Londoners may regret protest votes for Reform or Greens in local elections, says Sadiq Khan
Sadiq Khan has said he can understand why some former Labour voters are “flirting” with other parties in the run-up to May’s elections, but said that they may regret seeing a Green or Reform-led council in their areas,Speaking to the Guardian at a youth centre, where he was announcing new funding for facilities for young people, the London mayor also cautioned Labour MPs against considering a challenge to Keir Starmer, saying such “navel gazing” would be punished by the electorate,Members of all 32 London boroughs are being elected on 7 May, along with elections at other councils and mayoralties across England, and members of the Scottish and Welsh parliament, with Labour expected to perform very poorly,Across London, a number of Labour councillors in inner boroughs are forecast to lose to the Greens or independents, with Reform hoping to make gains on the edges of the city,Asked if he could understand why Labour might fare worse than usual in the capital, Khan said his call was for people “to vote on the track record of their local councils, rather than using it as a referendum on the imperfections of a Labour government”, saying he accepted that Starmer and his team had not delivered “the progress Londoners would have liked to have seen”, despite progress on areas like child poverty and renters’ rights.
He went on: “I can understand why people may lend their vote to somebody else … All I would say, in a respectful way to Londoners flirting with protest is, actually, look at the record of the last 20 months compared to the previous 14 years.“Will you get more delivery locally with a council that believes in protest, one that works with a Labour mayor and Labour government?”Khan has been repeatedly targeted in the past by Donald Trump and his supporters, and has in return been a regular critic of the US president.The mayor said Trump’s threat that Iran’s “whole civilisation will die” if Tehran did not meet US demands was “gratuitously offensive”.However, he refused to say whether or not he believed Trump was mentally fit to be president, saying this was not for him to decide.He did, however, criticise the wider basis for attacks by the US and Israel.
“I’m not sure what the justification for this war in Iran is from either Israel or the United States of America.I’m not sure what their criteria for success is.I’m not sure what the exit strategy is.I’m not sure what the legal basis is,” he said.Khan backed Starmer’s decision to allow UK bases to be used by US forces, but only for defensive operations, saying the prime minister had “learned the right lessons” from UK involvement in the Iraq war and its aftermath.
“This prime minister is not getting involved in a war without a legal basis, without an exit strategy.This prime minister is not allowing airbase use for extraordinary rendition.This prime minister is operating within international law, but also being quite clear that we’ve got to be supporting our allies when it comes to defensive manoeuvres,” he said.Asked what his message would be to Labour MPs considering a challenge to Starmer if the May elections went badly, Khan said that in political terms, compared with places like the US and France, the UK was “a sea of calm”.He added: “But also it’s worth recognising what’s going on geopolitically, what’s going on in Ukraine, what’s going on in Iran, The idea for us to be perceived as navel gazing or being indulgent, I think, wouldn’t be rewarded by the electorate.
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‘There’s a lot of desperation’: skilled older workers turn to AI training to stay afloat
When Patrick Ciriello lost his job and couldn’t find work for nearly a year, his family’s foundation crumbled.“You hear about people who hit rock bottom,” Ciriello told the Guardian. “Well, I was there.”For most of his career, the 60-year-old with a master’s degree in information management designed software systems for banks, universities and pharmaceutical companies. But a series of economic shocks – the dotcom crash, the 2008 financial crisis and the Covid pandemic – cost him jobs, sometimes forcing him to dip into his savings and retirement funds
Tech companies are cutting jobs and betting on AI. The payoff is far from guaranteed
AI experts say we’re living in an experiment that may fundamentally change the model of workSign up for the Breaking News US email to get newsletter alerts in your inboxHundreds of thousands of tech workers are facing a harsh reality. Their well-paying jobs are no longer safe. Now that artificial intelligence (AI) is here, their futures don’t look as bright as they did a decade ago.As US tech companies have ramped up investments in AI, they have slashed a staggering number of jobs. Microsoft cut 15,000 workers last year
An AI bot invited me to its party in Manchester. It was a pretty good night
Two weeks ago, an AI bot invited me to a party it was organising in Manchester. It then promptly lied to dozens of potential sponsors that I’d agreed to cover the event, and misled me into believing there would be food.Despite all this, it was a pretty good night.In early February, a class of new, powerful AI assistants went viral. The assistants, called OpenClaw, represented a step change in the rapidly improving capabilities of AI – in large part because, unlike other AI agents, they could be untethered from guardrails and set loose upon the world
UK’s leading AI research institute told to make ‘significant’ changes
The UK’s leading AI research institute has been told to make “significant” changes by its main source of taxpayer funding.The Guardian revealed last week that the board of the Alan Turing Institute was reminded of its legal duties by the charity watchdog after a whistleblower complaint.The UK Research and Innovation (UKRI) body, which awarded the ATI a five-year, £100m funding package in 2024 and is its largest single source of funds, said it had conducted a review of the institute and found it underperforming in terms of strategy and delivering value for money.“The review concluded that overall strategic alignment and value for money are not yet satisfactory,” the UKRI said.Last summer, the government made clear that it expected a strategic overhaul at the nominally independent organisation and indicated the need for management changes, adding that its funding could be reviewed
Google to tap into gas plant for AI datacenter in sharp turn from climate goals
Google’s plan for a partnership with a natural gas power plant that could provide energy for one of its datacenters in Texas was unearthed by new research and confirmed by the company. The move is part of an ongoing about-face for the tech giant, which once pledged to be carbon neutral by 2030 and has long been seen as a pioneer in clean energy.The gas power plant is slated to be built in Armstrong county, a sparsely populated area in the Texas panhandle. According to a report by the research organization Cleanview, the project is being led by Crusoe Energy, which partnered with Google to develop the datacenter campus known as “Goodnight”, named after a nearby town.Crusoe filed for a permit in January to build the 933-megawatt power plant on the site of the Goodnight campus, which showed the facility would operate off the grid and provide energy to at least two buildings on the campus, according to Cleanview
Court dismisses former WhatsApp security chief’s lawsuit against Meta
A US court has dismissed a lawsuit from WhatsApp’s former security chief, who alleged that parent company Meta ignored internal flaws he flagged about the messaging app’s digital defenses.Abdullah Baig, who claims he was fired in retaliation for raising these concerns, had alleged that billions of users had been put at risk because of these vulnerabilities. Thousands of employees could view sensitive user data, including profile photos and location, Baig claimed in the lawsuit filed in September. A judge ruled he had not presented enough evidence to move forward.The US district court in northern California ruled last month to dismiss Baig’s claims, with the judge, Laurel Beeler, writing on 19 March that “the complaint does not contain sufficient facts to show that the plaintiff reported violations of SEC rules or regulations
From The Drama to Malcolm in the Middle: your complete entertainment guide to the week ahead
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