Growth is the watchword of this Labour government. Practically every policy decision, from the AI Opportunities Action Plan, to the designation of data centres as ‘critical national infrastructure’, has been made in the interest of growing the UK’s economy.
As well as supporting Britain’s homegrown tech companies, this means attracting investment and support from the world’s largest firms, and there has been some progress on that.
For example, October saw cloud providers CoreWeave, CloudHQ, ServiceNow and CyrusOne commit a collective £6.3bn investment in the UK in the interest of bolstering its data infrastructure. A year earlier, Microsoft pledged a similarly targeted investment of £2.5bn.
Microsoft’s UK CEO Clare Barclay was even appointed by the government to chair an industrial strategy body, while ministers cosy up to American investment congolomorates like Blackrock. …
