Lewis Ormston is a chartered accountant, further education governor, and former local election candidate
AI is reshaping society at exponential speed. Its potential to transform public services, business, education, energy, and healthcare as we know it is beyond any current comprehension. Society in five, ten and fifteen years is going to look fundamentally different to today – and the countries that understand the scale of that opportunity now are the ones that will lead it.
The global race is already underway. The United States is driving frontier model innovation out of Silicon Valley. The UAE is building infrastructure at pace. India is leveraging its engineering talent pool, and China is investing at a scale that should alarm any serious Western government. The UK sees itself as a competitor in that race, and rightly so – we have world-class universities, deep tech expertise, and a track record of scientific innovation. We’ve proven ourselves before, from the invention of the World Wide Web to the founding of DeepMind. But seeing yourself in the race and competing in it are two very different things.
Labour’s record in office is now well established – big promises today, followed by policy contradictions tomorrow. They promised growth, yet raised taxes. They won over business, then burdened it. On AI – the defining economic opportunity of this decade – they are doing it again.
The contradictions are everywhere. Labour want to fuel AI investment through their £500m Sovereign AI venture capital fund, yet that figure is pocket change compared to what private-sector AI innovation burns through on the daily. They want to fund research through the Fundamental AI Research Lab to transform public services, yet have committed just £6m a year to do it.
Labour also want to attract inward investment in data centres, yet oversee energy prices that make the UK one of the most expensive places in the developed world to run one. We’ve already seen the consequences of this. In April this year, OpenAI paused its UK Stargate data centre project – a multi-billion pound scheme that had been announced just months earlier as proof that the UK was open for AI business – over UK industrial energy costs and a regulatory environment too uncertain to justify the risk. If one of the world’s most valuable AI companies can’t take a chance on the UK, who can?
And even when British AI companies do succeed, we are struggling to keep them on British soil. ARM – Britain’s biggest tech success story, worth over $100bn – is listed on Nasdaq, not the LSE. That listing happened under our watch, and it should sting. But the lesson has gone unlearned, and the situation is worsening under the current government. London IPO fundraising fell to its lowest level in thirty years in the first half of 2025. We are building world-class companies, then watching them leave. Countries that are serious about AI don’t let that happen.
None of this is an accident. Labour are looking at AI in silos. One policy on investment. Another on energy. Another on listings regulation. There’s no coherence, no thread connecting them. That incoherence reflects a government that is structurally incapable of seizing the opportunity.
Business needs certainty. It needs a regulatory environment that enables it to plan, invest, and grow. When the government can’t provide that, businesses move to where there’s opportunity, and that’s what’s happening.
The Conservative Party has both the opportunity and responsibility to offer a serious pro-business and pro-innovation alternative – and to be ready to take it into government as early as 2029. That means building a coherent AI strategy – one that joins up the policies Labour keep developing in isolation.
On investment, that means working in genuine partnership with the private sector to unlock serious capital – not offering headline figures that can’t fund the actual cost of AI development. The private sector has the appetite. The government’s job is to create the conditions, yet at the moment, it’s launching underfunded schemes that barely make a difference.
On infrastructure and energy, Labour have already designated data centres as Critical National Infrastructure back in 2024, and a fast-track planning route exists on paper. But that label doesn’t lower energy prices or shorten the grid connection queue. What’s needed is prioritised grid connections, planning consent that delivers at speed, and zero VAT on electricity for qualifying AI and tech facilities. These changes would directly address the cost barrier that caused OpenAI to walk away earlier this year.
On listings, we should go further than current FCA reforms to make the UK a genuinely competitive destination for high-growth British tech companies – so that the next ARM stays here, rather than heading to New York. Britain should be the place where AI companies want to start, scale, and list. Right now, we’re falling at the final hurdle.
None of these are radical ideas. They’re basic conditions that any economy with ambitions to become an AI superpower requires. Getting these foundations right may not be groundbreaking, but it will determine whether UK talent gets to do what it does best on the global stage, or whether we spend the next decade watching from the sidelines, as others build the future we could have led.
The ambition is there. The question is whether those in charge are capable of executing it. On current evidence, they are not.
Lewis Ormston is a chartered accountant, further education governor, and former local election candidate
AI is reshaping society at exponential speed. Its potential to transform public services, business, education, energy, and healthcare as we know it is beyond any current comprehension. Society in five, ten and fifteen years is going to look fundamentally different to today – and the countries that understand the scale of that opportunity now are the ones that will lead it.
The global race is already underway. The United States is driving frontier model innovation out of Silicon Valley. The UAE is building infrastructure at pace. India is leveraging its engineering talent pool, and China is investing at a scale that should alarm any serious Western government. The UK sees itself as a competitor in that race, and rightly so – we have world-class universities, deep tech expertise, and a track record of scientific innovation. We’ve proven ourselves before, from the invention of the World Wide Web to the founding of DeepMind. But seeing yourself in the race and competing in it are two very different things.
Labour’s record in office is now well established – big promises today, followed by policy contradictions tomorrow. They promised growth, yet raised taxes. They won over business, then burdened it. On AI – the defining economic opportunity of this decade – they are doing it again.
The contradictions are everywhere. Labour want to fuel AI investment through their £500m Sovereign AI venture capital fund, yet that figure is pocket change compared to what private-sector AI innovation burns through on the daily. They want to fund research through the Fundamental AI Research Lab to transform public services, yet have committed just £6m a year to do it.
Labour also want to attract inward investment in data centres, yet oversee energy prices that make the UK one of the most expensive places in the developed world to run one. We’ve already seen the consequences of this. In April this year, OpenAI paused its UK Stargate data centre project – a multi-billion pound scheme that had been announced just months earlier as proof that the UK was open for AI business – over UK industrial energy costs and a regulatory environment too uncertain to justify the risk. If one of the world’s most valuable AI companies can’t take a chance on the UK, who can?
And even when British AI companies do succeed, we are struggling to keep them on British soil. ARM – Britain’s biggest tech success story, worth over $100bn – is listed on Nasdaq, not the LSE. That listing happened under our watch, and it should sting. But the lesson has gone unlearned, and the situation is worsening under the current government. London IPO fundraising fell to its lowest level in thirty years in the first half of 2025. We are building world-class companies, then watching them leave. Countries that are serious about AI don’t let that happen.
None of this is an accident. Labour are looking at AI in silos. One policy on investment. Another on energy. Another on listings regulation. There’s no coherence, no thread connecting them. That incoherence reflects a government that is structurally incapable of seizing the opportunity.
Business needs certainty. It needs a regulatory environment that enables it to plan, invest, and grow. When the government can’t provide that, businesses move to where there’s opportunity, and that’s what’s happening.
The Conservative Party has both the opportunity and responsibility to offer a serious pro-business and pro-innovation alternative – and to be ready to take it into government as early as 2029. That means building a coherent AI strategy – one that joins up the policies Labour keep developing in isolation.
On investment, that means working in genuine partnership with the private sector to unlock serious capital – not offering headline figures that can’t fund the actual cost of AI development. The private sector has the appetite. The government’s job is to create the conditions, yet at the moment, it’s launching underfunded schemes that barely make a difference.
On infrastructure and energy, Labour have already designated data centres as Critical National Infrastructure back in 2024, and a fast-track planning route exists on paper. But that label doesn’t lower energy prices or shorten the grid connection queue. What’s needed is prioritised grid connections, planning consent that delivers at speed, and zero VAT on electricity for qualifying AI and tech facilities. These changes would directly address the cost barrier that caused OpenAI to walk away earlier this year.
On listings, we should go further than current FCA reforms to make the UK a genuinely competitive destination for high-growth British tech companies – so that the next ARM stays here, rather than heading to New York. Britain should be the place where AI companies want to start, scale, and list. Right now, we’re falling at the final hurdle.
None of these are radical ideas. They’re basic conditions that any economy with ambitions to become an AI superpower requires. Getting these foundations right may not be groundbreaking, but it will determine whether UK talent gets to do what it does best on the global stage, or whether we spend the next decade watching from the sidelines, as others build the future we could have led.
The ambition is there. The question is whether those in charge are capable of executing it. On current evidence, they are not.