A new Sovereign Consensus
Every few decades, as the old consensus falls away, a new settlement is required
Where we are
Britain is in a bind. We are exposed to external shocks — geopolitical instability, energy volatility, technology outside our control — and internal strains that weigh us down: weak state capacity, high tax burdens, creaking infrastructure and poor value public services.
We are buffeted around with no redundancy in the system or counter-leverage to offset these pressures. We have little optionality. Policy is constrained by sclerosis and scarcity.
Now we face an AI inflection point that, for all its benefits, risks further instability: a new value chain we have little stake in is emerging — models, drones, robotics, networking, chips and energy — just as the vulnerability of our services-heavy economy is laid bare. Value may quickly accrue to AI companies domiciled and taxed elsewhere. The impact on our society and the prospects for government revenues is stark.
Where we need to get to
The correct response to volatility isn’t stability, but momentum. We can only regain control by restoring dynamism. We can only protect dynamism with control over our future.
That future is indeterminate. Security guarantees are unreliable, superintelligence is looming, bond markets are skittish. So we must build capabilities that give us optionality in a range of scenarios, by maximising opportunity within current constraints and pushing back against them.
The ingredients of comparative advantage — energy prices, frontier science, industrial capacity, talent networks, etc. — may be fixed in the short run, but are up for grabs in the long run.
Equally we need both tactical mechanisms to sidestep incumbent vetoes today and to build a culture that dissolves them long-term. Tackling parliamentary impotence, creating durable fiscal headroom, and competing globally on institutional agility are all critical to create the most scarce resource of all: room for manoeuvre.
Sovereignty must not be confused for self-sufficiency, protectionism, or trying to control the entire AI stack. It is about building leverage to durably control our destiny. National sovereignty underpins individual agency.
In today’s world, long-term strength requires hard power, economic abundance, and breaking the trade-off between state capacity and cost. So restoring national advantage requires ambitious supply-side reforms, building early stakes in new value chains that may upend the global economy, and fostering large firms that generate leverage either by occupying strategic chokepoints or by sheer virtue of their scale.
How we get there
Today, we lack the urgency and consensus to reposition the country quickly and get ahead of what’s coming. Britain is caught in a liminal space between a fractured national spirit and the onrushing upheaval of this new world. This is fertile ground for zero-sum, destructive forces who tear down more than they build.
Instead, those who can see the path ahead — not only for AI, energy, defence and state capacity, but also for collective purpose and national identity — have a duty to get organised.
Even if we can renew domestic productive power — reinvigorating economic growth and restocking the assets of statecraft — the risk of extraterritorial value transfer, from British labour to US capital, poses an existential societal threat.
This comes at a time when, already, the welfare state is creaking and the tax burden is high, due to demographic pressures, waste, and a failure to adopt even internet-era technologies, leaving the state overweight, indebted and underpowered. We will need new national institutions to transform the state at scale, while also acting as anchors of national purpose.
Every few decades, Britain faces a generational moment of self-reflection, when a ruling consensus breaks down and a new settlement is required. Today, to navigate the overlapping and indeterminate challenges of AI, energy, security and state capacity, the new order must focus on rebuilding optionality and national agency. In effect, a new Sovereign Consensus.
Show us the way Andrew. You’re starting that momentum and there are people who will help and follow.