Keir Starmer is right to gamble on an AI revolution, but it might not pay out in time | Rafael Behr

Keir Starmer said that artificial intelligence will transform Britain ’s economy in the coming years .

He would have preferred to talk about AI improving productivity, generating jobs and improving services, without being asked if he plans to sack the chancellor.

But economic pressure on the pair is real, and the spending review in June will be brutally austere.

In a more benign economic setting, Starmer ’s speech launching the AI action plan would probably have received less attention treated as a nerdy digression.

But it has been overburdened with political heavy-lifting because Reeves and Starmer are stuck in a fiscal trap they laid for themselves in the past and badly in need of something upbeat to say about the future.