Reflections from my first Labour Party Conference

I went to the Labour Party Conference to find out what the UK’s new Prime Minister really thinks about AI (and, especially, Palantir). I also wanted to (subtly) lobby Labour MPs on Palantir – find out why more of them aren’t backing the use of next year’s break clause to end its contract with NHS England. And I wanted to find out for myself what the general vibe is around AI.

Carole Cadwalladr, Beeban Kidron, Byline Times and others were openly critical of a distorting “tech bro” culture around Keir Starmer, (see, for example Starmer’s race to AI-ify public services). I wanted to know if that culture is still as dominant, or if it’s morphing into something else? Even before he took office, Burnham signalled a different direction, saying he wants to increase regulations on big tech and see more government intervention. In last week’s speech to the United Nations, Burnham reiterated his concerns about surveillance, disinformation, and the need for the UK to build it’s own sovereign technologies. But are things really going to be any different?

I was close to power – but not that close. I saw someone take a selfie with David Lammy, Lucy Powell chatting to her young advisors, Louise Haigh being interviewed on LBC. I got to say hi to Dawn Butler as she walked past in her bright turquoise trouser suit. But like all these things

A contact of mine told me the Labour Party conference is a bit like Glastonbury – you make plans but you never get to stick to them. It was certainly chaotic. The full programme (conference plus fringe events – of which there are literally hundreds) didn’t come out until a couple of days before conference started, so I’d had no time to properly look through it. At the conference itself, it felt like there were layers upon layers of permission and access. Plenty of private round tables and invite-only drinks receptions. I spent a lot of time feeling like a gatecrasher at someone else’s party. I didn’t how to use the app or save events. Or how to join the “ballot” for Burnham’s speech. Let alone where to get a wifi signal. I felt close to power – but not that close. I saw someone take a selfie with David Lammy, Lucy Powell chatting to her young advisors and Louise Haigh being interviewed on LBC. I was hoping I might be able to talk to my MP but I met one of our local councillors on the train who told me he’d rather be judging a dog show or opening a fete. In the end, the highlights for me were the spaces where I was made to feel welcome and where people either knew me or had the same cause in common.

The Campaign Fringe

I arrived at Camp and Furnace late morning on Monday for Campaign Lab’s event, the bouncers were bleary-eyed after Dawn Butler’s Jamaica Party on Sunday night. Apparently the Brent East MP was DJing and dancing til 3am. She’s got more stamina than me. Anyway, Camp and Furnace is a music venue and feels very much like a nightclub, even at midday. But the vibe was great, and very…fringe. Trays of lollies and stickers everywhere, tote bags galore. Loads of stalls with different businesses talking about their campaigns, exhibitors ranged from 38Degrees, who’ve been hosting a number of petitions against Palantir (Zack Polanski’s Stop Palantir in Public Services has reached more than 178,000 signatures) to the AdFree Cities network: their art installation, Billboard Dystopia, is a hoarding made from e-waste which shows how big polluters use advertising to greenwash their brands. 

The panels were great too. My favourite was the after-lunch session on AI in campaigning with Kanishka Narayan MP, the Minister for AI; Josh Carrington, Chief Technology Officer, The Labour Party; James Rees, Co-Founder, Movement and Laura Williams, Scientists for Labour and a Labour councillor in North Herts. Hannah O’Rourke, Campaign Lab’s co-founder and director, chaired the session really well. I learned what an MCP is (a Model Context Protocol Server – like an API but built for AI agents not humans) and that Kanishka Narayan has been using AI to run “synthetic focus groups” in his Vale of Glamorgan constituency. There was a lot of talk about how we need to make campaigns more scalable and efficient, but also how “we have to do best job in shaping technology in light of our values. We need bottom up not top down” (Narayan). John Carrington said a lot of members of the parliamentary Labour Party were coming to him with small language models they were building to hope solve local issues. James Rees also said he was “a big fan of small language models at a community level”. 

After that panel I followed Kanishka Narayan to a much more bullish discussion on AI alongside Accenture’s UK CEO, Matt Prebble. “What role can the government play in accelerating AI adoption?” asked the session chair (Carolyn Dawson, CEO, Founders Forum). “We have to ask, what can AI do to enable dignity and opportunity in public services?” responded Narayan. “We don’t want to make mistake of specifying the kit. Government have made those kinds of mistakes in past….we need to think deeply about open source, for example.” And later “It’s not inevitable. Each one of us has a degree of agency.” Open source, values, dignity, bottom-up, not inevitable, agency…they may be buzzwords and phrases, but I’m really happy to hear the minister for AI use this type of language.

Pink Hair Data Whisleblower

On Sunday, Carole Cadwalladr published a Substack post announcing a panel discussion co-hosted by The Citizens and Doc Society, along with a screening of #pinkhairdatawhistleblower – Marc Silver’s short film about Chris Wylie, the Cambridge Analytica whistleblower. The aim of this conference fringe event was to debate how we totally failed to heed the warnings of the Cambrige Analytica scandal, primarily in the weaponsation of our personal data. As Cadwalladr says: “There’s a particular reason for showing it now and doing so at the Labour party conference: everyone’s favourite spytech firm, Palantir.“

In the film, Wylie explains how Cambrige Analytica helped turn Facebook into “a full service propaganda machine [which] knows so much about a person that it can feed them more and more of the content they want. Soon they go down the rabbit hole. And then you’ve changed their minds politically.” He notes how Facebook has become “a battlefield”, and “elections are no longer a domestic event. There’ll always be an international dimension to elections from now on”. Finally, Wylie asks:

“If we overly segment, if we overly target, we risk fragmenting society in a way where we don’t have any more shared experiences, and we don’t have any more shared understanding. If we don’t have any more shared understanding, how can we be a functioning society?”

In the panel discussion after the screening, Carole Cadwalladr said: “The scandal of what happened then is that it’s so much a microcosm of what’s happening now…the collection of all our data…that’s Palantir. Everything that we’re seeing in this moment with AI, with data, with the big tech ceos, it’s all happening.”

She added that Damien Collins, the Conservative MP who chaired the DCMS committee inquiry into Cambridge Analytica, published an excellent report ten years ago, but nothing has been done since: “people in the political class need to pick a side” she said, referring specifically to Tom Watson’s recent acceptance of a high-level role at Palantir.

No Palantir in the NHS demo

On Tuesday, I missed Andy Burnham’s big speech because I was giving one of my own. To a small audience made up mostly of a few policemen and a dancing frog. Just outside the conference perimeter fence, in front of the Liverpool Wheel. We were protesting against Palantir in the NHS.  I was talking about my experience as a patient, and why I believe Palantir’s values are incompatible with healthcare. As an anthropologist, I’ve been thinking a lot about the impact on culture, and the affect of an organisation like Palantir on all of us who use the NHS. “Surveillance and warfare should be nowhere near healthcare”, was one of the chants we sang.

There were about 25 of us, a mix of GPs, hospital consultants and health workers, most wearing scrubs, some coming from civil society groups, like me. A doctor led the chants: “Health workers will not be silenced” and “Say no to surveillance tech”, and finally, “Back the break clause now”. A few passersby took leaflets. A handful of people filmed us on their phone cameras. The frog danced and waved a coloured flag. A few additional protestors for various causes were up and down the quay. A handful of delegate walked past. It was windy and our long banner kept flapping up and down. A few yards away at the main entrance to the conference, Steve Bray, still protesting Brexit, played You’ll Never Walk Alone over his sound system. I think he was trying to give us some moral support.

It’s hard to tell what impact a small demo like this will make. We got some coverage in Novara Media and The Citizens. But Palantir is a contentious issue – and definitely something the Labour party leadership did not want to be discussed at this conference. At the end of last week, there was a call for an emergency motion on Palantir, but that was subsequently blocked. I guess it’s all about managing the news cycle. Burnham’s government wanted some control over the headlines, and it certainly wanted maximum coverage of Andy Burnham’s first conference speech as prime minister. A vote to back the break clause in Palantir’s NHS contract, and to cut Palantir’s ties across all our public services, would have used up all the oxygen.

Lessons for next time

Was it all worth it? I guess so. I met some great people. I left feeling that Andy Burnham’s government is trying to do things a bit differently. At very least in terms of messaging. Even among my fellow demonstrators there was some confidence that Burnham will agree to back the break clause in NHS England’s contract with Palantir, he’s just waiting for the right moment. I feel there is a new wariness around, and a new cautious distance opening up between the UK and US tech. Certainly there was a focus on sovereign technology, along with the strong message of re-industrialisation. Britain takes the G20 presidency next year, and in his speech, Burnham said he will that role to put AI centre stage. The aim is to develop a new global code that captures AI’s benefits while staying clear-eyed about its risks. It’ll be a tough call. I just hope Burnham has the right advisors around him to help make that happen.

Main photo: Campaign Lab’s a panel on AI with (left to right): Kanishka Narayan MP, Minister for AI; Josh Carrington, CTO, The Labour Party; Hannah O’Rourke, Co-Founder & Director, Campaign Lab; James Rees, Co-Founder, Movement; Laura Williams, Scientists for Labour & Councillor, North Herts