Victory in sight – but other goals still to conquer

With Boris Johnson having jumped before he was pushed by the Privileges Committee, the Conservative Party found itself embroiled in yet further controversy, its vision of mitigating significant General Election losses made all the more foggier. Which was good news for Labour – but only to an extent. Because despite its old foe’s extraordinary implosion, there remains great work for the red rose to do to convince good sections of the population it is a viable alternative to Tory rule beyond it not being the party of Sunak, Truss (and formerly Johnson) et al.

Words by Steven Hugill

4It was hardly tanks in Tiananmen Square. Nor was it New York steelworkers lunching in the heavens, Buzz Aldrin sullying his NASAissued white boots with moon dust or John and Yoko pleading for peace from beneath their bed sheets.

But in its own little way, in its own little part of the world, it made for no less a salient moment in time.

Under harsh yellow leisure centre lights, Conservative Darlington MP Peter Gibson surveyed local election ballots on a whiteclothed trestle table.

The news wasn’t good.

Caught mid-reaction by a member of the local press corps, Gibson was snapped as he instinctively raised his left hand to his head, palm pressed against forehead and fringe, as Tory blue evaporated from the voting colour wheel.

After wresting control of Darlington Borough Council for the first time in 2019 – albeit with independent propping – the shipwright’s son could see draining constituent sentiment had it listing hurriedly towards subsidence.

The image and its meaning, though, extended far beyond the railway town and its interlinking wards, instead feeding into a wider narrative at play across the rest of the North East.

Now, it should be said that forecasting any General Election result through the prism of grassroots political favour comes with no little risk of distortion.

But Darlington’s result, added to other geographies in the south of the region, nevertheless presented some interesting take aways.

As the town shunned Conservative rule, in the process gaining a Labour-dominated coalition with the Liberal Democrats, so too did Middlesbrough’s colours change, with its council walls and mayoral office switching from independent grey to red.

Over in Redcar and Cleveland, Labour again scooped seats as UKIP disappeared, but swayed not enough to secure a majority, while in Stockton, the Tories picked off independent and Liberal Democrat seats to marginally best its old foe.

In snapshot form, they show the usual flux of local politics.

In wider view, though, they represent a country searching for new direction but lacking the necessary compass and coordinates to truly find it.

And don’t expect the pathway to suddenly clear as the months tick towards the next General Election.

Because Labour, despite its positive national polling forecasts, still remains a tough vote for many.

Although the party these days carries more meat on its bones from the carcass left behind by Jeremy Corbyn, it continues to lack sufficient muscle to dominate the fight.

And, as ever, much of its frailty comes from a battle with itself, the fall-out from its decision to omit North of Tyne Mayor Jamie Driscoll from a North East Mayor longlist a recent case in point.

But what of an alternative?

Well, with the roof of Boris Johnson’s circus having finally caved in following one too many trapeze walks and recordbreakingly bad replacement ringmaster Liz Truss spending more time talking to echo chambers like GB News than MPs in the Commons, the Conservatives’ show is limping to a close.

Rishi Sunak might continue to look into the spotlights, encouraging punters beyond to roll up and be part of the latest incarnation of the Tories' grand show, but nobody is really buying it any longer.

No party could survive and spin its way out of the litany of unmitigated disasters dished up over recent years, not even one where a loyal band of MPs and supporters continue to genuflect to their apparently wronged deity.

Yet it’s an unavoidable truth that while Labour will assume power whenever Sunak decides to rip the sticking plasters away and calls an election, you can’t escape the feeling it will do so because it isn’t the Conservative Party.

And for the country’s sake, that won’t be enough.

Succeeding is not Sir Kier being a different face to Boris Johnson, Liz Truss or Rishi Sunak.

Success will be using the platform it will inevitably inherit to demonstrably change the UK - where the cost of living crisis bites ever harder amid rising interest rates - for the better.

Because if it doesn’t, the country will once again find itself with compass in hand, and one fewer direction in which to take.

What of the future?

Technology

When it comes to artificial intelligence, whether you’re reading a newspaper article, scouring the findings of a well-known search engine, chatting between work colleagues or scrolling through the vast reaches of social media, there is always one constant factor – its impending impact on humanity.

From fears around job losses to security and privacy warnings and claims of a potential weapons uprising, artificial intelligence is a story with huge emotive connotations, causing many to already eschew its advances.

But what of its benefits?

Surely, for a technology created to make lives easier, scope must exist to ensure it co-operates and co-exists with society, rather than leaving it cowed?

Those behind its meteoric rise, like ChatGPT mogul Sam Altman, certainly think so, pointing to voluminous potential benefits across sectors such as health and education, and equally seismic impact across wider society as a whole.

Words by Mark Harrison

Scale-up partner at RTC North

Artificial intelligence: will it make us all redundant?

From BT planning to replace a third of 55,000 jobs with computer systems to Prime Minister Rishi Sunak’s advisor Mark Clifford warning it could be potent enough to create weapons and “kill many humans” within two years, artificial intelligence is never long out of the headlines. But are the dangers really so grave? Here, Mark Harrison, scale-up partner at RTC North, looks at the more positive aspects of simulating human intelligence and why, despite much forecasting to the contrary, people will always hold the power.

4Artificial intelligence.

How do we control it? Will it take all our jobs? Will it destroy the atmosphere to rid itself of troublesome humans?

We certainly have to keep a close eye on the effects of something programmed to grow so explosively.

Artificial intelligence only came into the public consciousness in November last year, yet its headline-grabbing status means it is given equal, and many times higher, billing than the Ukrainian war and cost of living crisis.

Earlier this year, Sam Altman, chief executive at OpenAI, addressed the US Senate amid fears from the latter over unregulated artificial intelligence tearing out of control and destroying our lives.

And therein lies a crucial issue.

There is too little time being spent thinking about the possible benefits of artificial intelligence, such as the acceleration of research around cancers and Alzheimer’s disease it could help yield.

If we pull the handbrake and heavily regulate artificial intelligence, you can guarantee the Russians, Chinese, North Koreans and various other states won’t.

We have to go with it and use it where we feel it benefits the greater good.

Progress, however quick, has happened before, and we came out it in a better place.

I grew up in the North East in the 1970s when the mines, steelworks and shipyards were closing down.

It was a hard time, and many of my generation were left behind and didn’t recover.

I chose to leave and seek experience elsewhere, and when I returned ten years ago, the region had been transformed beyond all recognition.

This cycle of decline and renewal of economies has always happened.

Artificial intelligence will only make us all obsolete if we let it.

The development of artificial intelligence and the powerful machine learning models that drive it has limitations; the available processing power and the available electricity to drive the servers it resides on provides an initial buffer to any ‘rise of the machines’.

We humans will always have control.

Much as the fictional, all powerful, humanity exterminating Daleks could be defeated by the humble staircase, if artificial intelligence spins out of control, we have the means to stop it.

Every server needs a humble kettle lead to keep it running, and if things go wrong we can simply pull the plug, which would lead to some kind of lame version of a classic Schwarzenegger flick.

A bigger threat to humanity, in my opinion, is social media and the havoc it continues to wreak on the fabric of society.

It needs regulating, though is probably already at a point where we should shut it down.

The collective sigh of relief heard around the world from doing so would be deafening.