During a recent conversation in the House of Lords, a former senior US government official told me that “democracy was broken”. When I asked why, they pointed to research that showed that governments – regardless of party – represent the interests of the wealthy and not the people who vote for them.
Nowhere is this more visible than with the tech lobby, which has effectively thwarted all attempts to hold the sector to account, while at the same time embedding its services into the heart of the state and our personal lives.
Powerful interests, aided by seemingly limitless cash fund thinktanks, pay for friendly research and deploy armies of lawyers, consultants, preferred academics, thinkers and government relations professionals who spin a tale in which technology is both too complicated to regulate easily and too important to refuse. What they want isn’t a world without regulation, but one in which big tech itself writes the rules.
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And while thelobby problem might have started in the US, where most tech firms are based, it has not stayed there.Looking at the past two years of UK tech policy, we can see the results of lobbying in action. In opposition, Labour was at the forefront of efforts to effectively protect children online. It made a commitment to protect creative copyright andworkers whose jobs might be disrupted or displaced by technology. And it wanted to prevent the data held in trust on behalf of the public – including by the NHS – from being treated as a private asset to give away to Silicon Valley.
Every one of these positions was changed once in government. Some argue that this is simply “realpolitik”. Others point to the influence of big tech; as one insider recounted to me,the government was “swaddled” by lobbying, wrapped around it like a blanket from the very beginning.
What the government has given up is our democratic right to set the terms under which we use technology, and with it any semblance of national control over infrastructure and critical services, large swathes of which havebeen handed over to big tech in deals completed with little oversight.
Since the start of 2025, the government has signed multiple MOUs (memorandums of understanding) without scrutiny. It has pledged to discount energy costs for datacentres, largely benefiting American multinationals. It has opened tenders for military satellites to a US company for the first time. And, it has given access to highly sensitive, valuable data – including in health and defence – to US companies such as Palantir, a controversial company with a history of citizen surveillance that has been amassing government data at scale.
The lobbyists frame the debate as one between regulation that will inhibit innovation, or no regulation to bring progress and wealth. But that obscures the real choice,which is between imposing our rules or living under terms of service set by Silicon Valley. If we refuse to do this, then big tech will reap the benefits, while we pay the costs.
The impact of the tech sector on mental health services, the time stolen from education, the displacement of UK businesses, and the destruction of the creative industries allhave economic and social costs. We are choosing between democratic accountability and private power.
Soon we will have a new leader of the Labour party, and the country. For the incoming leadership, it is essential to reject the swaddling and soft promises of the tech lobby. To be a nation is to govern in one’s own interest. To deliver household prosperity (not theoretical growth), we will need control of tech. This meansinvesting in UK-based tech companies, valuing our data as a sovereign asset and understanding that it is inefficient to replace a worker who pays tax and lives and spends in their community with an AI, the profit of which goes largely untaxed to its US owner. Unfortunately, these considerations have not been factored into the decisions made by the government over the past two years.
The safety of our country and our kids, the livelihoods of our creators and the future breakthroughs based on our health datamust be under our democratic control. I have spent the past year talking to businesses, people at the cutting edge of tech, and those who are being hurt and left behind. I believe thatwithout solving this issue, no leader will be truly incontrol of the country.
Pope Leo recently set out in 245 paragraphs his vision for the future of tech. It made for inspiring reading. Our new leaders shouldstart with just three commitments.
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First, an unequivocal commitment that any tech deployed in the UK will respect the privacy, rights and safety of children. Second, an unequivocal commitment to use the precious data of the BBC, NHS and that held by the UK’s innovators, creators and businesses to benefit the UK. And finally, an unequivocal commitment to invest in key parts of the UK infrastructure so that no US company is in a position to exert influence over Britain’s defence or security or our government’sdecisions.
These are the minimum terms of engagement for a new deal – a good deal – with big tech.
