Everyone loves a good story – and right now, the UK is telling a good one on tech. The tech sector is Britain’s modern success story. UK tech reliably puts over £150bn into the Treasury coffers every year, British tech has grown fast, 1.8 million of us now work in tech jobs and Shoreditch is primed to usurp the City as our brightest economic star.
As London Tech Week kicks off the vibes are good. Global investors are circling, UK companies are feeling more confident, and world’s brightest tech minds are following Chat GPT makers OpenAI, flocking to the UK as the location of choice for international expansion. But we must ensure this modern success story doesn’t turn into a cautionary tale.
Because while we have been toasting our success, Paris has calmly and confidently stolen a march on London as Europe’s top tech hub. Now we don’t yet have to throw on berets and start coding on café terraces, but we do need to ask: what are they getting right that we aren’t?
Under the last Government the focus on British tech was all too often about polished pitch decks. Endless white papers, frameworks and strategies – the talk. But the walk? That’s where things need to sharpen up.
Housing and lab space is too expensive. Energy costs are high. And for all the talk of unicorns, our tech entrepreneurs often finding that their own Government didn’t or couldn’t take a bet on them.
This London Tech Week is our chance, Labour’s first ever in government, to show we still have our mojo when it comes to tech. The world’s watching. And not just the usual suspects from New York or San Fran.
From Dubai to Dublin, people are asking if Britain is going to keep the pace, or if it’s time to quit the race.
Under Labour, there’s a deep recognition that the future isn’t just about new toys, it’s about a new contract – between the state, the people and innovation.
For Labour Ministers that means pushing ahead on AI governance that’s respected around the world, as well as fixing the plumbing. Affordable housing and lab space, access to talent and modernising infrastructure so tech businesses can access the computing power and data they need. A regulatory environment that wants to proactively open new markets and give entrepreneurs the license to take risks.
Labour gets that better tech, means a better Britain. At the same time, we can’t ignore the fact that tech policy is no longer an obscure niche for policy wonks. The public is watching – AI is now part of everyday dinner-table conversations – not just among developers, but musicians, teachers, lawyers. When government makes decisions on issues like AI and copyright, or the use of facial recognition, these aren’t abstract trade-offs – they’re choices voters take notice of.
The last government fell into the trap of talking big, and just to a small crowd of true believers on tech, avoiding the hard choices. Delaying decisions to no one’s benefit.
It’s no surprise therefore that over the last few years, polling by the Government, the Ada Lovelace Institute and Public First has shown scepticism about tech and AI is on the rise.
Tech isn’t magic. Like any major part of our lives, we can’t do everything, not everyone can be winners, there are choices to be made.
And when government makes them, it has to level with the public. It has to show not just what it’s investing in but explain what voters will get in return.
Faster NHS diagnostics, stopping your family members being driven mad by the anxiety as they wait weeks to get and receive a scan.
More responsive public services, meaning you get answers from the council quicker, your passport arrives on time, and as unthinkable as it might be, you could even book a driving test.
Good, well-paying tech jobs, that bring back the opportunity of homeownership and raising a family for our young people.
Labour sees the opportunity of tech, but we need to get on with the hard work. We need to get better at telling stories about what you get in return if Rachel Reeves invests our money in AI Growth Zones, National Data Libraries and supercomputers.
So, this London Tech Week lets celebrate, focus on the hard yards of how we best support our tech sector, and start telling voters about their part in Britain’s modern success story.