The UN’s International Day for Elimination of Violence Against Women and Girls on 25 November is a time to face reality: the atrocities of Hamas gunmen in on October 7 included the widespread rape of women and girls. With most of the rape victims subsequently murdered, a full account may
The Chancellor struck an optimistic tone on Wednesday as he stood up to address the Commons with his Autumn Statement, proudly stating the country ‘has turned a corner’ and that his plan for the British economy is ‘working’. Sadly, as we heard at our immediate reaction event that evening with
Next year’s general election is likely to centre on domestic issues rather than Russia and its invasion of Ukraine, not least as it is hard so far to see any substantive policy differences with the Conservatives on this issue, beyond a possibly performative demand that the government do more of
Richard Toye’s Age of Hope is the first major study of the post war Attlee government to be published since 1997. It stands alongside the two much earlier classic overviews of this period, Kenneth Morgan’s Labour in Power (1984)and Peter Hennessy’s Never Again (1992), but benefits from a longer and equally
The shiny facade of the recent ‘global AI safety summit’ doesn’t offset the government’s serious lack of ambition on ‘safety and ethics’ in the UK. This broad ambition to lead the diplomatic effort on AI, is honourable in its own right. Dystopian depictions of our future, envision AI attacking our
It is hard to look at world events today and feel hopeful. Russia’s war against Ukraine and the Hamas orgy of violence on October 7th (again) bring to mind Irish poet WB Yeats’ words from 1919’s The Second Coming: Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold; Mere anarchy is loosed
Barnet, where I am a councillor, is one of the most diverse boroughs in the country, including being home to the largest number of Jewish people of any local authority in the country . On 7th October when the horrific terrorist incursion into Israel by Hamas occurred, we were braced
Rishi Sunak wants to put the UK on the world stage with his AI Summit this week, but there remains a crucial missing ingredient from the government’s script: workers. And it is not a new omission. The government has chosen to make the summit about existential risks and global standards.
Ignoring the hype about Elon Musk’s attendance, this week’s AI safety summit is serious business. It marks the first significant diplomatic interventions on AI, and therefore is likely to frame globally how the world’s governments might respond to this technology. There have been some welcome but tentative government interventions so
“The debate about how we get to Net Zero has thrown up a range of worrying proposals and today I want to confirm that under this government, they’ll never happen.” Rishi Sunak’s speech in September marked a break from over a decade of political consensus on the importance of Net
