On Labour’s soft left, the question isn’t whether to challenge Starmer, but when
A spectre is haunting the most ambitious politicians in Labour – the question of timing.If you hope one day to become prime minister, you could blink and miss your moment.Andy Burnham clearly believed he did not have much time.But now he might have longer than he thought.Labour’s powerful soft left caucus currently has no candidate who is ready to challenge the prime minister.
Until they do, it seems unlikely they would be part of facilitating a leadership challenge en masse.It is why the survival of Keir Starmer as prime minister for far longer than many predict is underpriced as an option in Westminster.None of his rivals really know whether there is an advantage in being first mover.Go too soon and you end up yesterday’s story, quickly consigned to the backbenches.Move too slowly and your rivals have sewn up all the support.
Wes Streeting, the health secretary, looks like he benefits most from the NEC’s decision to keep Burnham from returning to parliament.He is the only potential candidate who would be ready to move in May – especially if Labour also lose the Gorton and Denton byelection.But the near unanimity in blocking Burnham is also a sign that the institutional support for Starmer is perhaps stronger than might have been imagined – and there are clues about how an average member of the parliamentary Labour party (PLP) might react to a forced leadership challenge.In public, some outspoken MPs denounced the blocking, but in private far more were voicing concerns about what a Burnham byelection candidacy might unleash.Some MPs have proved themselves all mouth and no trousers when it comes to whether they are serious about regime change.
One option that comes up in late-night chats with disgruntled MPs on the Commons terrace is the possibility of a non-binding confidence vote in the prime minister held at the weekly meeting of the PLP,A similar vote was held against Jeremy Corbyn in 2016,He lost, but stayed on as leader nevertheless,Starmer’s critics believe he would not do the same should he lose – or if a substantial number of MPs voted against him,But with only one candidate realistically ready to run at that point, those MPs who do not want Streeting may then decide to back Starmer.
Those on the soft left’s preferred candidates – Burnham and the former deputy prime minister Angela Rayner – could benefit from going more slowly,Burnham is said by some to have been offered the possibility of a return in 2027,Though many MPs have flinched at the Manchester mayor’s strategy, they agree with his diagnosis – that Labour is floundering without a guiding vision and must return to its core values in order to succeed in government,Rayner’s allies say she is certain to run in the event of a leadership contest and will not do a deal, but she needs to hear from HMRC about her failure to pay stamp duty on a flat before she can make real preparations for a challenge,But could they both run out of time? There is a minority on the soft left that thinks time is short and waiting only makes a Reform UK victory inevitable.
The majority still will not countenance backing Streeting.But others, mindful of the need to beat Nigel Farage and hold together the party’s progressive coalition, have begun to warm to the health secretary as a possibility.They cite how confident he is on anti-racism and Labour values, and his talents as a communicator and attack dog.And there are a few more – female ministers in particular – who say their preferred candidate is Shabana Mahmood, despite her hardline immigration reforms.The conversation always begins with the concern that those reforms have made it impossible for the home secretary to win the support of Labour members.
But many MPs frustrated with the constant U-turns from No 10 think there is merit in a decisive cabinet minister who makes tough decisions.They also have long-held admiration for her political skills from when she was the party’s campaign coordinator.As Conservative prime minister, Theresa May lost dozens of parliamentary votes, shed cabinet ministers and even survived a confidence vote before she was forced to resign.And, in Boris Johnson, she had an obvious rival ready to replace her.Starmer’s position is nowhere near as dire yet, with his rivals hopelessly divided, even if few think he can ultimately prevail.
AI systems could use Met Office and National Archives data under UK plans
Met Office data and legal documents from the National Archives could be used by artificial intelligence systems as the UK government pushes ahead with plans to employ nationally owned material in AI tools.The government is providing funds for researchers to test how Met Office content could be used by the technology, such as in helping agencies and councils know when to buy more road grit. Another project will explore whether legal data from the National Archives – the UK’s repository for official documents – could help medium- and small-sized businesses with legal support.The government has also announced plans to license content from national institutions such as the National History Museum and the National Library of Scotland for AI development.Ian Murray, the minister for digital government and data, said the National Archives plan was “what smart use of the public sector” looked like
Sam Altman’s make-or-break year: can the OpenAI CEO cash in his bet on the future?
Sam Altman has claimed over the years that the advancement of AI could solve climate change, cure cancer, create a benevolent superintelligence beyond human comprehension, provide a tutor for every student, take over nearly half of the tasks in the economy and create what he calls “universal extreme wealth”.In order to bring about his utopian future, Altman is demanding enormous resources from the present. As CEO of OpenAI, the world’s most valuable privately owned company, he has in recent months announced plans for $1tn of investment into datacenters and struck multibillion-dollar deals with several chipmakers. If completed, the datacenters are expected to use more power than entire European nations. OpenAI is pushing an aggressive expansion – encroaching on industries like e-commerce, healthcare and entertainment – while increasingly integrating its products into government, universities and the US military and making a play to turn ChatGPT into the new default homepage for millions
AI needs to augment rather than replace humans or the workplace is doomed | Heather Stewart
“Who wouldn’t want a robot to watch over your kids?” Elon Musk asked Davos delegates last week, as he looked forward with enthusiasm to a world with “more robots than people”.Not me, thanks: children need the human connection – the love – that gives life meaning.As he works towards launching SpaceX on to the stock market, in perhaps the biggest ever such share sale, the world’s richest man has every incentive to talk big.Yet as Musk waxed eccentrically about this robotic utopia, it was a reminder that major decisions about the direction of technological progress are being taken by a small number of very powerful men – and they are mainly men.In the cosy onstage chat, the World Economic Forum’s interim co-chair, Larry Fink, failed to ask Musk about whichever tweak of internal plumbing allowed his Grok chatbot to produce and broadcast what a New York Times investigation estimated was 1
Google AI Overviews cite YouTube more than any medical site for health queries, study suggests
Google’s search feature AI Overviews cites YouTube more than any medical website when answering queries about health conditions, according to research that raises fresh questions about a tool seen by 2 billion people each month.The company has said its AI summaries, which appear at the top of search results and use generative AI to answer questions from users, are “reliable” and cite reputable medical sources such as the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the Mayo Clinic.However, a study that analysed responses to more than 50,000 health queries, captured using Google searches from Berlin, found the top cited source was YouTube. The video-sharing platform is the world’s second most visited website, after Google itself, and is owned by Google.Researchers at SE Ranking, a search engine optimisation platform, found YouTube made up 4
How the ‘confident authority’ of Google AI Overviews is putting public health at risk
Do I have the flu or Covid? Why do I wake up feeling tired? What is causing the pain in my chest? For more than two decades, typing medical questions into the world’s most popular search engine has served up a list of links to websites with the answers. Google those health queries today and the response will likely be written by artificial intelligence.Sundar Pichai, Google’s chief executive, first set out the company’s plans to enmesh AI into its search engine at its annual conference in Mountain View, California, in May 2024. Starting that month, he said, US users would see a new feature, AI Overviews, which would provide information summaries above traditional search results. The change marked the biggest shake-up of Google’s core product in a quarter of a century
Latest ChatGPT model uses Elon Musk’s Grokipedia as source, tests reveal
The latest model of ChatGPT has begun to cite Elon Musk’s Grokipedia as a source on a wide range of queries, including on Iranian conglomerates and Holocaust deniers, raising concerns about misinformation on the platform.In tests done by the Guardian, GPT-5.2 cited Grokipedia nine times in response to more than a dozen different questions. These included queries on political structures in Iran, such as salaries of the Basij paramilitary force and the ownership of the Mostazafan Foundation, and questions on the biography of Sir Richard Evans, a British historian and expert witness against Holocaust denier David Irving in his libel trial.Grokipedia, launched in October, is an AI-generated online encyclopedia that aims to compete with Wikipedia, and which has been criticised for propagating rightwing narratives on topics including gay marriage and the 6 January insurrection in the US
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