- 2 days ago
Sir James Cleverley has returned to the front bench after UK Conservative Party leader Kemi Badenoch reshuffled her top team.
Adam and Chris discuss the changes to the shadow cabinet and whether they will help the Conservatives in the fight for dominance of the right of British politics. Also today, their opponents Reform UK, led by Nigel Farage announced a Tory defection at the Welsh Royal Show.
Plus, the UK government has announced a new deal with OpenAI to use AI in public services. The agreement could give the company access to government data and mean its software is used across education, defence, security and justice.
You can now listen to Newscast on a smart speaker. If you want to listen, just say "Ask BBC Sounds to play Newscast”. It works on most smart speakers.
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New episodes released every day. If you're in the UK, for more News and Current Affairs podcasts from the BBC, listen on BBC Sounds: https://bit.ly/3ENLcS1... here: http://bit.ly/1rbfUog
Adam and Chris discuss the changes to the shadow cabinet and whether they will help the Conservatives in the fight for dominance of the right of British politics. Also today, their opponents Reform UK, led by Nigel Farage announced a Tory defection at the Welsh Royal Show.
Plus, the UK government has announced a new deal with OpenAI to use AI in public services. The agreement could give the company access to government data and mean its software is used across education, defence, security and justice.
You can now listen to Newscast on a smart speaker. If you want to listen, just say "Ask BBC Sounds to play Newscast”. It works on most smart speakers.
You can join our Newscast online community here: https://tinyurl.com/ne...
Get in touch with Newscast by emailing newscast@bbc.co.uk or send us a whatsapp on +44 0330 123 9480.
New episodes released every day. If you're in the UK, for more News and Current Affairs podcasts from the BBC, listen on BBC Sounds: https://bit.ly/3ENLcS1... here: http://bit.ly/1rbfUog
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NewsTranscript
00:00There's been a lot of movement in British politics today.
00:02Several members of the Conservative shadow cabinet are out.
00:06A Conservative is out of the Conservatives and joining Reform.
00:09And Angela Rayner, the Deputy Prime Minister, is moving on to territory
00:12that Nigel Farage, the leader of Reform, was on yesterday.
00:16What does all this movement mean?
00:17We will explain on this episode of the BBC's daily news podcast, Newscast.
00:24Hello, it's Adam in the Newscast studio.
00:26And it is Chris at Westminster.
00:28And we're recording this episode of Newscast at half past six on Tuesday.
00:31But at half past one on Tuesday, Chris and I were in the Jeremy Vine studio
00:35doing our monthly phone-in on Radio 2 when, Chris, massive news broke from Westminster.
00:42It did. So a shadow cabinet reshuffle was underway.
00:46Now, occasionally, you know, you and I, Adam, get mildly excited about political developments.
00:51This one was, I think, middle ranking, not least because it wasn't like a wholesale clear-out of the shadow cabinet.
00:57Neither was it tinkering. It was somewhere kind of in between.
01:02And we were getting bits and bobs dribbling out about what Kemi Badenoch was doing
01:05in terms of changing her front bench team.
01:07And as we record, as you say, at half six in the evening on Tuesday,
01:11we have had in our possession for about 15 minutes the full list.
01:16And the standout thing is that James Cleverley, used to be Home Secretary, Foreign Secretary,
01:20ran for the leadership last time, was beaten by Kemi Badenoch, and indeed by Robert Jenrick, is back.
01:26So he went off to the back benches for a bit, having lost.
01:29And he is back as shadow housing secretary, also communities and local government.
01:35In other words, shadowing Angela Rayner.
01:37And he's kind of a, cliche alert, Tory big beast.
01:42There's no doubt he's done some of the biggest jobs in government.
01:45And interestingly, Kemi Badenoch's been saying not only that,
01:49but he also represents a kind of strand of conservative opinion that is different from hers.
01:54She is seen as more to the right than he is.
01:58And she says it's about assembling a team that represents the full spectrum of conservative opinion.
02:02So James Cleverley, shadow housing, a couple of other names.
02:06In fact, you know, newscasters want the details.
02:08So here we go.
02:08Kevin Hollinrake becomes the Conservative Party chairman.
02:11He has been a staple of the front bench for a while in government and in opposition.
02:16Neil O'Brien, who is a big thinker, comes in as the shadow minister for policy renewal,
02:22which basically means presumably writing a lot of policies.
02:24Oh, policy renewal and development.
02:26So there you go.
02:28And a chap called Alex Burghardt is going to be involved in policy too.
02:32Stuart Andrew is going to do health, shadow health.
02:35He's replacing Ed Arger, who himself has had some health problems and so is standing down.
02:40Nigel Huddleston is going to do culture, media and sport.
02:43Richard Holden, former party chairman, shadow transport secretary now.
02:47Julia Lopez, shadow secretary of state for science, innovation and technology.
02:53And then interestingly, this heads a little into the weeds,
02:56but I think it's as interesting and as significant is that Kemi Badenoch's chief of staff,
03:02Lee Rowley, a former MP, is gone.
03:06And Henry Newman, who was a big noise behind the scenes for the Conservatives in government
03:11and indeed in opposition, used to work closely with Michael Gove, amongst others,
03:15is the new chief of staff to Kemi Badenoch.
03:19Right.
03:19What does this reveal about where Kemi Badenoch is going?
03:23Right.
03:23Let's break that down into a few things.
03:25First of all, the return of Sir James Cleverly.
03:28I always think when a big beast reappears, it's either a sign of strength from a leader,
03:35that they're prepared to have other big characters with their own heft around them.
03:41But more often than not, it's actually a sign of weakness and it's like putting the bat signal up
03:45and they need someone to come in and bring them some heft.
03:49Which one do you think it is today?
03:50I mean, obviously, maybe it's neither.
03:51I kind of think it's probably perhaps more simple than both of those things,
03:57which is that if you are a Conservative leader in the position that Kemi Badenoch is in,
04:03you would have someone of James Cleverly's stature and experience on your front bench
04:08if they're up for serving.
04:10And he clearly wasn't keen having lost the leadership race
04:12and probably a bit exhausted by government, etc., etc.
04:15And he is keen now.
04:18He's been very quiet on the back benches, really.
04:20So, you know, there's always the danger from a leader's perspective that somebody who is a big beast on the back benches
04:25has more scope to cause you trouble, whereas at least they're bound in on the front bench
04:30by a kind of sense of collective responsibility.
04:33I think from his perspective, he's probably kind of hungry to get stuck in.
04:37You can be more prominent, whatever might happen in the future,
04:40if you're on the front bench.
04:44Robert Jenrick, who's not shy of ambition, has been serving on the front bench.
04:50And James Cleverly is a potential contender in the future alongside Robert Jenrick.
04:55Should a leadership role become vacant?
04:58And so you probably, if you're James Cleverly, might think about doing that from being on the front bench.
05:03I've even talked about him as a potential Conservative candidate for Mayor of London in the years ahead.
05:08And again, if you're on the front bench, perhaps that's a bit more of a prominent position.
05:10But a lot of that is heading wildly into the realms of several steps down the track.
05:16I think broadly, as I say, from Kemi Badenoch's perspective, if he's up for serving, you would want him.
05:21And yes, he's from a different tradition within the party, if you like, but that's perhaps no bad thing.
05:26In fact, you can make a virtue of that.
05:28And if he's up for the scrap and wants to get stuck in, which he clearly does, then from Kemi Badenoch's perspective, why not have him back?
05:38And Neil O'Brien's an interesting one because he is well known for having this ability to kind of think big thoughts and come up with policies that could address those, like our ageing society.
05:49But at the same time, very retail-y policies that are related to people's daily lives.
05:53Do you remember a few months ago, he published that manifesto of things that just really annoy people, like badly parked e-bikes and people listening to music on the train with no headphones?
06:05Yeah, yeah, no, exactly.
06:06And maybe somebody would say the Tories need some more of that stuff.
06:09Totally.
06:09And he is exactly that.
06:12That's what he brings to the political wicket.
06:16So he was in the mix because I think he was a sort of junior shadow schools or education minister prior to this reshuffle.
06:22So he was on the front bench.
06:24But, you know, policy renewal and development is absolutely, it seems to me, sort of round peg in round hole for Neil O'Brien.
06:31And so I think Kemi Badenoch would argue that's the sort of best use of his talents, really.
06:37Ultimately, though, this wasn't, to me, looking like a reshuffle that was designed to send a message about a refreshed team with new priorities
06:46or a more kind of reform-leaning, leaner, meaner, conservative front bench.
06:52To me, this just seems more of a bit of a sort of HR operation, really.
06:57Yeah, I think that's probably right.
06:59I mean, I think it was triggered in the first instance by Ed Arger wanting to stand down.
07:04So then you've got to find someone to replace him as shadow health secretary.
07:08If you then get into a space where you think the person you want to do that job is already doing a different job,
07:13before you know it, you can be a few moves down the track and you need to do something more than just a one-in, one-out.
07:20James Cleverley was up for coming back and so you need to find a role for him.
07:25But in the grand scheme of things, you know, this wasn't a wholesale radical change.
07:31Neither was it the one-in, one-out.
07:32It was kind of, you know, half a dozen or so.
07:34I think there'll be a few more at a more junior shadow ministerial rank as two.
07:38It'll be intriguing to see if any of the new intake of Conservative MPs,
07:41there's 25 out of 120-odd of them who are new to Westminster at the last general election.
07:47Do some of them get shadow front bench gigs on top of their various responsibilities at the moment?
07:54Do they start being put in slightly more prominent places?
07:57But yeah, I think that's a fair characterisation, Adam, really, of where we are.
08:02And I think a little bit of a nod from Cammie Baden-Ock in James Cleverley's return and others of making,
08:08trying to make a point that says, look, you know, there's a lot of noise from Nigel Farage and reform,
08:13but here's what an alternative government could look like.
08:16Now, of course, the Conservatives' numbers are massively depleted versus kind of any recent historical comparison.
08:23But they have a shadow front bench that sits in the House of Commons,
08:26and that's more than reform can point to.
08:29And I guess in, you know, in this sort of reshuffle, you can sort of begin to nod to that
08:33and show a sort of depth and breadth of experience that reform don't have.
08:37But of course, if you're an insurgency, you know, and all the rest of it as reform hope themselves to be,
08:43then you try and make a virtue out of all of the opposing things to that, don't you?
08:46That you're the fresh start, et cetera, et cetera.
08:48So that's the people in and out of the Conservative shadow cabinet.
08:52What about this person who's out of the Conservatives altogether and into reform?
08:56Yeah, well, I think this is where this last 24 hours really has been like a parable of opposition politics in 2025 playing out in one day.
09:07So you've got, you know, Cami Boudinot with this really tough job, for all the reasons we know,
09:12leading the Conservative Party and doing this little bit of a rejig and refresh and whatnot.
09:16And meanwhile, you've got Nigel Farage at the Royal Welsh show.
09:21And there he is with the latest defectee from the Conservatives to reform, Laura Anne Jones,
09:28who is a member of the Welsh Parliament, saying that she's been a Conservative for years and years and years.
09:34And she's had enough of them and she's joining reform.
09:37And, you know, that's yet another.
09:39And actually someone who is currently an elected member of a parliament.
09:43Some of the more recent defectees have been former MPs.
09:48Now, there's a sort of thing, Adam.
09:50Look, when a party gets a defector, that is almost always, at least on day one, a reason to smile.
09:56Because you've gained somebody at the expense of one of your rivals.
10:00There's a bit of a question that Nigel Farage might start to face as this sort of face of a anti-establishment insurgency.
10:07If loads of his new recruits are former Conservatives, where, you know, you've got this party that is the epitome, if you like, of the political establishment who were recently in government and then were kind of crushed in a general election.
10:23And to what point, you know, at what point does a sense of insurgency get diluted if you're seen to be this sort of port in a Tory storm?
10:33Equally, if you're Nigel Farage, that is a nice problem to have, isn't it?
10:36Because it indicates momentum heading in your direction.
10:39It indicates that you have a magnetic appeal and your opponents are the sort of other end of the magnet.
10:45They're repelling.
10:45And I'll let newscasters decide how Nigel Farage was interpreting what Chris just said in this little clip from the press conference that Nigel Farage did with Laura Ann Jones, his new defector, when the pair of them were asked about the Tory reshuffle.
10:59So thereby linking all the things we've just been talking about.
11:02There'll be this reshuffle.
11:04Most of the people that get reshuffled, frankly, are not even household names.
11:08No one is even talking about them.
11:10You know, and if you look at the polls, they're sliding.
11:13They're now sort of 17, 16, whatever it may be.
11:16They've got further to go down.
11:18And I believe, and I'll repeat the point I made a moment ago, I believe after May next year, they will cease to be a national party.
11:26Yeah, the Conservative Party have forgotten how to be Conservative.
11:28That's Nigel Farage and Laura Ann Jones.
11:32And the reason Nigel Farage, Chris, is talking about May next year is because that's the next elections to the Senate and also the Scottish Parliament.
11:38Yeah, indeed so, in Wales and in Scotland and in London and in pockets of England beyond the capital.
11:47And it's a really big kind of midterm-ish kind of feel to next year's elections and potentially a really, really big moment for reform and therefore for Labour and the Conservatives.
12:01And indeed, in the context of Scotland and Wales, the Scottish National Party and Plaid Cymru.
12:05Now, we didn't have time to talk about reform yesterday because Nigel Farage had done this big speech about prisons and the criminal justice system.
12:14And what is interesting is, because I didn't have the chance to watch it in real time, you then go on the Reform UK website and you think,
12:21oh, there must be like a thing where you can read all Nigel Farage's speeches and they're not there.
12:26So their website isn't like a classic government-in-waiting website where you can read exactly what their leader has been saying about various policies.
12:35But he did come up with a lot of actual policies in this speech, didn't he, yesterday?
12:39Yeah, he did. And the whole thing, again, is sort of illustration of how unconventional politics is at the moment.
12:46Here we are, probably the best part of four years out from a general election.
12:50Then you've got a party with a handful of MPs that is launching a quite broad policy prospectus,
12:56particularly within the theme of law and order and policing and crime.
13:02And doing so, you know, a considerable distance away from a general election,
13:05actually still quite a long way away from those elections next May.
13:08I mean, it's only July. But then they're trying to climb this sort of hill politically, mountain politically,
13:15that has never been pulled off before, going from sort of nothing to government in the blink of an eye.
13:22So they've got this campaign, it's going to run all summer. They're focusing on crime.
13:26They're talking about halving crime within a parliament.
13:29They were talking about sending some British prisoners to prisons overseas, El Salvador, Estonia, Kosovo.
13:35There are actually some precedents of countries having kind of effectively export agreements on their own domestic prisoners.
13:42They also talk about sending foreign prisoners back to their country of origin, a whole load of more police officers,
13:50beefier police officers. That was the thing, Adam, that reform talked about.
13:53They wanted effectively more stringent tests for incoming police officers in terms of kind of fitness and sort of muscularity and all that kind of stuff.
14:04And they reckoned, I've probably missed a few.
14:07I'm going off the top of my head as to what else they were saying yesterday.
14:09It'll come to me in a minute. But they reckon this whole thing would, oh, prisons.
14:12There's going to be a whole load of new prison places, including turning some former Ministry of Defence sites into places for lower category prisoners and not the most dangerous criminals.
14:25They reckon all this is going to cost, I think, £17.4 billion across a parliament.
14:30So, I mean, a lot of money.
14:31And they also reckon they could do it without putting up taxes because they talk about rolling back lots of net zero promises that this government and its predecessor have signed up to,
14:40scrapping the HS2 rail line, although quite much of the money for that will already be spent by the time of the next general election.
14:45Let's see. And I think, you know, now where we are now with reform is that, yeah, they get more attention and some people love that and some people really don't.
14:54But they're going to get a lot more scrutiny and a kind of stress testing of the deliverability of the ideas that they're coming forward with.
15:01Now, they are intentionally distinctive and different because that's their whole pitch relative to what they see as the sort of mushy samism of Labour and the Conservatives.
15:14But, you know, that kind of kicking the tyres of things and trying to work out the extent to which they are credible is going to become a far bigger part of the kind of journalistic enterprise around reform.
15:25It'll be a far bigger part of what the opposition parties do.
15:27And then it'll be a case of to what extent do people think that that really matters, particularly a reasonable distance out from an election.
15:35Perhaps it'll matter more to more people closer in.
15:37Or if there's that embedded sense that too much is not getting better anytime soon under successive governments, Conservative and Labour,
15:48then perhaps that kind of credibility test that the bar for it lowers a bit if enough people think, well, it's worth giving them a giving them a crack.
15:58And also one of the things that Nigel Farage said at this press conference on Monday that was in a lot of the papers today was this idea from him that society is on the brink of collapse.
16:08And this was in response to the tensions around the hotels, housing asylum seekers, protests popping ups are all over the place now fairly regularly.
16:18But interestingly, Chris, Angela Rayner at this morning's cabinet meeting, the last one before the summer holiday, she was going onto that turf.
16:27And not just that, but she obviously made sure it ended up in the email sent to all the journalists saying, here's what was discussed at cabinet today.
16:34I think exactly that. And that is yet another example of where Downing Street, you know, where the heart of government are really aware of what reform are saying
16:43and that they are pivoting towards a position which sees reform as the principal party of opposition,
16:49even though in numerical terms in Parliament, they are some distance, obviously, from that.
16:54And desperate not to be seen to be aloof, out of touch in those ivory towers of Whitehall, whilst you have a politician in Nigel Farage who can communicate incredibly savourily,
17:09being seen to sort of outflank them in terms of a sense of knowing what's going on on the street, if you like.
17:15So I think not only was that briefed out, but briefed out in the name of the deputy prime minister,
17:21who herself would make an argument that she's entirely plugged into what's going on in sort of ordinary streets up and down the up and down the UK
17:28and remains very plugged into that, even though she occupies a high office of a high office of state.
17:33And there's a broader point beyond the kind of party politics of this. There's a real worry.
17:37There's a real worry about it. I've spoken to Labour MPs who are really worried about
17:42the tensions around a combination of things. But yes, asylum seeker, hotels and these houses of multiple occupiership
17:52and on top of challenges around the cost of living, challenges around an economy that's flatlining,
18:00all contributing to a sense of concern in government about just those kind of images that we're seeing from Epping in Essex.
18:10Chris, thank you very much. See you soon.
18:12Ta-ra.
18:13And one other story to talk about on this episode of Newscast.
18:16The UK government has signed a deal with OpenAI, the American artificial intelligence company that is behind ChatGPT,
18:26which will see the UK government and OpenAI cooperating a lot more, whether it's creating new jobs
18:33or maybe changing the jobs of people who work in the civil service because they're going to be done by artificial intelligence instead.
18:39I caught up with two people who've got lots of experience in this area, starting off with the BBC's technology editor,
18:45Zoe Kleinman, who joined us down the line from Glasgow.
18:48Hi, Zoe.
18:49Hello.
18:50And also here in the studio is Jimmy McLaughlin, former Downing Street advisor and now host of...
18:55Jimmy's Jobs of the Future.
18:56...where I'm assuming AI is quite a big feature.
18:58It is indeed.
19:00Right, Zoe, this news story today, just what is this deal that the government and OpenAI have done?
19:05I should start by saying it's a voluntary agreement, so nothing is set in stone.
19:11What OpenAI is saying is that it's going to explore making its British headquarters bigger here.
19:18That means potentially more jobs.
19:20And it's also going to look at investing more in the loads of AI data centres that the UK is looking to build to strengthen our infrastructure.
19:28And in return, it says it's going to collaborate with the government on using its AI advanced models in public services,
19:37with the aim of not only making government departments more efficient,
19:41but also making those public services easier for the rest of us to use.
19:45And does this feel to you as a significant piece of paper that's been signed, even if it is just a voluntary thing?
19:51It's not the only deal the government's done with US tech giants.
19:54It's gone into similar partnerships already with Google and also with Anthropic, which are OpenAI's rivals.
20:02I think, you know, clearly this government is really rolling out the red carpet to the AI sector.
20:07It thinks that AI is a really important part of its goal to promote growth in the country.
20:13Peter Kyle, who's the tech secretary, reckons AI can fix the NHS and fix the economy.
20:19There's lots of bold claims been made for it.
20:23And the AI industry is equally proud of its achievements.
20:26Sam Altman, who's the CEO of OpenAI, the maker of ChatGPT,
20:30reckons that they're close to something called Artificial General Intelligence or AGI,
20:35which is tech that's able to live up to humans in terms of the skills that it promotes.
20:41There are, however, lots of criticisms and issues, I think, with this along the way.
20:48And also some questions around, you know, if we're supposed to be beefing up our sovereign AI,
20:52and there's lots of talk about Britain being part of the race and having a national infrastructure,
20:58are we getting a bit too close to all of these companies that are all based in the US?
21:02Yeah, Jimmy, is this, I mean, this is being pitched as a kind of win-win-win situation here.
21:07Is that how you would interpret it?
21:09Yeah, I think, look, it's a pretty good starter for 10 on these things.
21:13You've got to build relationships with these companies.
21:15You know, the UK government has always been good at that.
21:17You look at some of the kind of like magnificent seven that exist,
21:20the Googles, Facebooks, Amazons of the world.
21:22They have their second biggest offices outside the US in the UK
21:26that they provide tens of thousands of jobs amongst them.
21:29Like, it's really important. At the moment, OpenAI has only got 100 jobs in the UK,
21:34but having agreements like this mean that you can get more employment here, etc.
21:38So, look, I think it's a good deal.
21:40You know, there'll be lots of questions about data, etc., and data sharing,
21:44and people are right to flag that up, but this deal does not change any of that.
21:49And this whole thing about getting OpenAI to kind of partner with the government
21:52on the provision of either public services or just how government departments actually work,
21:58is that a real thing, or is that a little bit of a red herring?
22:02I mean, I've just...
22:03My email app, for example, or my BBC laptop has just got the new co-pilot thing.
22:08Oh, yeah.
22:08Isn't this just happening on everyone's desktops anyway?
22:12Well, I think there is some truth in that,
22:14but I think there's a lot of information that's stored in government
22:17about historic things that have been tried.
22:19And it was one of the things that I found frustrating at Downing Street would be
22:22you wouldn't find that out.
22:24You'd be developing a policy idea, and you wouldn't find out until a few weeks into it
22:28that this had been tried in sort of the early 90s, or something similar had been, etc.
22:32Like Michael Heseltine had toyed with it.
22:34Exactly.
22:35Whereas, actually, if you can pull all this information and be able to have something
22:38that can kind of search all that, because often people wouldn't know, etc.
22:41And so the UK civil service has its own AI now called Humphrey,
22:47based off the Yes Minister character and so on.
22:50So, like, being able to ask that,
22:52OK, what have we done in this policy area before,
22:55I think could be really interesting with that,
22:57because that isn't available on the sort of World Wide Web.
23:00And Zoe, it's interesting in the press release that the government put out about this partnership,
23:04the example they give of one of these tools being used is using AI to categorise public
23:10and industry responses to consultations.
23:13So rather than a person having to go through 100 submissions on a website,
23:17the AI can do it very quickly.
23:19And that seems like a very nice sort of benign kind of office function that's being done here.
23:23Yeah, I mean, that is a classic admin function that AI can do extremely well.
23:28I suppose the thing is that, you know, everything that you feed into any AI tool that you're using
23:33is generally then used by the company that owns the tool and can be, in theory, used to train it.
23:39Now, there are some companies that claim to have done deals
23:42where the data doesn't get shared more broadly and that it stays within the firm.
23:46And I think the government obviously needs to make sure that it's sort of got the right deal
23:51in terms of what happens to that data and how it then gets used, if it gets used at all.
23:56But you're right, this is classic stuff that AI is really good at.
23:58It's good at finding patterns in enormous quantities of data.
24:03That's what it does really well.
24:06And Zoe mentioned that phrase, AGI, artificial general intelligence,
24:11which is kind of the next leap forward, isn't it?
24:13And I know, Jimmy, you've been speaking to Peter Kyle, the technology secretary,
24:17and in fact, Keir Starmer, the prime minister, on your podcast about this concept.
24:20Yes, the last two guests.
24:22So I asked Peter Kyle whether he thought AGI would be here by the end of the parliament.
24:26And he said that he thought it would be.
24:28And I asked him within four years.
24:30Within four years, which I do think will be a real transformational change,
24:34which none of us are kind of ready for yet and really have got our heads around.
24:38I asked Keir Starmer whether he thought the same.
24:41He wasn't quite as equivocal on it.
24:43He just mentioned that Peter was an ambitious guy and he liked to see that.
24:46So I thought that was an interesting answer from the prime minister.
24:48But I do think like it is a big thing that is potentially going to change so much of our economy.
24:55And, you know, it's going to the question I put to Keir Starmer was, you know,
24:59he was at Leeds University when the deindustrialization was happening in places like Yorkshire and so on.
25:05Like we might be right at the verge of that again.
25:08But this time it could be a very different deindustrialization.
25:10It won't be as evocative.
25:11It won't be as significant as seeing those jobs go in coal mines, etc.
25:17You know, it will go through the middle classes this time.
25:20And I think it's just a big change that we might not be ready for yet.
25:23Are we at a stage where you can imagine what sort of application AGI would be used for?
25:28I mean, we've all got quite used to these large language models.
25:31So the chat GPT thing.
25:33But what would help us get our minds and our heads around what AGI would do practically?
25:38Well, there was something that I used the other day, which I thought was quite interesting with this.
25:41Like we were looking at how we sort of grow the podcast and the production company behind it.
25:45And it essentially said to me, what you need, Jimmy, is a COO.
25:48And you need somebody to come in and lead your operations.
25:50And then it said, would you like...
25:52This is what the AI said.
25:53This is what the AI...
25:53Like a management consultant, basically.
25:54Yeah, exactly.
25:55But then what it did as well, Adam, that was different this time, was it said,
25:58let me go and find some names for you.
26:00And it pulled up 10 names, 10 LinkedIn pages of people that, you know,
26:04they wouldn't have all been great, but there were some really good suggestions in there, actually.
26:07Brennan sat through there, on the other side of the newscast studio, just side eye of my colleagues.
26:12Anyway.
26:13But I just thought, like, that is the next stage that I had not seen it do before recently,
26:18where it's gone and set, like, it's diagnosed the problem.
26:20We've then rewritten the job description together about what I would like to see in it as well.
26:25And then it's gone.
26:26Shall I go and find some people for you?
26:27And I thought that is a key change of it that we'll see.
26:31Do you know what that's making me think?
26:32That makes me realise it's sort of, it's chat GPT, but with then the gumption you get from an employee.
26:39Yes.
26:39Chat GPT responds to you very well, but it doesn't have initiative.
26:43Exactly.
26:44This is it going out and being like a self-starter, basically, like what you want in an ideal employee.
26:48Yeah.
26:48Zoe, that other phrase you talked about, sovereign AI capacity, what do we actually mean when we talk about that?
26:55I think what we mean is having enough of an AI sector ourselves that we can't, that we're not completely reliant on other countries to not only provide us with tools and services that we use as customers,
27:09but also to research and develop the next generation of the tech so that we are always sort of using other people's kit, if you like, and we never have enough of our own.
27:17The problem clearly is that, you know, the two main contenders here, US and China, have vast amounts more money than we do to throw at this.
27:26And we see that consistently with not only the national commitments, but also the private sector funding that the AI sector receives.
27:33I mean, it is impossible for the UK to match that.
27:37But what we do have is really good research and development here.
27:40And I think the plan is that we can sort of, you know, master that and use that to our advantage, even though we can't compete financially.
27:49And earlier this year, really interestingly, China suddenly released an AI chat book called DeepSeek that we talked, you know, a lot about.
27:59And the story that sort of first came out around that was that it had been done on a fraction of the cost of something like ChatGPT.
28:06And in the end, I'm not entirely sure that that narrative was true, because although some of it had been cheaper, it was sort of built on the soldier of giants.
28:14You know, it wasn't like they just spent 5p and created this whole thing from scratch.
28:18However, it did make everybody go, well, hang on a minute.
28:22Maybe you don't need as much money as as we've been told you need.
28:25And maybe it isn't the case that there's only three or four people in the entire world that can do this because only they have the resources.
28:31I think, you know, I've got to bear in mind there's a lot of empire building going along.
28:35There's a massive power grab going on and and people are going to use that to their advantage.
28:40And they're going to keep telling you that you don't have enough to do it and only they can do it.
28:43And, you know, please just let them get on with it because it's in their interests.
28:46And Jimmy, a couple of questions for you with your old kind of Downing Street hat on.
28:50Although that seems very old tech when we talk about this.
28:53Your Downing Street neural implant, which I hope has been removed.
28:57And that thing about the UK actually being quite good at this stuff.
29:02Do you think governments of all kind of political persuasions have had a bit of a difficult job or failed to convince the public that we are not necessarily world leaders, but definitely world players in some of these technologies?
29:14I'm thinking AI, life sciences, stuff like that.
29:17Exactly. Yeah, I think we we are a real world leader in this.
29:20And I think, you know, you can look at one of the Sam Altman is often talks about and we have done a lot today, but Demis Hassabis is sort of probably number two in the world, if not number one himself.
29:30Which is DeepMind, the Google version of this.
29:32Exactly. Based right here in London.
29:34So I think it's I think we should be proud of what we've done.
29:38We need to work out how we scale these companies.
29:40That has always been a problem.
29:42I mean, Peter Carl came on the podcast, said, I want a one trillion dollar company here in the UK.
29:48I pointed out that we could do with getting to a hundred billion before we worry about one trillion.
29:52One order of magnitude lower.
29:53Exactly. And so the ambition is great.
29:57Peter Carl is obviously leaning into this.
29:59This is the announcement today as well.
30:00Keir Starmer is getting the posture on AI right.
30:04And these are huge sort of technological forces, really, which actually national governments don't have that much kind of control over.
30:11It's a bit like the Internet and so on.
30:12So I think we have to kind of be wary of that.
30:15And whilst we are a big player in this space, you know, these are these are even bigger shifts that are happening.
30:21I just think it's interesting because you get the sense that the general public and of course, I'm massively generalizing here.
30:26Don't buy those old style government press releases of this deal means we will create one thousand two hundred and fifty seven new jobs.
30:33I think people are skeptical of that.
30:35So you can see why this government announcement today is the next generation of that.
30:39It's not just making a big claim about some potential future jobs.
30:43Yeah, completely.
30:44And I think, you know, the government have done a lot in terms of these AI growth zones.
30:47They've had 200 applications through them right across the country.
30:51But I think, you know, when we're talking about AGI, it is going to impact almost every area of our life, just in the way that the Internet has done over the last kind of 30 years.
31:01There might not be a sort of big bang moment, as it were, but it will just gradually increase in people's lives.
31:08So I think it's very important that the government is taking these steps.
31:11And the other question I wanted to ask you with your Downing Street hat slash neural implant is when you are negotiating with these mega, mega, mega companies, like their market capitalization is huge.
31:24Their CEOs earn bazillions.
31:27Do you feel like, I don't know what I'm trying to think of it like a respectful word here.
31:34Yeah.
31:34But like they're the big guys and you're just sort of just the little guy.
31:39Well, I think, you know, it's interesting because money motivates a lot of people.
31:43But these guys are so rich that money has kind of like beyond motivation, beyond motivation for them.
31:49So there's lots of other things that you have in your toolkit as a special advisor to the prime minister.
31:54There are lots of other things, you know, sort of, you know, visiting Downing Street was a huge thing.
31:59I was saying to Keir Starmer in the interview, we were in the small dining room.
32:02I always used to request that meeting room for when I was meeting these international investors.
32:06And the reason for that was that was where Thatcher and Gorbachev had their small private dinners.
32:11And that was where the Cold War was thawed.
32:14And finishing investment meetings with that was often a bit of a key trick that I used to...
32:18Interesting that you finished the meeting with that rather than like, shall we just pop in here?
32:22You'll never guess what happened here in 1984.
32:25Well, sometimes I used it at the start and so on.
32:27But I remember Tim Cook came to...
32:29Apple CEO.
32:30Yeah, and the Apple CEO came to visit the PM.
32:33And it was partly around the sort of Battersea office opening, which employs now sort of 5,000, 6,000 people there.
32:39Which PM was that at that point?
32:40That was Theresa May.
32:42And he was in the kind of anteroom waiting.
32:45And he was just transfixed by the picture of the Queen that we had there.
32:49It was one of the few ones of the Queen smiling.
32:51And he sort of said in his South Alabama drawl, you know, I've been watching Netflix.
32:55And, you know, I just find this so captivating kind of being here.
32:58And I just thought, what a wonderful example of kind of soft power.
33:01You know, my job was to go in and kind of warm these guys up before seeing the PM.
33:05And already the picture on the wall being in the room had kind of done that.
33:08And we were able to get that big announcement over the line.
33:10Zoe, just here's a philosophical question to end with for you before you go off and do the rest of the day's news.
33:16Do you feel, as the technology editor, the way you've covered AI stories and the kind of story you're actually doing for the news has changed over the last few years?
33:27Somebody said to me they feel like Schrodinger's human because they feel both excited and terrified of AI.
33:33And they've got all these kind of, you know, conflicting feelings about it.
33:36And something I often get asked is how scared of it should we be?
33:39And I think actually it's OK to feel both of those things.
33:43It is exciting and it is terrifying.
33:45AI is a massively broad church.
33:47You know, we talk a lot about generative AI because that's kind of become the showbiz element of it, hasn't it?
33:52You know, AI that creates pictures and videos and poems and stuff.
33:56But there's a lot of AI tech that's not doing anything as sexy as that, you know, that's doing disease diagnosis in hospitals and that sort of thing.
34:04And I think, you know, that is a really important and perhaps less controversial use of the tech.
34:10I think I've got a four year old.
34:12My youngest child is four and I don't really know how to prepare him as he grows up for the working world because I think it will be unrecognizable to what I would consider to be a day in the office right now.
34:23I do think that it's going to impact all of our lives.
34:27You know, it's the pace of evolution since the sort of faltering robots that I used to see 10 years ago to the to the skills that it has now are amazing.
34:36But there are there are other parts of this story, you know, that we mustn't forget.
34:39We have to hold these. We have to try to hold these companies to account.
34:43They need to be transparent about the environmental impact of this tech, which is huge.
34:48They need to be transparent about what data they're using to train their tools, where they're getting it from and whether they should be paying for it.
34:56Those issues, I think, are not going to go away.
34:58And currently, I haven't really seen any of them, despite commitment to doing so, I haven't really seen any of them massively step up to the table and say, OK, here you go.
35:08Here's the carbon footprint of all of our all of our tech here.
35:11And the other thing to bear in mind, of course, is regulation here in the UK at the moment.
35:14We do quite light touch regulation because we want to encourage AI to companies to come here and to grow here and to build here.
35:22But ultimately, Europe has the AI Act, which, by the way, nobody likes, literally nobody likes.
35:29And we have an AI bill that's slowly sort of making its way.
35:33And I don't know if the goodwill between us and these US tech giants will start to sour once the UK starts to say, actually, you know, this is a really powerful and disruptive technology.
35:44And it's got to have some form of regulation at some point.
35:47I think that's going to have to come.
35:48OK, two things then in closing for you, Jimmy, what not turning to super nanny, but what do you say to the parent of a four year old about what that kid's education should be like to deal with this new world?
36:01Well, I have a one, three and a five year old, so I think about it a lot.
36:04It's like the Waltons in here.
36:05Yeah, exactly. I think it's going to I think it's going to change dramatically.
36:09I think there's always been a saying that the most valuable lessons at school are learned outside the classroom.
36:14And I think that's going to become ever more true in terms of the classroom that we've defined it over the last 10, 20, 50 years.
36:21Actually, it's going to be about teamwork, resilience, all of those aspects, the ability to learn, knowing how you learn.
36:27I think we've had a very one size fits all in our education system.
36:31Actually, people learn in lots of different ways.
36:32There is opportunity with AI to be able to do that.
36:35But just on that point about it being outside the classroom, does that mean parents having to teach their kids how to be critical thinkers, how to be flexible, how to adopt new things without grumbling about them?
36:48Or does that mean that actually the education of a child will come from more places than just a school?
36:53Well, so I think, yeah, I think education will come from more places.
36:57One of the worries that I have of AI when it comes to education and these chatbots being used as coaches, therapists, all this type of thing, is that you almost have a frictionless relationship with the AI.
37:10Now, that's great in some ways, but actually human relationships are inherently messy.
37:14And, you know, being able to work through those at school and be able to kind of form those teams and friendships, I think is going to be really important.
37:24And sort of contrasting that with having a frictionless kind of co-pilot that you can use every night is going to be a challenge.
37:30Yeah.
37:30At the moment, it's sort of pitched as the UK is the sweet spot between lots of different jurisdictions with varying degrees of regulation.
37:38I'm wondering if that's maybe another red herring.
37:41And it's just that we haven't worked out how much regulation to do yet.
37:44And we'll end up being a less appealing place to the tech companies once we kind of get on top of that even more.
37:50Look, I think it's a really interesting challenge.
37:52I think there is an opportunity between China, the EU and North America as being the big regulatory players for us to be in a bit of a sweet spot between them there.
37:59As Zoe said, no one likes what the EU kind of bill is doing.
38:02There is always a challenge between government and business.
38:04They always kind of rub up against each other to some degree as well.
38:07You will also have a problem if you've got all of the big companies saying that they like the regulation as well,
38:12because then you're partly putting in barriers that stop other people entering the market as well.
38:17You will see that soon as well, then arguing for the regulation.
38:20So it's a really interesting challenge.
38:23But I do think that, you know, the Technology Secretary of Peace Carr has put a lot of thought into this.
38:28And, you know, examples like today are a right step forward.
38:32Zoe, I'm going to let you go.
38:33Thank you very much.
38:34And, Jimmy, last question, another political question.
38:37It's the Tory frontbench reshuffle today.
38:40It is.
38:41Now, is that like watching like a giant asteroid heading for the Earth and the asteroid is AI, but that's like wondering about, I don't know, what's the price of stamps in equivalent?
38:52I haven't quite caught up with it all yet, but I think it's very encouraging to see James Cleverley back and so on.
38:58I think that the government has a large majority and actually they need to be held to account in the Commons and so on.
39:05And if James Cleverley is going to be going up against Angela Rayner when deputising for Prime Minister's questions, I think that will make quite interesting viewing.
39:14You'll be watching.
39:14Yes, I will be watching that one.
39:16Right, Jimmy, thank you very much.
39:18Thanks, Adam.
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