Andy Burnham thinks the UK’s big tech romance is over: report
Key Points
- Burnham's team is drafting a new UK AI strategy that pivots away from US tech giants toward British firms and workers, the FT reported.
- Advisers called the current government's courting of Silicon Valley a "geopolitical failure" that alienated voters.
- Tech sovereignty is central, sharpened by Washington's shock export controls on Anthropic that briefly pulled its models worldwide.
- Ideas under discussion include limits on foreign ownership of data centres, reskilling guarantees and a more muscular CMA.
- Whitehall officials are already planning for a Burnham government — and are "terrified" of his devolution agenda.
For the past two years, British AI policy has rested on a simple bet: make the UK the most attractive place in Europe for American technology companies to spend money, and prosperity will follow.
Incoming Prime Minister Andy Burnham and his team appear to have concluded the bet has failed, and they intend to tear it up.
Advisers to the Labour leadership frontrunner are drafting a new technology and AI strategy that would pivot away from what they describe as a US-centric model championed by former Washington ambassador Peter Mandelson, and instead prioritise British companies and workers, the Financial Times reported.
Key figures around Burnham, including former Tech Minister Josh Simons, have drafted in AI sector researchers Antonio Weiss and Martha Dacombe to help shape the plan, according to people briefed on the discussions.
Unfettered tech boosterism is a vote-loser,” one person involved in the discussions told the FT, arguing that the government’s pursuit of US tech investment had been a “geopolitical failure that hasn’t delivered on its intended aims” and had put Labour “at odds with its voters and the vast majority of the British public”.
The Anthropic wake-up call
In June 2026, the US government imposed export controls on the AI company Anthropic, prompting the firm to pull its powerful Mythos and Fable models from users worldwide – including British businesses and government departments that had built workflows on top of them.
The controls have since been lifted, but the episode demonstrated, in the starkest possible terms, that the UK’s access to frontier AI exists at the pleasure of decision-makers in Washington.
It is a direct challenge to the deal-making of the past two years. US tech companies had pledged billions in UK investment, including £22 billion from Microsoft and £5 billion from Google, largely to expand their data centre networks, as part of a technology pact brokered by Mandelson.
Washington suspended that deal late in 2025 amid frustrations over wider trade talks, leaving the UK with the political costs of the courtship and few of the promised returns.
The emerging strategy is organised around a phrase Burnham’s team has been testing: “making tech work for people”. In practice, that means several things.
Workers at risk of displacement by AI would get access to retraining. The Competition and Markets Authority could be handed greater political licence to tackle concentration of power in digital markets.
And the current government’s “AI Growth Zones” – sites created to fast-track AI-enabled data centre development – are likely to face evaluation to ensure they deliver for the communities that host them.
Even the government’s flagship consumer-facing AI project is in the crosshairs. Burnham’s advisers questioned the headlong pursuit of driverless cars in London, asking “what’s the point and who’s it for?”
The king in the north
The centrepiece of Burnham’s plan is instead a structural one. This week he launched the idea of a Number 10 in the north, an extended operation based in Manchester, which he called “the nerve centre of a rewired Britain” and promised that “the days of Whitehall fighting the devolution power into the regions and nations are over for good”.
Crucially, he framed it as a national redistribution rather than a northern land-grab. “It will only be based here,” he said. “The job of No 10 North will be to make power flow into the Midlands, into the South West, into the East of England, and yes, into London.”
Attached to it is a 10-year economic mission, which tells you Burnham is planning for two terms, not one. He set out a decade-long plan to raise living standards through reindustrialisation, housing, infrastructure and reform of essential utilities, with the ambition of “good growth in every postcode”.
