The Rest Is Politics: Leading - 125. Peter Kyle: AI, grief, and the power of Elon Musk

Episode Date: March 17, 2025

5 consecutive UK Prime Ministers have declared that the UK will become an AI Superpower, why is Keir Starmer any different? Why does no one have ‘big ideas’ anymore? And, how did Peter Kyle’s experience of grief shape the politician he is today?  Rory and Alastair are joined by Peter Kyle, the Secretary of State for Science, Innovation and Technology, to discuss all this and more.  TRIP Plus: Become a member of The Rest Is Politics Plus to support the podcast, receive our exclusive newsletter, enjoy ad-free listening to both TRIP and Leading, benefit from discount book prices on titles mentioned on the pod, join our Discord chatroom, and receive early access to live show tickets and Question Time episodes. Just head to therestispolitics.com to sign up, or start a free trial today on Apple Podcasts: apple.co/therestispolitics. Instagram: @restispolitics  Twitter: @RestIsPolitics  Email: [e-mail] Video Editor: Josh Smith  Assistant Producer: Alice Horrell Social Producer: Jess Kidson Producer: Nicole Maslen Senior Producer: Dom Johnson Head of Content: Tom Whiter Exec Producers: Tony Pastor + Jack Davenport Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Thanks for listening to The Restis Politics. Sign up to the Restis Politics Plus. To enjoy ad-free listening, receive a weekly newsletter, join our members chat room and gain early access to live show tickets. Just go to therestispolities.com. That's the restispolities.com. Welcome to the Restless Politics leading with me, Roy Stewart. And with me, Alice Campbell. And we've got a member of His Majesty's Cabinet, Peter Kyle, who is the Secretary of State for all things, tech and science and innovation. And Peter is, something we talk about on the podcast quite a lot, actually. and you've got a lot to live up to because I know you'd listen. We'd say very nice things about it.

You said, it'd better be good. I'm only here because you haven't mentioned me for a few weeks, and I thought I'd just turn up. Sorry, yeah. So Peter is a Labour MP down south. His background is in, as an aid worker, working for charities, working pretty much in the public sector. A lot of his life after that.

He became an MP in 2015, rising star, we call them, and has now risen to the level of the cabinet. and I think he's seen as one of the hopes for the future. But has also got some really interesting insights in relation to his current job, because AI that we keep hearing about, that is part of his brief. And also very interesting childhood, interesting past, and lots of interesting things in his background. So thank you for being here.

Thanks for having me. Peter, thank you. Can you begin by, it's a terrible question to ask a politician because often get a pretty plastic answer. But can you give us a bit of a sense of your childhood and who you are and what you were like growing up? I had a great childhood. I came from a very loving family.

It's a very, very socially mobile. My dad left school when he was 14. Grew up in poverty in Liverpool. He left school 14 to become an apprentice stonemason to his dad. His grandfather was also an apprentice stone mason to his dad. So you get a sense of the family life there. Dynasty. And he well, kind of.

Peter, I'm interrupting here for a second. Just tell us a little bit about what being a stone mason means. What kind of stone mason? Well, my grandfather, who only met a few times, he was working on Liverpool Cathedral. My dad had, you know, five, six, seven people living, you know, sleeping in the room that he was sleeping in. It's what he called a slum. It was something that impacted him his entire life. At 16, straight away, as soon as he could, he joined the Navy. And he said for him, it was either Stone Mason or Navy. going forward so he chose the navy he credits the drive the discipline he credits so much for that experience came out in his mid

to late 20s became a daughter-door salesman for Pilkton Glass then moved south which is I've got this accent than his accent when I was going for a little bit of Liverpool no I haven't got any no no no no I was in Liverpool yesterday Steve Rotherham and you know

I'd said that to him but it killed me but my dad rang me when I was going for selection in 2013 in Hove and dad rang me and said, I bet this is the only time in your life you've ever wanted my accent, you know, because in the Labour Party it fetishises his accent so badly. Unless they belong to Hatton than those guys. Yeah. So then he moved south and worked his way up from being salesman for a glass company to owning the company. And the same journey was going through our life. You know, that poor, I was born when he was at the start of that journey down south.

And every couple of years we were moving home. I was born into a home where it was a terrace house by the dump outside Bogner Regis, by the main. road with a dump the other side. A couple of years later, which was the first time I remember, it was the end of a terrace, and you had this sort of garage block that you could learn to ride bikes in. A few years after that, a new build estate. And then when I was 12, onto a leafy estate where Dad lived until he died last year. So it was very upwardly mobile, very, very, very driven.

I've never met anyone to this day in all the jobs I've done that worked as hard as Dad did. and I think that I have inherited his work ethic, sort of the working class work ethic that he had, but also the middle class sensibilities that he gave me through the journey that he took our family on. Rory loves a good working class backstory for Labour politicians. He doesn't quite hit Angela Rainer levels, does he, Rory? And I don't have claimed to. No. And where does Stone Mason and Toolmaker fit in the Labour working class lexicon?

I'm proud of everything that Dad did. the journey that I went on that he left for me is inconceivable. And he, after I won, he didn't think I'd win the election. Nobody did in 2013, in 2015. And that week after the election, we were walking down my street. And there was Peter Kyle posters in all of the windows down my street. And Dad, he couldn't stop looking at them. And he just said, isn't it just weird? And I just said, if you look at the posters, you'll see that Peter is written quite small. And Kyle is in massive letters. I said, that's your name. I said, that's our name. I said, and this is what we have done as a family. And he was in floods of tears. And I probably only saw him cry twice in my whole life. So it's a very big thing that we went through. And that was because of his journey. My mum also, I was actually much closer to in many, many ways because she was around more.

And I was very affectionate with mum. And she was very, very loving. It was a nice childhood. I know what you probably want to get to and start talking to about some of the challenges that I had in life. But I never want to take away from the fact that I was a very, actually at its core was a pretty sort of what people would appreciate as a standard family life. One of the lovely stories here is parents who navigated having a child that was very different to them. I guess you made very different choices in your life.

You will have been different in terms of your academic path, in terms of your commitment to public service. So to talk to us a little bit about what it was like for your parents having a child who I guess, wasn't exactly like them and what kind of space they gave you to be who you are. I think actually, Dad in particular, found it really difficult. Me and Dad were really close growing up. I absolutely idolized him. Then I started to take different journeys when I worked at the Body Shop.

You know, Dad was proud of the very traditional approach you had to business and becoming a business person and a successful one. And what did I do at 18? I ended up working at the Body Shop's head office. This is in 1989 when the Body Shop was going Stella and Anita Roddick was breaking every rule. I mean, he hated it. You know, and there was me coming back with having drunk the Kool-Aid and just talking about the campaigning, the environmental campaigning and all that sort of stuff, doing campaigning and making money. He hated it. Then I went to university, but as soon as I think

I, I think for somebody who is self-made, having reflected on this so much, because my relationship wasn't great with Dad for a long time. And I think that was really proud of me. But as soon as I stepped outside of his life's experience, I think he found it difficult being the dad. he wanted it to be, which was to be guiding. I think looking back, he probably really wanted me to go into his business and actually carry on his business so that he could have carried on mentoring me and caring for me and being part of my sort of development into the future. And I only really recognise that now.

When I ended up doing a doctorate, we barely spoke. You know, we spoke in sort of platitudinous ways for years. Because that was just outside his... Whenever I mentioned it, he would end the call straight away. You can imagine at the time it was incredibly hurtful, very hurtful. And what about being gay? Did that, how did you do with that? So I came out in my sort of mid to late 20s, and I'd never sort of ignored it.

I never really had a secret life. I'd never really wanted to be with anyone. And I'd been an aid worker. I'd done things that just because I had a difficult educational pathway, I just wanted to throw myself into really overwhelming and challenging environments. And I loved that. But as soon as I went to a university and I wanted to be with someone, then I started to think who I was. And I just thought, oh, God, it's going to be with a man, isn't it?

And it wasn't, I didn't have this sort of moment where rainbows are coming at my ears and it was this big thing. So I went to a tutor that I absolutely loved. He was brilliant. And I said to him, can I ask you advice? You've got three kids. How would you like to be told by one of them that they're gay? And he went, oh, come back tomorrow and I'll tell you and I'll think about it. He said, but just, and I was walking out and door, he goes, but don't do it by phone.

I don't think I'd like it being done by phone. And I went back home and I thought, well, I know now. And now I feel I'm hiding something. This is like day one. I feel like I'm hiding something. Dad was in New York. My mum, by the end, they had a horrible divorce, and my mum was living in Devon.

And my brother lived down the road. I thought, this is ridiculous. So I rang them all up one after another and just told them I was gay. So you went against what the tutor told you. Yeah, yeah. So I went in the next day, and he said, look, I've thought about this.

I said, it's too late. I rang him up and told them. How did they take it? The thing that a straight person will never understand is that it is an appalling thing you have to do is to sort of tell someone, something so deep and personal, which is also about emotion. It's about sex and sex life, which is, because immediately, you know, it's connected to that. And no one actually has to do that.

But for someone who's pretty good at getting conversations to where they need to be, there is no natural organic arc for a conversation where you ring a family member and say, how are you doing? Great. Thanks. Did you see it on TV? And then suddenly you've got to get it to you saying, I'm gay. You can't do it. So I kept Dad on the phone for 45 minutes and he was desperate to get off the phone for about half an hour of that 45 minutes. And then he said, I've got to go. I've just got to go. And I said, Dad, I'm just ringing to say I'm gay. And then there's just this long silence.

And he said, what did you just say? And I just said, this whole conversation is about me telling you that I'm gay. And he sort of, he said, oh, okay, all right, no problem. We'll speak later. And then he sort of like, he kind of hung up, but he wasn't in a bad way. And then later on that evening he called back and we decided to. conversation about it and he just said all the things you would love to hear from a dad. He was great. Mum wasn't so good. She struggled with it and she didn't use the right words. She didn't do it in a way

that, you know, the cue word. No, it wasn't a key word. It was, it was, there was lots of things. Okay. There was lots of things. And by then I'd had a, my relationship with mom was shattered because of the way that the separation. She ran off with your dad's best friend. Yeah. And that was when I was, when I was a teenager. And that was, it was, it was, it was, just awful because I was very very very close. Was that the other time your dad cried? No, that was rage. That was rage.

I don't remember tears in that period and that was appalling. Very, very hurtful and felt very, very personal for me. Did you ever make it out with you, mum? I did, but that was when I got a boyfriend who you were probably going to want to mention as well. And as soon as...

I love the way you know what we're going to talk about. The thing is you have such a reputation of subtlety, Alistair, that I never know where are you going to go. You're so unpredictable, that's your problem. So as soon as mum saw me and I was in love, everything just melted away. And I learned a lot about parents and families in that moment because she'd spoken a lot about being gay

and come up in conversation. She'd said, at one point, I was just really worried you were going to turn into one of them. And, of course, we were getting on well that day and suddenly you just sort of implode. And I just said, well, for every one of them, I think I know what you're talking about. You see in the street. Don't you think there's hundreds that you don't know about?

And all that sort of stuff. It was very difficult. She came from a very different background and had different experiences in life. So I'm not going to judge anyone that takes things to go on a journey. So anyway, I took Vlas down. So that was your partner. A while after we started seeing each other. And it was the weirdest thing.

Within probably 10 seconds, mum had just melted. Her face, her body expressions, her everything because she saw in her own two eyes that her son was in love with someone. And at the end of the day, what parents want is their kids to be happy. And all the prejudicial misconceptions she might have had just disappeared in a heartbeat. And suddenly she was inviting friends around to meet me and him. And that hadn't happened before. And in terms of her relationship, I'll just say it was very, very difficult.

Vlas was a very, very, very family-oriented person. And incredibly, you know, a lot of his warmth, which he had in abundance, came from his family life that he just loved and he hated the fact that I was estranged from mum and was so angry towards her and he would I didn't know this for a long time but he was calling her all the

time and he was bringing the relationship together in his way and but we only spoke about the separation the about 10 days two weeks before she died at the hospital bed when I was sitting next to her and she was asleep and she woke up and saw me there and just said

you know everything I did, I know it hurt you most. But I hope you know I've always loved you. And then I came back to her and said, all the anger that I have and through it, I hope you've always known I loved you and she did I do.

It's all we needed to do. For all the stuff I wanted to talk to her about and tried talking to her about, that was it. It was an incredibly powerful moment. Peter, will you tell us a little bit about Vlas and tell us a little bit about what happened there? I'll tell you about Vlas.

I'll tell you about after I lost Flass, what I won't do is talk about the moment that I actually did lose him because I did one interview about that. And it was a very, very, very difficult thing to do. And it took five months of discussion with Alice Thompson in the run up to doing it. And I thought I will, I think people deserve to know about what makes politicians who they are. And I'll do it once and get it out there. But Vlas was from Czech Republic, grew up in a very conservative Catholic part of Bohemia, and was just very straightforward. He was the same person in every situation. I mean, not a scintilla of mediation or fitting into it. He was just the person he was. And sometimes that's brilliant. At the time, sometimes it was embarrassing because he would just blurt stuff out in different situations.

And I feel some shame that I felt embarrassed to start with. but his overriding characteristic was warmth. He always saw the best in everyone. He was fun to be around and was just like a warm emotional blanket in any room that he was in. And unbelievably loving, unbelievably just straightforward. And in many ways, I had some of those characteristics with mum when I look back. And, you know, like every relationship, particularly someone like me that was coming into relationships for the first time. There was no very, very, very few arguments, but we, we sort of came to together very,

very closely. We moved apart over the years, but we were together for almost eight years. And then, you know, I got the phone call very early one day, like 5.30 to say that he had died. And then there was a lot of stuff that happened afterwards because of police investigation and all the sort of horrors that go with that kind of thing. And your life just literally implodes. I am someone who's been an aid worker, I'm naturally quite resilient. You know, I've always had very, very robust mental health. So even when it happened, I was completely surprised at just how devastating it was to my brain,

to my sort of emotional life, the fact that my hands were just tremoring the whole time, that I had lost complete control of my emotions. So I'd be walking down a street for weeks and weeks anywhere, any situation, and suddenly shaking with tears and so forth. So I was really surprised at just how devastating it was. It gets into that kind of grief and gets into every part of your body. And that's the bit I will talk about

because I think we don't talk about grief in this country very, much and thanks to you and others you talk about mental health. But I think that the recovery and resilience building that comes from those experiences is something that I would be comfortable talking about. But the actual events and so forth is something which, you know, I managed to talk about once and that's it. That's it. Yeah. When you talked about this grief being kind of overwhelming, how long does that go on for? And how different was it to when you lost your parents? Oh, very different.

I think all grief is different. I don't think there's probably in the whole history of humanity been two people who grieve in exactly the same ways and have the same impact. But the funny thing is I could feel it happening. When the police officer

called me, it was like I had shards of glass going into my brain and then just, because bits of my brain weren't talking to each other anymore. And you know when somebody says something, does something, you've got to do something, like, you know, even turn a shower on. You're not coordinated in the same way.

Nothing is working in the way that it should. Nothing. Your thoughts don't complete. Your thought process takes you to different places. Everything is dysfunctional. It says that psychosis to me. Well, I wouldn't know, but maybe it is. Maybe it was for me.

But I could feel everything just pulling apart and fracturing. I could feel it happening and I knew that it was happening. In terms of how long it was, I knew in that very first day that I would need help. I knew that I wouldn't recover from that. alone in the very first day that that happened and in that day you are barreled into all sorts of difficult moments you have to do some formal things and and the like and you just a zombie I went back to my best friend was waiting for me he had lost his wife and he'd be married for 18 months and she was 32

six months earlier he was waiting for me and took me back to his home and you know he just said you're shaking, you know, and my head was twitching and everything. It was, it was just unbelievable, you know, just how far, you know, I sank. So I had a very good friend who is a consultant in A&E, Allie. We were aid workers together back in the day. I spoke to her, and we had a conversation about lots of different things, and then she said, what can I do?

And I said, you can find me a grief counsellor. She called back a couple days later and said, could you speak to Diana? here's the number when you're ready and I did but of course before you get there as well six days later my mum died that was very different

mum's in my arms and her husband's arms when she died and I went straight out to the car park after mum had left us and rang Diana and just said I'm Peter Kyle and then just absolutely just started

sobbing, sobbing, sobbing a couple of days later I went to see her for the first time and I sat in front of her and she said, the very first thing she said to me was, what I'm going to say now is it's going to make you really angry. Because the whole point of what we're doing is we are going to get you back to a place and it'll be a very different place that you were in before because life will never be the same again. But it doesn't mean that you can't build

something back. And the whole purpose of building back is so you can fall in love again because you've had it, you can have it again. And that is what we're going to get back to. and she was very practical. She, you know, week after week, you know, and some weeks I couldn't talk. I couldn't say a word. But, you know, twice a week to start with, then once a week and, you know, slowly, slowly. And secondly, a personal trainer, I know it sounds middle class, but physical and emotional. And Pete, my trainer and Diane, I wouldn't be able to do what I do now without them.

Peter, thank you for being so honest and open. And listeners who want to learn more about the story. and Vlas being killed and many other things can read it in that interview that you gave at the times. One of the things, of course, that echoes with what you're saying is that you've now put yourself into public life. And there is a sense of real, I hope this transition works, real grief and anxiety about what's happening to the world order. I mean, we feel like we're in a very, very uncertain time. People are mourning all these things we took for granted over the last 80 years. about democratic values, about the far right in Europe, about NATO, about the international alliance.

And I guess one of the things I want to get you on to is how do you get that balance between realism about just what a crisis the world is facing and just what a big lift Europe now has balanced against the sense of hope and optimism and coming through it? The world is always changing, and every generation where there is a generational shift and there is one now is really challenging. I mean, people accept change, but find, they know that change is happening, but people normally find change quite difficult because you have to wake up thinking, acting, doing things differently

than you did the day before, so it's unsettling. For me in this job, and, you know, I think being part of this government, you have to understand, or for me to get through days, not just in this issue, but lots of different issues. You have to understand where you have agency, and how you can use that agency wisely, but not get overwhelmed by the things that you can't have an impact in. If you can focus on the things where you can,

then you can really find ways to absolutely maximize what you can do. Now, I think if you look at the way that Keir and this government has acted in really difficult circumstances on a whole range of different things, I hope that puts into perspective what we are trying to do, because every day around the world at the moment, there are very big things happening, sometimes very disruptive, and we are constantly asked to commentate on everything. What we're seeing here is this real determination to make an impact where we can and to make that

impact positive and deliver as much positive change as we can with Britain, in a post-Brexit, in a world where the polar sort of relationships or polar areas are just... shifting in ways that are so rapid and so profound. And we don't yet know, because these are very new forces in historic terms, we don't know where all of it is going. And that's where I think, you know, everyone who comes to us speaks uncertainties about the Trump administration will mean this and, you know, Putin will do that. You know, we know from history is how things will play out to a degree.

But actually, these are quite unpredictable times and we have to use the agency that we have very, very smartly on behalf of the British people right now. And I think people listening will already have sensed that you're somebody who's pretty open and pretty emotionally intelligent and empathetic. And you triggered me there because you mentioned Brexit. And I'd managed to get through the whole interview without even getting there, Peter. How can I put this? I know what you think about Brexit and I know how much of a thing you think,

how bad it was for the country and so forth. But if Roy and I started to talk to you about Brexit now, we know there is a government line and you have to stick to it. it and as you were saying before we started I was very much always in favour of the being government line and you stick to it right? Understatement of the century there I'm

not wet, I'm not wet, I'm not wet, I'm just a bit more really things I'm getting very left-wing, I don't know what I'm becoming but I'm definitely not wet. It's just becoming wet. What do you've been wet? Oh honestly, I do listen to the show and? Oh come on, let's not go there, come on, go back to break here. I'm sorry, you cannot call me wet. Am I right, Peter, that he's getting

more and more left wing. No, I don't think he's getting more left wing. I think he's just getting more, I don't know, there's no sort of cause that he doesn't think government should just adopt and make number one. That's absolute bullshit. It's not. You get a campaigning email and suddenly it's like that should be number one priority for the whole

government and we should put taxes up to pay for it and make the education department, the sport department. I mean, I do listen. Sorry, that's been my position for 25 years. Yeah, that's because you read it in an email from, from something. I know the emails existed when I first advocated

sport be part of education. Anyway, shut up. Oh, he's back. This is the alley I remember. We woken him up. Let me carry on. But how do you feel

when you know that people like me are watching you and I know that you are delivering a line that you have to deliver because that's the government line. But actually, if you were a totally free agent, you probably say something very different. There's very, very, very few times that I have had to deliver a line that I would disagree with more than a couple of degrees.

So take the Brexit, your example, which triggers you, and it's a very triggering subject for a lot of people. And this is a good example of it. I put my heart and soul into that campaign, and it was emotional as well as philosophical and practical. But I grieved for leaving the EU the day that we lost the 2019 election, because that was the day we lost agency. That hung parliament became a landslide parliament against us. And there was nothing I could do anymore. And I grieved for what the Labour Party had done by absenting itself from where the country needed us to be. I lost all hope of being able to steer towards a better deal, a better outcome, whatever.

So when we actually left in January, you know, like two months later, I felt nothing. Because I literally felt nothing. Because at that point, I'd grieve because it was inevitable. And all I was thinking is what is next and what comes next. At that moment, the whole political landscape changed. And I think as someone who is of my politics, you have to live in the moment facing forward. Even if you're two weeks behind trying to catch up for two weeks and then face the, forward, then you're not where the public needed to be. So the landscape changed and I changed

with it, taking my values and principles with me, applying it to the new landscape we're on. And I think the same approach happens in government. And I know there's other issues that we'll talk about that with difficult things we've had to do. But that is what how I approach these issues. So when I talk about Brexit now and, you know, Britain and the EU and the, you're in the world and everything, actually, if you look at the big issues facing the EU and the EU and the UK and the world. Russia, Ukraine, China, China policy, how that's changed in 2015, you know, from the golden age to where it is now, or 2010.

You'd think of the rise of AI. You think of online harm. You think of all these big issues that are rattling around the world, you know, biomechanics, all these great opportunities, but also challenges. Not one of them was there as a priority in 2016. And yet some people just want us to think about what we've lost. I want to make sure we mitigate the things that we need to make. mitigate, but we need to be rigorously focused on the future because that is the way that we

really start rebuilding, not just with the EU, but without others. Is the risk, though, Peter, actually, that you sort of jump to 2020 and then you get stuck in 2020? Yes, of course it is. I mean, I would say that the real time to be thinking about a much closer relationship with the European Union, some form of customs union, some whole new architecture is now. The real risk is that you think, oh, I lost that in 2019. That's old news. We've got to move on. And What you can't see is that the direction that Trump's going in, the direction that Russia's going in actually means that now is the time to reimagine completely, not just Britain's relationship to Europe, but how Britain, Ukraine, Turkey, Norway could all relate to Europe. I think it's a good example. And I would say that I've leapt right to where we are now in 2025. Because if you look at the tonal relationships in you fundamentally changed, you know, just in the last two. weeks I've met for EU commissioners. And I've done the rounds of EU commissioners since I first

got in to this post, which is only seven months ago. Commercars is Mr. Vance in Munich. But if you look at what we need now, it is functional relationships, the effort to find common ground. There's a lot of work that Nick Thomas Simmons is doing on the long-term rebuilding. But when you say the customs union, because of what's happening in the world now, to rejoin the customs union, it'll take years of negotiation. Years. You're not going to suddenly pop in Not with courage and imagination. I mean, you may be missing, in fact, an extraordinary opportunity. And it would require a referendum because of the change in sovereignty.

There will be lots of different issues. And also, there's lots of practical reasons why there are things there that the EU want from the UK. And there's lots of things we want in that relationship as well. And exploring them all, we can do that now. We can put food on people's table right now in the weeks ahead, rather than just trying to go back to the big existential things, which have very, very big profound sovereignty issues. We need to be focusing on the practical issues

because that's what they want us to do. It is also what is in the best interest of Britain now. I think there's a really interesting question here, and I think it goes to the heart of the way that the Labour government thinks about things. You get the sense that Starmer's personality is very much, let's focus on the here and now on the practical and the small things. Let's not get into big ideas, big structures, big visions.

And I think there's a risk that actually, we've entered a world and a politics where actually we need really big structures, big ideas. It feels more like 1948, feels more like the kind of world that Jean Monnet was dealing with. And the risk of looking at, you know, let's do the practical everyday things that we can do. And of course, appeals to me, that's quite a sort of small seat conservative message, is that we won't achieve the transformational change necessary for European security, European economies or indeed our entire strategic independence. What I do agree with in what you just said is that I think one of the reasons for Brexit

was that the public knew something quite big was wrong with the country, that we needed a sort of big refresh and that the remain argument felt very incremental. It didn't feel modern and fit for the sort of moment we were living in. Yet the Brexiteers, obviously they weren't encumbered by any sort of need to anchor it in, you know, anything written down or... Fact or truth. So it did feel like a big solution to a big, what felt like a big problem.

Don't forget, we've passed through an economic crisis, we were in the middle of a migration crisis, they had a big solution to what was a set of big challenges. And I do accept we face a lot of big challenges as a country, but the nature of them are very different. You know, we've inherited public finances that are genuinely, you know, extraordinarily difficult. You know, we've come into government

and the tax threshold is ridiculous. ridiculously high. Borrowing is high. The amount of waste I found in the department I went into was unbelievable. Unfunded. Can you sound like Elon Musk. Yeah. No, well, this is interesting. I hope you can come on to that. I hope I get to talk about. We'll come onto his admiration for Elon. Oh, I do hope we can talk about what I've been doing about regulating appropriately and tackling, you know, efficiencies and the like, which we have to do, but there are ways of putting your own values and principles into doing it, the show you can achieve it in different ways. I would argue that right now, the really big thing,

we have to do is lay the foundations for what we can do in the future because we don't get the basics right in running our public services, rebuilding our relationships with our neighbours and our key allies. If we don't get the economy and the foundations of the economy really strong, we will have nothing to build on right now. And just, look, you both care about international politics and our bilateral and multilateral relationships incredibly strongly. Just imagine Britain, as we inherited it after 14 years of the Tories and what they put us through. And then we came out with a big idea for the new global order and then we went and tried to sell it to people. It would be ludicrous. What we are doing is rehabilitating Britain and we are showing

through actions, not just words. I said this to all of the European and American and other leaders and people leading different parts of governments from other governments that don't judge us on our words, judge us on our actions and that I can talk through actions. And that's a great thing about being a government that does things. Yeah, great. But sometimes leadership is about or I use the V word, the vision, but it's about setting a long-term sort of frame. And I do think there is a massive opportunity right now. You can call it what you want,

a kind of defence security and economic partnership, forging a new relationship that we don't have to bang on about Brexit the whole time, though I probably will a bit, but actually just set out something for the future. And I think it's wide open there right now. And I think where we're right is there's a danger that we just feel, let's just go day-to-day, let's be a bit incremental, and that's the way to do it.

And that's Kears' style. And that's fine. I've got no problem with that. Anyway, let's move. Well, you just, you put words into my mouth and then moved on. Yeah, I know, I know, because that's why I'm chairing it. Now, let's talk about you. We mentioned another trigger word, Musk, but let's just talk about AI, because that was a huge part of your brief.

I think here is the fifth prime minister that we've had to say that Britain is going to be a global leader in AI. Now, before we get onto the how, just if you meet somebody who literally knows nothing about what this whole artificial intelligence debate is about. Very basic to Mrs. Woman on top of the bus, what are we talking about? We're talking about machines that can learn human attributes and behaviours from the data that we produce in our daily lives. And it can bring it together, and because of the combination of vast amounts of data

and huge computational abilities through what supercomputers can do these days, You can analyze that data and you can recreate human-like behavioral thinking. And the latest models that are producing artificial intelligence are now doing computational thinking in things like biology, chemistry, maths, but also general cognitive thinking at PhD level. And very soon we will reach what they're calling and what they're aspiring to, artificial general intelligence, AGI. whereby artificial intelligence will be able to think cognitively along the breadth of human thinking above the way that most average humans can do. And what that means is that they can't just do one task you ask it to.

It can follow a train of tasks through a logical process that actually reflects a human-like sequence of thinking to deliver the kind of outcomes that up till now only humans can do. Okay, Peter, Alastair, quick break, and then back in a second. Hey, this is Michael and Hannah from Gollhangers. The Rest is Science. This episode is brought to you by Cancer Research UK. We often think of beating cancer as treatment, but imagine stopping it before it begins. After years of work, Cancer Research UK scientists are launching a clinical trial of lung

vax, the first vaccine designed to prevent lung cancer. It builds on TracerX, the world's largest cancer. evolution study, which tracked lung cancer cells over many years to uncover the disease's earliest warning signs. Lung Vax is designed to train the immune system to spot these signs early on, destroying 40 cells before cancer develops. So it's not treatment, but preventative, with the potential to stop lung cancer before it starts. The first stage of the trial starts this year focusing on people at higher risk. It shows what long-term research makes possible. For more information about Cancer Research UK, their research breakthroughs and how you can support them,

visit Cancer Researchukuk.org forward slash the rest is science. Hi everybody, it's Dominic Samaruk here from The Rest is History. Now, some of you may have heard me on your show, The Rest is Politics, when Rory was away, and I was filling in and enjoying Alistair Campbell's tremendous banter. And I'm back to tell you about our new series on The Rest is History, which is all about Britain in the 1970s, a period with a lot of uncanny resemblances to our own. So right now we're living through a moment when oil shocks generated by war in the Middle East are rippling through the world economy, when Britain feels like it's sunk in a bit of a malaise,

people are arguing about Europe, the government has got a few issues with the trade unions, and we have a kind of, I suppose you'd say governing elite, a kind of political class that is really struggling to come to terms with all of these issues. And people are asking if Britain is governable at all. So there are a lot of parallels between that Britain that I'm describing, which is our Britain, and the Britain of the mid-1970s. So in this series that's coming out on the rest is history, we'll be looking at these and other issues.

We'll be talking about the rise of Margaret Thatcher, obviously a colossal figure in our political life even now, whether you love her or loathe her. And we'll be talking about the very first Brexit referendum of 1970. a subject that I'm sure Rory and Alistair will have strong opinions about. We'll be talking about the fall of the Labour Prime Minister Harold Wilson and we'll be talking about one of the grimmest moments in Britain's economic history, the moment in 1976 when we had to go cap in hand, as people said at the time,

to the International Monetary Fund, the IMF, for a then record bailout. Now, if that sounds good to you, how could it not sound good to you? Of course it sounds good to you. We have a clip for you to listen to at the end of this episode. And if you want to hear more, just search for The Rest is History, wherever you get your podcasts. So you came in and as Alice has pointed out, lots of other people banged on about AI before you arrived. And I guess there are many choices you had to make, but here's a couple of them. You had to decide whether you were going to roll in behind Rishisunek and really put the emphasis

on making the UK the leader in AI security and safety and trying to make the UK the central place for global agreements on what safety and security looks like. And another decision you made is you've decided to build a big supercomputer and a 20 times compute in order to do these enormous trainings that large language models do. And obviously for listeners to explain, these are computers that can cost a billion and where a training package could cost a hundred million. So just talk us through those two choices because there were alternatives, right? I mean, there's the alternative to Rishi Sunat, which is presumably the one you're pushing ahead on, which is putting more emphasis on innovation. And there's the alternative on the supercomputer,

which is to say maybe the UK shouldn't be getting involved in massive supercomputers, huge training models. That's a bit excessive. We don't need to be doing that. The US can be doing that. There are other more niche things we can do on the applications of AI, more practical embedding, public services. So talk us through your policy choices. The best way to answer this is to say, what is the purpose of safety? What is the purpose of security? And I would argue that it is to protect people and to make people safe, but crucially to feel safe. Because you don't feel safe, you're not going to start interacting with something feel it's okay to actually start using it. So once you've achieved that, why stop there? The purpose of safety is to protect people,

but also to make people feel safe enough, to embrace the technology. What the previous government was doing was focusing entirely on safety, but not actually using that safety for the next second step, which is opportunity. So what I've done is actually invested more heavily in the safety side. We have the AI Security Institute, which has a relationship with the big model creators, the people who are creating the platforms that are the most cutting edge. We test their models before they're released into the public, these big, powerful models, what the AI most people interact with is actually derivatives of that.

But if you get the main model safe for the key things that could present huge existential challenges to life itself, with things that you would imagine, you know, helping people build things that could cause wide treadles to life. If you can mitigate those, then you can get the derivatives right through our economy and society in public services to actually for benefit. So what I've done is invested heavily in safety and security. We are now genuinely world leaders. We are joint number one with that in the US. But what we're doing that Rishishishu Knaq never did was in a very ambitious, pointed way, making sure that that technology benefits everyone and is used right through our economy

because people feel safe enough to explore the opportunities of it. Now, the third thing that you mentioned there is actually about the way that we're providing the sort of infrastructure for it. and why a 20-fold increase in compute. Actually, it's the whole country's public sovereign compute. We're increasing by 20 times. And also the rest of it, we're putting huge emphasis in as well. Why?

Because the people who have these big models, the countries that have them, are going to be responsible for or benefit from, the greatest opportunity for wealth creation, the greatest opportunity for hard and soft power around the world because the impact it's going to have on security and defense is going to be huge. When you look at how America has used sort of nuclear, civil and defensive nuclear, the relationship is quite subordinate with other countries that they partners with. And actually, this isn't unique insight.

The Senate last year published a memo which said that they want the same relationship on AI. They want to have the absolute cutting edge. They want to have partners who are allied countries, but they want the allied countries to be kind of dependent on them for it. Well, I want us to be at the very forefront of. of it because those countries will be able to shape how it goes, how it is used and deployed. I don't want us to be for the next massive period of this industrial transformation that we are going to have because of AI, always buying off the shelf from other countries.

And I think if we have the opportunity to have, you know, some of these very, very conceptual, powerful cutting-edge pieces of work whose derivatives can then start flowing through the economy domestically, then the opportunities for wealth creation, but also staying at the top seat in the global order of how decisions and power is influenced and the ability to express our values and principles as a country, then AI is going to be absolutely central to it. The question you have to ask yourself is, if we were going to have a new security council that would be set up in 10 years' time after AI has gone through another 10 years, you can bet that actually your ability to influence the world via technology in particular AI is going to be one

of the things that will indicate who are the top countries and the most influential. influential countries that need to be together in the room where big decisions are made. But a lot of the people who are driving this feel to me like they think that they are and they may well be far more important, far more powerful, far more significant to the future of the world than elected governments. Now, where do you get that balance? You talk there about AI being for everybody. How do you stop this just becoming another driver of inequality? Exactly. How do you do that when the characters who we read about and hear about and we've talked to, who are driving it, do tend to be in this kind of sovereign individual space. And people like Musk, frankly,

I just think he's a repellent human being who now has too much money, too much power. And because he has all that money and all that power, people like you and politicians around the world feel there's nothing they can do or say about it. So it's another way of answering Roy's previous question. It's another reason why we in Britain need to get this right. We've got great universities, we've got great skills, we've got a great investment landscape, we've got English, you know, we have a huge scientific pedigree going back centuries. All these reasons why we should be bringing this together so that we can get into the cutting edge as well. Now, the amount of money, you've mentioned it already, the billions for the infrastructure, the hundreds of millions it takes to train just one of the models and they need to do three or four of these every year. We don't have that money.

So that money is often coming from outside of government, which is one of the fundamental challenges that we have. But we can create the circumstances where it can happen. Now, there are going to be a lot of moral and ethical challenges thrown up by AI going forward. I want those moral and ethical challenges to be resolved in a country like Britain with a liberal democracy, where we have a mature regulatory landscape, and we are a stable now. We are a stable politics and economy. I want those things to be resolved here because we can have influence over it if we get it right. If we get it wrong, then we stand back and it will be countries which don't share our values,

even if they might be allies, they might not quite have the liberal values that we have here. They might not quite have the democratic values that we have here. And believe you me, China is investing in this in a way which is just completely mind-bending and hard to actually conceive on the scale of it. Why? Not for giggles. They're doing it because they know if they get them. they're first and they stay ahead, then they will have dominance in the way that the world

and its economy will unfold into the future. We have to be cognizant of that. So, Peter, let's follow up on that liberal democratic values thing. The big challenge to the liberal democratic values is now explicitly being made, and you heard it at the Munich Security Conference from J.D. Vance, the US Vice President said, very frankly, we don't share values with European countries anymore. And Elon Musk is now using social media platforms to undermine our own democracies to support far-right parties, literally getting behind in the middle of an election in Germany, one of the most consequential elections in German history, putting his entire platform behind the AFD, a far-right party, something that the United States

never consider doing interfering in internal electoral affairs like that. So the biggest threat probably that we face now in Europe is the survival of those liberal democratic values and how we defend those liberal democratic values in the face of a concerted attempt by the Trump administration to use technology to undermine those values. How do we respond to that? And I suppose without sounding like a broken record, how do we avoid responding to that without doing it together as Europe? I mean, even this question about where we're going to get the money from, from your investment, how we take, as you say, our brilliant ideas and innovation and make them things that go to market, Britain's not big enough on its own.

The only way we're going to be able to compete with the kind of money in the US is if we set up huge pan-European funds on this stuff. So you've already seen how concerted efforts to work together. Britain and Europe is working in an incredibly tight and functional way these days. And I've seen that myself. I was there at the Munich Security Council. I was in the room when J.D. Vance did the speech. I was sitting in the second row.

as the words unfolded, I knew I was in a historic moment. I could feel the reaction. And you looked horrified? Were there clips of me doing it then? I saw you. Did you? Oh, God. God, you're just so, you're just everywhere, aren't you?

You're just omnipotent, sort of this sort of presence being down. You're wet. You're going to regret saying that. I felt, you could just knew it was an historic moment. But people think that the Trump administration has been. there for forever. It's been there for weeks. And we know that Trump uses rhetoric in an incredibly potent, but also smart way in terms of the way that it can sometimes disrupt things and then suddenly, you know, something quite different pops out of the other end in terms of actions.

So we have to see what it's like when we start to sit down and get down to the meat and bones of what this relationship with America is going to be like under the Trump administration, which we accept is going to be very different from the previous Biden administration. And particularly with the EU and Europe, with Britain bilaterally with the States. But we had Macron going out there earlier than Kier. And you've seen coordination in how these things unfold. You've seen Europe stick really tightly together when it comes to defending Ukraine and speaking up for President Zelensky and standing shoulder to shoulder with him.

I think you've seen a lot of what you're asking for. But it's done in a way that actually can just wait to see. where the real, you know, substances and not just constantly, you know, just get battered around. I mean, when I do interviews and I do lots of media rounds these days, I am asked 99% about something that somebody in America has said, and about 1% on what is actually going to be signed, delivered or sealed between the two countries. Yeah, well, that's partly because the words of the people that say these things have consequences, and we saw that in Southport. and I don't know whether you thought I was being wet when I texted you in the middle of the...

Give up. When I texted you in the middle of the Southport riots and said, you know, we go on about online harms, we cannot have a situation where somebody like Musk with the reach he has is deliberately inflaming hatred and violence. That happened. And that was words.

It was words, but also it was the words of lots of people and we made lots of arrests at that point in that period. And I think as I said... For which he's roundly attacked you. As I said... And back Tommy Robinson. And our laws haven't changed. Our laws will not change.

You know, the law on misinformation in this country actually is quite a high bar, because you have to show intent. Just words alone, don't get you there. You have to show how you are intending to use those words in order to provoke the kind of outcome. So those people who were arrested and convicted for it. Let's say if I start up by saying that when Tony was around, there would be certain figures in the media

that we would be a bit wary of taking on, okay? But that is Musk on a gargantuan scale. And I'd worry that these guys now have got the politicians over a barrel. So they're too powerful. And they actually, we talk about speaking truth to power, they're the ones that we've got to be talking to. And the power is no longer where it should be with democratically elected politicians. There is no question that some of the companies in the tech world have a power that very few companies in the

past have ever had. You have to go back quite a long way to find it. I think the challenge has been what we've seen in the last, I hate commentating. As I got in, I promised myself I wouldn't commentate. That I would just talk to me to this. Okay. So if you look at Silicon Valley, if you look at big rising sectors in the past, when a breakthrough sector emerges in the past, there is a time when it reaches a certain power, economic power, that it ends up getting into politics. And what we've just seen in the last two years or so, maybe a bit longer, that's happened in Silicon Valley. And that's something that feels very new. Actually, previous generations have dealt with it in the past, you know, with oil companies and others.

And you look at some of the Vanderbilts and the rest of it, in America, the, you know, the East India company here. You know, it happens. This has now happened with the tech world. So, again, there are individuals out there, but there are also these big companies. And just to give you a sense of why we need to be – and I got into a little bit of controversy for saying that we need to act with humility. What I actually meant with that is that I can't sit in Whitehall anymore, or we can't sit in Whitehall, Brussels or Washington anymore, and legislate and regulate to get these companies to do what we want them to do. Actually, we have to deploy statecraft in a way in addition to legislation, in addition to regulation. We have to deploy statecraft for which we've only really deployed against counterparts and other governments. So it is like dealing with the country.

When you're dealing with Google. You like dealing with a powerful country. I wouldn't say it's a country because it's not everything. You know, it's in singular purposes. So let me just give you this one example. If you take the big five, six companies, tech companies, most of them will be spending more on R&D. Amazon, for example, spends more on R&D

in singular technological development than the entire British state does in public R&D. For the purpose of making JAPEs or is even richer? For the purpose, well, for their commercial purpose, and look at what they've done with it. And you look at what they're doing with data, supercomputing, they're putting three and a thousand satellites in the space. This is what they're doing.

Now, you as a state, going along to that, the relationship has to be sophisticated. Look, I do have tests for myself when I have these meetings because I have the privilege of meeting people very, very senior, chief exec and presidents of these companies. And when I sit with them, I hope, because in the very, very first week that I had this job, I brought in victims of social media harm.

And I sat with parents who have lost children to online activity. And I listened to them. And I've had them in again before making announcements. Before I've done things that might be challenging for them, I speak to them directly. And I hope when I end these meetings that, yes, I am there to beat the drum for Britain and investment and the like. But I always will say what the expectations of Britain is. And what I have and what Keir have and what our government has of them should they come to Britain and operate here. I hope those families would be proud of the words that I say, at least content with the words that I use.

You've got an unbelievably difficult job. And obviously, as you keep teasing Alastra and me, it's all very well us sitting in a studio and asking you questions. And we do understand to some extent what that is. It is a pretty unpleasant time, though. I'm sitting here in the States talking to you. When I talk to people on the extreme edge of the West Coast, people in the kind of Peter Thiel camp, Mark Andresen camp, they basically say Europe and the UK doesn't matter anymore. We've got the seven biggest tech companies in the world.

The whole of the future of defense is going to be defined by the kind of stuff that we're doing with data and cyber. We've got them over a barrel. If they dare to try to regulate us, if they try to touch the way in which we operate with Twitter, we're going to shut them down and kill them with trade sanctions. They don't have any money. all the companies come to the West Coast if they want to get investment because investment doesn't work in the UK and Europe, right? So that sounds to me like strategically over the next 10, 15 years, we're going to have to become more independent of these people. We cannot be over a barrel

in relation to those people. You've talked a little bit about how a supercomputer could help you on that. But there's much more than that, isn't that? There's about how we get 350 million people in Europe together and 14% of the world's GDP and use that money so that we actually have some sovereign independence in data, in tech, in search engines, and defence. How are we going to do that? Go to one of the first questions you asked me, and that's what we're doing by investing so heavily, I mean, literally heavily in AI and the infrastructure for it. We have to be able to innovate, upscale and allow companies and partnerships between public and private sectors to innovate and commercialize in a way that we're going to do.

We have to get that done better. So that is for sovereign purposes. It's just simply so our economy can be rooted in where the growth of the future is. But also it comes down to the hard and soft power that I mentioned and the economic wealth that I've been mentioning all the way through this. The fundamentals are exactly the same. And it's not new for this century, for this moment. You know, in every century, you know, you're relevant if you are rooted in where the economic opportunities are. That's why Britain has done so well as what is, you know, a fairly small geographic country.

You know, we were ahead at the first industrial revolution. We were really good at the two revolutions that came after it. But at the moment, we've been really, really behind in this latest one, which is about digital infrastructure and use of digital and the way that digital is going to transform absolutely everything. So we have to get there. You're avoiding my invitation to talk about scale. But in a global world, we should be having global partnerships.

And, you know, you keep coming back to one particular bit, which is our neighbours. Europe, where we share democratic and liberal values, because you can't rely on the US anymore and you're certainly not going to rely on China. So you don't really have many options, do you? Well, you think in a global world, we should be partnering with our global allies. And also, we should be making sure that where there is China that is waiting there to try and get in and influence, we need to strengthen those as well. So Australia and Japan, incredibly influential partners. And in the digital age, that kind of innovation and the robotics and the use of digital

technology in Japan is fundamentally important. Just bear this one statistic in mind. Since 2010, if you take technological stock, the stock of tech companies, it's increased by 400%. If you aggregate all other remaining sectors, then it's about 10%. And we have been sort of rooted in the 10%, not where the real growth has come from. If you took Silicon Valley out of America, they'd have the same productivity gains as Europe. we've been sitting on the sidelines here so there are lots of reasons why we have to do this and of course our relationships with Europe on a whole load of

grounds have got to be sort of rehabilitated and got to work together but Europe has these same problems at all you'll know the Draghi report that came out a little while ago that spoke exactly in the terms that I am but we will work with Europe on those key things that there is areas of mutual benefit but there are certain things that we can do right now

as a country and we need to be focusing on them, exploiting them for the good of our domestic economy and people who live in Britain. And that includes also transforming the way we do government. Because I've got a lot to say on the way that we modernise government for the moment we're living in in the future. Listen, you're going to have to go quite soon because you're a very, very busy cabinet minister with lots and lots of things to do. And we're just a couple of aging, old wet hacks who sits around sort of pontificating. But what I'm going to do before you go is get you to promise to come back in the not too distant future.

and answer some of these questions, but through questions from listeners who've listeners so far. I'd love to do that. Yeah. I'd love to do that. I want to be one of your live shows. I want to go on the I, oh, too. Well, yeah, would you bring in as many extra people to the crowd as...

You'd need Wembley if I did it. Maybe Wembley, yeah. Let me just ask you this, though, because this will also require quite a lot of legislation. And at the moment, you've been consulting on the data use and access bill. And I've got to tell you, if I see two sides, okay, on one side, I've got Paul McCuller, Martin, Elton John and Stephen Fry, saying you're doing something bad.

And on the other side, I've got the Musks and the Zuckerbergs and the Bezos and the Google saying, yeah, yeah, yeah, this is the way to go. I know who I'm backing. I'm with Macca, I'm with Elton John, and I'm with Stephen Fry. So why are so many people in the creative and cultural industries so upset about the line that you're taking in relation to copyright? it because it seems to me they have a very, very, very strong point. I think people who are in the creative sector are extraordinary. And the thing that's extraordinary about their profession is,

it's not just going to work and coming home at five o'clock and getting on with life. For them, it is a... So you understand they're very upset. And they think you're going to destroy their industries. Indeed, I understand. I understand that. So let's just understand exactly what I am doing. So I have a data bill going through Parliament at the moment. you will understand this because the data bill is actually about keeping us in compliance with the EU for data sharing across. Now, if we don't do that by June, then we fall out and all data for commercial and government businesses cannot pass the English Channel. So this is a leftover from the previous administration. The Lord of attached amendments on this to this bill. And what I have tried to do is to separate and give a specific moment to Parliament to look at the issue you've raised, which is about.

how the relationship between the creative arts sector and AI can interact in the modern times. I've said that the consultation which closed recently and I will legislate fully on the back of that and I'll be setting out exactly what the red lines are in the coming period on it, but I need to listen to the consultation in order to do so. But I'd be forced into this debate now because because of an amendment that's been attached to a different piece of legislation. Now, if I could just say one thing on this. We have the second line. creative arts sector in the world. We have the third largest AI market in the world. And what I'm being asked to do is to choose between one or another. The copyright laws are 300 years old. And there

is one reality which is immutable. And that is that all of the data that people are worried about has already been scraped and used by AI companies because not one of them, not one of them is domiciled in the UK. So unless you have international copyright attached to your work, which is respected in California, then your data has already been subsumed into the AI system. And when it comes to China, they have no regard for any copyright anywhere in the world, so it's already been up there in it. So this is about how we move forward from where we are. And I'm trying to find a way through that we'll give the protections for people who are creating creative products. It sounds like you're confirming that the tech guys have got us all over the

barrel. No, they have had. But the only way that we can have influence over them is, is to have them here by adding to British laws, because I can't pass laws that will have an impact in the Gulf or in Texas. So what we are doing is trying to find a way through where we can have the relationships. They can come to Britain to do it, but I will not sell creative artists downstream in order to do so. Their rights will be protected in the modern age, and they shouldn't always have to end up going to court

in order to make sure that they can have the rights that they need, because you need so much money to do that. Peter, thank you. Listen, I think listeners have got an amazing glimpse into you. I mean, everything from talking about complicated legislation, fights the creative industry, the huge geopolitical implications. We didn't begin to get into the way in which AI could transform health services, education, business.

And we'll do that through members' questions when we reengage again. But thank you for your honesty. Thank you for your frankness. And thank you for teasing us occasionally. So you're at Wembley. Thank you for having me. Wet. You're not coming. I think I'll get that lies west. We like West Street in best of the camera.

No, Angela. You know how to wound me. Yeah, I think we get Wes or Angie. Thank you. Thanks. Thanks again. Bye-bye. So, Rory. Peter Kyle. Well, I thought really moving on his family, I thought it was really lovely hearing him talk about his father.

I think he's sharp. I think he's a very able politician. And here comes the butt, as you predict. The bus is that there are two gigantic things happening. One of them is the complete reshape of global security as Trump abandons NATO. And I didn't feel that Peter is quite being serious enough about the way in which Britain should be coming

much, much closer to Europe, not just economically, but in terms of defense of security and I didn't buy into this idea of well we can make lots of small slow pragmatic steps I think this really is a time for courage and ideological vision beyond a matching for leadership

and I was disappointed that Peter kind of poo-poo's that so much and I think the second thing is I was a little uncomfortable with him teasing you and saying that you've become a little bit too woke and that you're jumping on campaigns too much The truth of the matter is that the Labour Party is doing things which I think are worth talking about.

I think the cutting of international aid was a really devastating, short-sighted thing to do that doesn't sit well with Labor's values or what Kirstama said before the election. And you're very loyal to the Labour Party, but I think when you're raising some of these issues, it's not just you. I think many, many Labour voters are uncomfortable with some of these things. And I don't think you should just brush them off as being, Alice has become a student activist. Anyway, that's me. Okay. Well, I'm going to come to his defence on both.

On the first one about Europe, I think the trouble here is collective responsibility. You know, I frame the question to him by saying, I know what you think about Europe. I know what you think about Brexit. I know what you'd really like to do. But he is bound by collective responsibility. They do have to say the same thing.

I actually thought recently, on the morning after Keir Stahmer met Donald Trump, which was obviously a huge event, during the morning round the next day was West Street, the Health Secretary, who's very, very good when he's talking about health, okay, and social care. But he goes on and is expected to talk about defence and foreign policy and security and the future of Europe with the same dexterity and the same knowledge. And you know, having been a cabinet minister, you do have to immerse yourself in your brief.

And I think sometimes it's unfair of us and of media people to expect cabinet ministers to have the same level of engagement and expertise across all issues. Peter knows. And on the woke point, I mean, just to tell listeners that beforehand I was raging about aid. And Peter said, I've listened to your podcast. I listen to every episode. and you now say things. This is what he said.

I wanted him to say it on air, actually. You now say things that back in the day when you would do your old job, if ministers had said those things, you'd have stopped them after three words, which is not quite true, but that's the point he was making. And I think likewise, we didn't really have time to get into aid, because, of course, Peter, again, Peter's a former aid worker. He knows how bad this is. But he also knows that unless he resigned, as Annalisa Dodds did over the aid cuts,

then he has to kind of tow the line. I thought you were going to say that you weren't convinced by his arguments on AI about how we, the UK, genuinely become this world leader without this relentless kind of sucking up to the Americans on tech and AI, because that's where I felt we needed a bit more. Let's do the AI thing for a couple things. So I think the first thing is, the UK is making one particular type of bet, particularly in supercomputing in these large, very expensive training models,

when it could be doing other things. I would prefer to see it saying, okay, that's not where we're going. Instead, we're going to focus on putting maybe even the same amount of money, but into the practical applications of AI into public policy. But the second thing is that I increasingly think that social media, in particular, X and Twitter, pose a very very, very, very fundamental threat to our own democracies. I think Musk and Trump are trying to undermine our democracies from within. Yeah.

And I would like to see us take that seriously in the way that people who fought fascism over the years have realized that you need to put guardrails around your democracy. Right? Yeah. These things are fragile and can be whipped away. And yes, I absolutely agree that it felt like we have a government that is so desperate to buddy up to these. tech people that we didn't get a squeak out of him on Elon Musk, despite the fact that Elon Musk is mocking the British government, saying that Tommy Robinson as a prisoner of conscience, claiming that we're an Islamic state, claiming that, you know, Peter Carl's own colleagues are complicit in rape. So Peter Philea. I think that is that is kind of worrying. Yeah. Yeah. Now that being said, Roy, you're in the States when we're talking to Peter. I was with him, but after

we ended, I asked him whether he would come back and do a members only, Q&A, on AI. So in other words, because I do think it's one of those areas, we get so many questions about this. And let's be honest, you and I, we study it a bit, but we're not experts. So we would like members and people who would like to become members and who could therefore take part in stuff like this is that from time to time where we have a guest like Peter, we do the interview, we put that out as normal, but then we do a members-only Q&A where you send in the questions

and we then get the guests back. And so on AI, we would like to do maybe half hour or so, get Peter back and get our members' questions and we can keep the conversation going about AI. What do you think of that? I think it's a great idea because there's so much specialist knowledge out there and there's so many questions that people on that field would love to ask Peter.

So well done on doing that. And I think it's really important. Good. See you soon. Bye-bye.