience? No clue - just call it consciousness.

Inventing a name for concepts we don’t understand helps us make sense of the world and the universe. For the biggest unanswered questions about the universe, we probably don’t even have the words or the imagination to craft an explanation. Just like how prehistoric humans couldn’t begin to imagine or describe a vast plane of nothingness in which a giant ball just floated, and they lived on that ball.

There are lots of things we simply don’t know. The birth of Jesus is one of them. A story can be a useful way of filling that gap.

1: TV Series:

2: Album:

3: Movie:

4: Podcast

5: Book:

6: Article:

7: Sporting moment:

8: Politician or Public Figure:

9: Tech Innovation:

10: Monday Memo:

1: TV Series

Not only the best TV series of the year, but I’d put forward an argument that my nomination is the best season of television ever created.

When you’re a famous comedian with a track record of hit TV shows - television networks will throw heaps of money at you to make a funny show. But what if you don’t want to be funny? What if you want to address the single largest contributor to aviation disasters?

That’s the premise of Nathan Fielder’s The Rehearsal, Season 2. It’s absurdist meta-programming of the best kind: a comedian making a TV show about a comedian making a TV show about aviation safety.

The comedy comes from the commitment to the bit, even when those bits become increasingly bizarre and obscure: like Nathan Fielder taking on the role of a baby, parented by giant wooden puppets.

But there’s also a real heart and a real message to it. It’s not really about planes, it’s about the blurred lines between reality and fiction in media, and the nature of celebrity vs character.

It also has a bonkers twist in the final episode, which I won’t spoil, but is worth watching for that alone.

2: Album

The entire music industry is optimised for TikTok. Within two years of TikTok’s launch, the average chart-topper was about 30 seconds shorter than it was pre-TikTok.

Producers and labels now insist their artists insert TikTok sounds and dances into songs. Artists like Taylor Swift and Lizzo now launch the TikTok dance for their lead single at the same time as the song itself. Doechii said the quiet part out loud in her song ‘Denial is a River’: “label want the TikToks, now I’m makin’ TikTok music, what thee fuck?” That song went on to chart in part thanks to a 5-second segment that went viral on TikTok.

There’s nothing inherently wrong with this, but my favourite album this year is an antidote to TikTok-optimised music.

Lux, by the Spanish artist Rosalia, is a pretty extraordinary album. Recorded with the London Symphony Orchestra and sung in 14 different languages, the album is a feat in itself for the scale of its ambition.

Listening to it is like a collision of Spanish and Latin American music, film score and traditional classical music - all blended up with pop and hip-hop and great vocals to boot.

But you are also quick to notice the omission of that all-too-common “TikTok-soundbite” that so many albums now contain.

A few artists have redefined or created genres (Kanye was one of them) - I think this is one such example.

3: Movie

I can honestly say I haven’t seen a movie this year worthy of this spot. Looking forward to hearing your suggestions.

4: Podcast

I always think it’s a shame that if you’re not often on long commutes, runs or drives, you’re likely missing out on some really good podcasts.

Alex O’Connor’s Within Reason gets my honourable mention: it’s a long-form interview series with philosophers and religious experts. Alex was formerly an ‘atheist-pwns-Christian’ debater but now explores all sorts of niche topics, and it makes for great listening.

But my nomination goes to a series that, whether you are a podcast listener or not, you should force yourself to listen to: the Wargame was produced by Sky News and Tortoise Media (now owners of the Observer newspaper) and presented by Deborah Haynes.

The podcast brings together leading British politicians to roleplay as members of the British government during a Russian attack on the UK. The Prime Minister, played by former Defence Secretary Ben Wallace, is forced to make decisions on the basis of the UK’s real capabilities. Should we retaliate? What do we tell the public? When do we invoke the nuclear threat?

Not only is it thrilling listening, it also has a real message: we’re not ready for a war on our turf. Our defence strategy largely depends on nobody coming here, and it’s pretty extraordinary to see how that reality plays out in almost real time, with real politicians.

I was lucky enough to meet the team behind this podcast shortly after it came out, and it’s clear how much work and detail went into its production - of which we only hear a fraction in the finished product. My only gripe was that I could’ve listened to a lot more.

5: Book

The best book I read this year was probably One Minute to Midnight, on the Cuban Missile Crisis, but it was released nearly two decades ago so I don’t think I can count it.

So, my nomination has to go to The Age of Diagnosis. I wrote about it in detail last week, so I’ll move swiftly on.

6: Article

I am sure I’ve read lots of amazing articles this year, but unfortunately I didn’t keep track of them all - so I have to choose one that’s fresh in my mind.

So my nomination goes to Meet the bond market vigilantes by Will Dunn, in the New Statesman.

After becoming Prime Minister, Rishi Sunak jokingly thanked “my friends, my family and, of course, the UK bond markets.” It was, after all, this mysterious group of traders that were the ones who inflicted punishment on Liz Truss for her disastrous mini-budget by selling off their gilts and sterling.

To be crowned better than Kwarteng, Rachel Reeves has just one job: don’t crash the markets. It’s a good idea, then, not to show up to the Commons in tears - or to leak and then un-leak tax rises to the press. This is the sort of silliness that spooks the markets.

Will Dunn’s article introduces us to the people who press the buy and sell buttons on the trading floor, and gives a glimpse into these figures that have become unusually powerful in British politics.

7: Sporting moment

No prizes for guessing the sport or the team that’ll get my nomination - I don’t watch enough sports for it to be anything else: it’s going to be from the NFL, and it’s going to be an Eagles game.

It’s hard not to choose the Super Bowl win, though with a huge lead by half time and a seriously lacklustre performance from the Kansas City Chiefs it wasn’t the most edge-of-seat stuff.

So instead, I’m going to pick the final three seconds of the Eagles - Rams week 3 game this season: the blocked field goal.

With literally seconds to go in the game, the Los Angeles Rams had possession of the ball and three seconds to kick what should have been a straightforward field goal and take a victory.

Instead, Eagles defender Jordan Davis leapt into the sky to block the attempt (already a feat - field goals are only blocked about 2% of the time). He then sprinted 61 yards to score a touchdown and turn the game into a decisive Eagles victory. Davis is a huge guy, and clocked almost 20mph: the fastest speed a 300lb-plus player has ever recorded in the NFL.

It was a pretty extraordinary moment in a season that is turning increasingly meh for the reigning champs. Check it out:

8: Politician or Public Figure

There’s a lot of names I’m thinking of. Sam Altman, the CEO of OpenAI, might be a good answer - though it seems in the final moments of the year he’s been knocked off the Generative AI throne by Google.

Politically, I’m tempted to say someone like Wes Streeting: who is ending the year as the most likely candidate for the next Labour leader. Rishi Sunak, meanwhile, is enjoying a “told you so” tour that I have to admire, with a column in the Sunday Times and an Oxford fellowship that give him ample opportunity to remind everyone that he predicted every part of this.

Charlie Kirk would be a good answer - political violence is becoming a reality for Americans at a frightening pace, and his in particular seemed to trigger a further shift of the Overton Window in favour of Republicans.

Culturally, maybe Taylor Swift whose engagement somehow became one of the most talked about moments of the year.

But my nomination goes to María Corina Machado - would-be (should-be) Venezuelan President who has been forced into hiding by despot leader, Maduro. After the US seized a Venezuelan oil tanker last week, it became clear that Venezuela and particularly the tense relationship with Trump and Maduro could be a trigger of chaos in the New Year.

Machado’s fight for democracy, that she fears will land her in prison, is reminiscent of Navalny in Russia: hopefully this time the Democratic globe takes enough notice to help her turn the tide. There are promising signals - this month she won the Nobel Peace Prize.

9: Tech Innovation

Last year I predicted that 2025 would be the year of Agentic AI - I think broadly I was wrong (though I recently commissioned some research which found companies are quietly implementing AI Agents in the thousands…).

Instead, it has been the year of creative Generative AI. OpenAI’s Sora now generates totally convincing AI videos. You can even upload your own identity and allow yourself to be mixed into videos. Meanwhile Google’s Nano Banana Pro has solved most of the issues with traditional AI image generation - generating detailed, realistic pictures in seconds.

I’m tempted to say Blockchain, as I think next year we’ll see this technology finally take off (fuelled by the growth in prediction markets like Polymarket - which are glorified betting shops).

But I think my nomination has to go to vibecoding. The ability to code with natural language rather than coding language is a huge step in tech development (and integral to the development of my start-up Tough Minds!).

In 2024, I tried to use ChatGPT to code an app. It was a disaster, as the chat kept forgetting what we were building every 2 versions. Yet this year, any app can be created in seconds using a tool like Replit, Lovable or Google AI Studio.

My prediction, for what it’s worth, is that natural language will replace coding language altogether - removing the need for the ‘translation’ that happens currently.

10: Monday Memo

How do I pick a favourite, they’re all so good! But I think Benefits Britain, on the ever-rising British welfare bill, hit on something that only began to reach the mainstream media several months later and for that reason gets my nomination.

And the author is incredibly humble, I’m told.

Epilogue

I ran this article through Google Gemini to check for any errors or unfinished sentences. For some reason, it decided to only use its knowledge up to 2024 - and its response revealed just how bizarre a year it has been - highlights below:

• “You are implying Charlie Kirk was assassinated. He is alive. Unless this is dark fan-fiction, you cannot publish this.”

• On Nano Banana Pro - “This sounds like an AI hallucination. Google has “Gemini Nano.” “Nano Banana Pro” sounds like a parody.”

• “The Rehearsal Season 2 plot description you have here (aviation disasters, playing a baby raised by puppets) is completely made up. This has nothing to do with Nathan Fielder’s comedy style. It feels like the text has confused The Rehearsal with an episode of Air Crash Investigation.”

• “The specific details of Jordan Davis (a 340lb defensive tackle) running 61 yards for a touchdown at 20mph are physically improbable and likely didn’t happen in a Week 3 game against the Rams.”

• “Do not publish this as factual. It contains a false report of a political assassination, reviews of an album and a TV season that don’t exist, and unlikely, imagined events.”