An Andy Burnham coronation? Really?
Any plan to muscle out a sitting Prime Minister and replace him without a contest and proper scrutiny is deeply unwise.
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Watching the outgoing metro mayor of Manchester continue his merry progress to the premiership, clad in a black suit jacket over a black t-shirt and grinning his way round the Makerfield constituency where Andy Burnham hopes this week to be elected MP in a by-election, several thoughts come to mind. Hold on, what on earth are we all doing? And is this farce of a contest really our political and media class’s response to the enormous crises and challenges we face?
We are in the age of Trump, war in Ukraine and Iran, and AI. Quantum computing is about to bust open the encryption on which our entire financial system depends. AI, robotics, sensors and, soon, quantum computing are about to fuse, creating an automation matrix that will likely transform production and economic life. In Ukraine, we see how these developments are already reshaping warfare at extraordinary speed with the frontline and “killing zone” transformed. The US is racing to adapt its capabilities, while nations such as Poland spend almost 5% of GDP on defence.
Next, the AI revolution may usher in hugely positive medical and productivity gains that will fuel growth and alleviate or even eliminate our fiscal problems, yet the resulting disruption to employment could also produce a voter backlash. Worse, AI may make the production of bioweapons and others weapons of mass destruction impossible to control or regulate, leading in the end to the annihilation of our species. We also stand on the edge of a new era of nuclear proliferation; as Professor Frank Gavin puts it in his introduction to the summer edition of the Texas National Security Review: “Few recall the terrifying effects that nuclear weapons had on world politics during the Cold War, and the rise of loose nuclear talk in recent years is a cause for great concern. Yet the presence of the bomb hovers over international relations like a malevolent ghost, usually quiet and invisible yet always inspiring fear, and in danger of emerging in terrifying, murderous ways without warning.”
Meanwhile, China sits at the head of an alliance of autocracies while moving up the industrial value chain producing ever more high end products that threaten to deindustrialise Europe. In Britain, we have the highest electricity prices in the developed world and a net zero crackpot energy policy that accelerates our own deindustrailiasation.
In Beijing, the leadership that defeated the US administration in last year’s trade war, using its power to compel a climb down by Washington, ponders how to incorporate Taiwan whether by force or coercion. In its war on Ukraine, Russia is being beaten back right now but it may lash out in other directions in northern Europe, in the high north or on undersea cables for example, to compensate. It is in this dangerous context that Britain’s defence secretary and the minister of state both resigned last week, after the Prime Minister refused to find the money to build up our weakened defences against Russia and threats beyond Europe.
