Andy Burnham is about to become Prime Minister. His ambition has never been a secret. Unlike generations of politicians who insisted that leadership had somehow found them, Burnham has openly wanted the job. In another era, that kind of ambition might have been regarded as slightly distasteful. In 2026, it feels almost refreshing. That may be one of the defining political lessons of the past decade. We have entered an era in which voters appear less concerned with whether pol

Whether taking in the news, one’s social media feed, using a software or just holding a conversation, artificial intelligence is now nigh on inescapable. At a social event I recently attended, someone even casually offered me use of their Meta Glasses, its integrated AI feature able to translate the foreign language being spoken at the event. Like most people in the UK, I am suspicious of the promises of AI, particularly of the large US firms driving the so-called AI bubble

It's time to stop thinking about the climate crisis as a problem for the future. If the past week of stifling temperatures in the United Kingdom has shown us anything, it is that global warming is a visceral, present reality. Yet at this very moment, when the effects of climate change are so tangible year on year, political discussion skirts around the issue. Squabbles over North Sea oil have dominated the conversation recently, despite experts having made it clear that arou

It is somewhat rare for an election to proffer signs that are simultaneously encouraging yet brutal for a party in British politics, but the Makerfield by-election proved just that for Reform UK. The result, while confirming that the party has decisively supplanted the Conservatives as the premier force on the British right, nevertheless exposed the possibility that Reform’s rise has itself birthed a coalition capable of stopping it. The encouragement is obvious; Reform amass

“We tend to overestimate the effect of a technology in the short run and underestimate the effect in the long run.” – Roy Amara, Stanford computer scientist. Dotcom, housing, crypto, and now, AI. The Fastest Scaling in History An asset bubble is a period where the price of an asset skyrockets beyond its intrinsic value before violently crashing. They have plagued economies for centuries. The artificial intelligence industry has experienced what is considered the fastest techn