Labour's Enthusiasm for Artificial Intelligence

30,000 jobs are set to disappear with the closure of NHS England and its merging with the Department of Health and Social Care. Echoing the Tories, tens of thousands of civil service jobs are on the chopping block. And this planned massacre of livelihoods were presided over by a grinning Keir Starmer and Wes Streeting and presented to the media as unalloyed goods. This is set to cut down on duplication and save lots of money (£45bn, apparently). But something else is also on the cards: the replacement of jobs by Artificial Intelligence. In his enthusiasm at the prospects of jobless service provision, Starmer gushed that "No person’s time should be spent on a task where digital or AI can do it better, quicker and to the same high quality and standard."

This is the umpteenth speech in which the Labour leadership have espoused their enthusiasm for AI. For Starmer and his project of authoritarian modernisation, the technocratic attractions are obvious. A state that is neither bigger or smaller but works better is enticing, particularly when previous attempts at digitisation have been hit by delays and costly failures. Those long in the tooth will recall efforts at harmonising the NHS's IT systems, and the huge problems rolling out Universal Credit encountered. But the prize is the speeding up of the state's mundane activities, like answering HMRC inquiries and sorting out driving licences quickly. AI is part of Starmerism's answer to the crisis of government legitimacy. If the bureaucracy can be automated and the discharge of its functions be made as rapid as placing and receiving an Amazon order, belief in the efficacy of government and, possibly, the standing of politics could improve - to Labour's benefit. If only people could forget about winter fuel cuts.

Those are the good reasons. What are the real reasons? The PCS response argues that new innovations should be introduced and embedded in cooperation with staff and be used to enhance working conditions and job security. A position likely to have gone in one ear and out the other. This is because AI's promise speaks to the dominant pole of (right wing) Labourism: its relation to "working people" not as working people, but something far more passive and politically innocuous: as consumers. The ultimate aim is impeccably Blairite: the depoliticisation of politics, and the reduction of choice between the parties that offer the best value, best quality services. This alignment with Labourist assumptions is more a coincidence of congruence. As ever, it comes down to interests.

On plenty of occasions, Starmer has staked out his intention to transform the UK into an AI superpower. This does involve infrastructure like building the first reservoir for 30 years, which handily is earmarked for land not far from the planned expansion of data centres in Cambridgeshire. But more importantly, he's leveraging the state as the anchor customer for AI services and innovation. There is nothing particularly innovative about this. In the Blair years outsourcing, Public-Private Partnerships, PFIs, etc. were used to provide guaranteed markets for everything from cleaning companies to construction firms. The aspiration was to tie the interests of those firms to the largesse of New Labour ministers, thereby expanding the party's base among capital's exalted circles. When the crash came and Gordon Brown's government became a busted flush, they were happy to carry on accepting these sorts of contracts while transferring their allegiance to the incoming Conservatives - who continued with the same practice. Streeting's love-ins with far right tech oligarch Peter Thiel, the enthusiasm for using AI in patient-facing interactions, and the endless promises of using the private sector to "help" with the NHS are part of the same piece. This is the mood music designed to entice Silicon Valley and giving them a stake in the British state, while generating a home grown ecology of expertise around innovation and application. Something that could have the happy by-product down the line of sheltering the UK from Trump's tariffs, and making Labour - on paper, the political antipode to their brand of freakish authoritarianism - their preferred political partner this side of the Atlantic.

Everyone wins, right? No. Supposing AI can fulfill the grandiose claims made for it, the British state is being used as a test bed for, to borrow a recent phrase, feeding jobs into the wood chipper. The purpose of generative AI is not to make things more efficient, but to deskill and digitise as many of the properties of immaterial labour that are feasible. I.e. The social competencies that capital accumulation increasingly depends on can, after a fashion, now be separated from workers and therefore tip the balance of forces further away from labour. To all intents and purposes, as per previous waves of automation what the government are promoting is a power grab at capital's behest. If these schemes are successful, the next targets are millions of jobs across private industry for the benefit of shareholders. And Labour ministers who fancy themselves as future consultants on implementing AI "solutions" in large organisations when they're done with politics. Just like the Thatcher years, Britain could pioneer a new class settlement. And just like the 1980s, unless the left and the labour movement gets its act together it will be our class who loses.

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