And while Labour had only 3% support for their idiotic plan to change their copyright law in the way that had provoked so much outrage, they were still trying to find some way to pander to US AI companies.
Starmer had originally been pro-regulation of AI:
https://www.politico.eu/article/how-labour-fell-out-love-with-ai-bill-peter-kyle/
In opposition Prime Minister Keir Starmer promised “stronger” AI regulation. His center-left Labour Party committed to “binding regulation” on frontier AI companies in its manifesto for government in 2024, and soon after it won a landslide election that summer it set out plans for AI legislation.
And then Labour dropped that plan and Starmer aligned with Trump.
Instead, U.K. officials adapted to the new world order. In Paris in February 2025, at an international AI Summit series which the U.K. had set up in 2023 to keep existential AI risks at bay, the country joined the U.S. in refusing to sign an international AI declaration.
And his government made that insane proposal on copyright, abandoning the rights of creatives in the UK in favor of giving US AI companies everything they wanted. Labour ended up more pro-AI than either the Green or Reform parties.
Polling by the Ada Lovelace Institute shows Labour’s leadership is out of sync with public views on AI, with 9 in 10 wanting an independent AI regulator with enforcement powers.
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A separate study by Focal Data found that framing AI as a geopolitical competition also doesn’t resonate with voters. “They don’t want to work more closely with the United States on shared digital and tech goals because of their distrust of its government,” the research found.
Both the consultation and that Lovelace poll showed Labour our of step with 90% of the British public.
And the Focal Data study found that Labour's focus on cooperating with the Trump regime on AI policy, and favoring US AI companies, were very unpopular. Substack article on that:
https://politicalwhiteboard.substack.com/p/what-brits-think-about-digital-sovereignty
US tech companies are pretty well trusted among Brits (56% trust them ‘somewhat’ or ‘a lot’ to act in the UK’s best interests), ranking ahead of both European and Chinese companies. The kicker is that only half as many (28%) trust the US government in the same way.
What we get is an asymmetry: people are generally fine with US tech companies, but they don’t want to work more closely with the United States on shared digital and tech goals because of their distrust of its government. Barely a third of respondents said the UK should ‘work more closely’ with them to set shared rules for the tech sector. Despite US companies being more popular than European ones, Brits would rather align with the EU (43% in favour).
As a consequence, any attempts to frame the debate through the lens of an AI cold war between the US vs China fell on deaf ears. The UK public simply will not accept that kind of framing right now: they a. don’t believe it’s true and b. don’t want it to be true.
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What the results also revealed was that views on digital sovereignty were a very important factor driving voting behaviour. Limiting foreign ownership of digital infrastructure was the most-popular policy of the 25. For now at least, digital sovereignty looks like a vote winner.
Look under section 3 there for which issues drive votes. Look at how important the ones that are AI-related are.
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