Summarize this content to 2000 words in 6 paragraphs in Arabic Good morning. Rachel Reeves will remain as chancellor for the rest of the parliament, Downing Street has said. No kidding. Although Keir Starmer and his chancellor do not always agree on everything, they are aligned on the big things, not least on avoiding tax rises. Both campaigned for Remain but came relatively late to the cause of the People’s Vote campaign during the 2017-19 battles over Brexit. This is more important than you might think. As Labour tries to get UK growth going, it is grappling with the question of just how bold to be when it comes to trying to reshape relations with the EU. And the government’s self-denying promises to not raise income tax, national insurance or VAT were a co-creation of Starmer and Reeves. Since 1964, chancellors have only left office when they disagreed with the prime minister of the day over an essential aspect of policy or personnel (Nigel Lawson, Sajid Javid and Rishi Sunak), after an election (Geoffrey Howe), when they’ve died (Iain Macleod), when their boss leaves Downing Street (Roy Jenkins, Denis Healey, Anthony Barber, John Major, Kenneth Clarke, Gordon Brown, Alistair Darling, Nadhim Zahawi and Jeremy Hunt) or when a crucial aspect of their programme is in tatters (Jim Callaghan, Norman Lamont and Kwasi Kwarteng). What is worth noting about that final three is that all their parties lost the subsequent elections (1970, 1997, and 2024). But the problem for Starmer and Reeves is that it is not clear whether they or anyone in the government has a plan that will improve the UK’s growth prospects and with it get the British economy and public finances out of its hole. Will embracing AI help? Some thoughts on that below. Cracking the codeTwo things that are true at the same time: Rishi Sunak’s work on artificial intelligence safety was a significant achievement and one of the standouts of his premiership. Creating an international forum where states talk about this issue is a net gain for the world. But his work on AI safety was also, as people at multiple UK-based tech companies said privately at the time, a bit of a disaster for Britain. After Brexit, it is not really in the UK’s primary interest to be a world leader on AI safety, both specifically and in terms of the signal it sends about the UK. That the Competition and Markets Authority took a colder view of the Microsoft/Activision merger in the same year as the launch of the AI safety summit did not exactly scream “the UK loves tech, innovation and investment”. So, even before you get into the substance of what Keir Starmer is saying about AI, as a signal, a lot of what he said yesterday — including in an op-ed for the FT — is positive. It’s true too that there are some very exciting trials of how large language models can increase productivity in the public sector by freeing up staff time and reducing the administrative burden on the state, though some of the suggestions in his speech sound very optimistic. But the government is going to need much more than positive noises on AI — it requires a bigger and broader set of pro-growth measures, and a plausible account of how it is going to stick to its fiscal rules, too. Now try thisI mostly listened to Franz Ferdinand’s new album The Human Fear while writing my column this week.What will Donald Trump’s second term mean for the US and the world? My colleagues and guest Kori Schake, director of foreign and defense policy studies at the American Enterprise Institute, will be tackling the biggest questions in a webinar on January 23 at 1pm GMT: register for free here. Top stories todayCross purposes | Rachel Reeves will step up pressure on Britain’s regulators to rip up anti-growth rules. CBI chair Rupert Soames said yesterday that business was “bruised” by government policies and new employment regulations would hamper growth and cause job losses.AI ‘maker’ rather than ‘taker’ | Experts have cautioned there are big obstacles ahead to Keir Starmer’s plans to harness AI, from access to energy and computing power, to concerns about governance of the rapidly evolving technology and the use of private data.Unearthed | British secret agents in Washington requested that J Edgar Hoover’s honorary knighthood be listed in the who’s who almanac Debrett’s to placate the FBI head, previously classified documents show. Into the distance | Kemi Badenoch has blamed “peasants” from “sub-communities” within foreign countries for the grooming gangs scandal in an interview with GB News. She said cultural issues surrounding the problem needed to be examined. “There is a systematic pattern of behaviour, not even just from one country, but from sub-communities within those countries”.Siddiq in new probe in Bangladesh | Anti-corruption minister Tulip Siddiq has been named by investigators in Bangladesh who allege she was involved in the illegal allocation of land to members of her family while serving as an MP, Sky News’s Rob Powell reports.
