It hasn’t taken long for the new Labour Government to show its true colours, building us up for raids on our pensions and inheritances which in most cases have already been taxed.
The so-called £22 billion black hole is made up of spending choices Labour are making, like the 22 per cent pay rise for junior doctors, part of the £9bn public sector wage settlement package which has laid the foundation for other unions to make eye-watering demands knowing this administration caves in to the blackmail of strike action.
Similarly, the Institute of Fiscal Studies pointed out that far from being unfunded, the cost of asylum seeker support was expected to be around £5.4bn, but is £1bn more because having scrapped the Rwanda scheme without any new plan to deter illegal immigration, the new government must plan for a higher influx than previously expected.
That estimate is therefore an early admission of defeat in what we know from this week’s shocking and unacceptable scenes of violence across England and Northern Ireland is a matter of extreme sensitivity.
While Sir Keir Starmer and Rachel Reeves choose to highlight the cost of prioritising public sector pay and asylum seekers, they cannot escape responsibility for removing winter fuel allowances from millions of pensioners who are far from wealthy, or scrapping a promise to cap the cost of social care at £86,000. Nobody is singing “Things can only get better” now.
The immediate cost to Edinburgh, with huge implications for the rest of the UK’s ability to compete, is the cancellation of a £1.3bn investment in artificial intelligence (AI) and technology. £800 million was coming to Edinburgh University for the development of its exascale supercomputer, now withdrawn despite £31m already having been spent on building a home for the new machine.
Fifty times faster than existing computers, it would be a game-changer in so many vital areas of medical and scientific research, which would have kept the UK at the cutting edge of technological advances vital for future national prosperity. But no, Labour has decided that buying off already well-rewarded medics is more important.
So much for the national mission for growth, and it was without any hint of irony, or indeed shame, that a UK Government spokesperson claimed that the launch of an AI Opportunities Action Plan which would “identify how we can bolster our computer infrastructure to better suit our needs”. By switching off investment?
Labour will “consider how AI and other emerging technologies can best support our new Industrial Strategy” but the Conservative government did just that and decided investing in Edinburgh University was worth it. Predictably, there hasn’t been a peep from Edinburgh’s four Labour MPs, not even Edinburgh East’s new MP Chris Murray in whose constituency the university’s Advanced Computing Facility is based.
Perhaps one of Edinburgh Labour’s Gang of Four would care to explain why scrapping an £800m investment in a computer which will make a billion billion calculations a second qualifies as bolstering our computer infrastructure?
AI technology is not just the future but is advancing now at a breakneck pace. Harnessing the potential and understanding the risks is not an option, but Labour can’t see beyond its nose or its paymasters. It’s going to be a long four or five years.
