“If it's the last thing I do, I'm going to destroy every fucking grammar school in England.”

Anthony Crosland, 1965

The Labour Party has a problem with education. Sometimes it feels that they would rather generate outrage than admit that the Conservatives might have got something right. Between 2012 and 2025, England rose in the PISA rankings from 18^th to 8^th in science and from 23^rd to 9^th in reading. Most impressively, the country climbed from 25^th in the world for mathematics to 10^th. This came after Michael Gove’s reforms which were informed by several high-performing East Asian approaches.

These are huge improvements. Wales and Scotland, governed by Labour and the SNP, lag conspicuously behind. Though it’s our relative global position that has improved, the knowledge-rich curriculum in England’s schools has proved more resilient to the overall negative trend in attainment over the past five years. Blair may have prioritised “education, education, education” but it was Gove, amidst rampant budget cuts, who has delivered it.

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Yet, despite this marked improvement, Powell and Burnham criticise those reforms for reducing the value of vocational subjects and narrowing the curriculum. They look at the continued, but decreasing, dominance of private schools in university admissions and job statistics and conclude that the problem must be that they prepare students better for life beyond education. They’re right.

However, the solution they propose – replacing technical awards with new vocational qualifications – puts in jeopardy England’s progress over the past fifteen years. Emphasising vocational rather than academic routes means that some kids will be pushed into qualifications seen as second-rate because of their background. Powell denies the emergence of such a two-track system.

Although the education secretary can control the law, she cannot control opinion. Whether the government regards vocational qualifications as on par with academic GCSEs is beside the point. What matters is what employers, parents and schools think. Inevitably, the subject choices that lead to traditionally working-class occupations (vocational) will be seen as inferior to those that are more conducive to middle-class professions. Britain’s historical problem with class cannot be dismantled in three years.

The question, of course, is whether this new focus on vocational GCSEs will come at the expense of academic education. Powell has promised to protect the gains in maths, English and science. However, given the limited number of GCSEs a child can take, languages and humanities, so crucial for a shared understanding of humanity, are being lined up for the guillotine. It’s also doubtful that Powell really appreciates the value of knowledge-based approaches to learning. She once claimed “what’s the point in regurgitation of knowledge when we all have the knowledge we need at our fingertips?”

The manner in which vocational subjects take over the curriculum will depend heavily on the school. This is part of the problem. Academic subjects, like Latin, are already unavailable in many state schools. How long before some only offer one modern foreign language? Or bin religious studies? Shifting the emphasis to vocational qualifications will further erode the status, and curriculum time, of subjects that are already under threat. Those subjects also offer students more chance of upward mobility.

It’s a regressive, classist move. Far from abolishing class distinctions, it will further entrench them, like grammar schools did many years ago. In the post-war Tripartite system, the grammar school sat alongside the secondary modern and the secondary technical schools: intended to be equal in status. In theory, grammars were a brilliant instrument of social mobility; an engine of aspirational meritocracy. In practice, they have no significant positive effect on social mobility. Their pupils predominantly come from high-attaining, middle-class families.

The attempt to put vocational subjects on an equal footing, like dividing secondary moderns from grammars, is well-intentioned but will ultimately end up the same way. Private schools will continue to stretch their pupils academically, whilst middle-class children in the state sector will still take the academic route either through grammars or high-achieving academies. As always, it is the working class that will lose out - shunted into schools that offer vocational qualifications at the expense of academic ones. This will close off access to leading universities and the best employers.

But it is a solution to a problem that does exist. State schools do not offer enough beyond the curriculum; Powell’s mistake is assuming that vocational qualifications should supplant academic work. Her promotion of oracy and enrichment is much more astute and something private schools have done for years. Their substantially longer school day, which sometimes includes Saturday school, leaves more room for enrichment. They also view extracurricular activities as something done by everyone.

If Labour is serious about broadening the curriculum and ending the disproportionate representation of privately educated people in top jobs, it should focus on this. It won’t be an easy task. Teachers, already underpaid and overstretched, would rightly require far greater compensation and parents would no doubt complain. Yet, if we want to incorporate sport, music and drama into school life as well as equipping students with the skills to engage in the workplace without losing academic excellence, then we must lengthen the school day. Governments can’t bend time.

One thing is for certain, though. Simply replacing access to academic education with vocational qualifications is counterproductive and hurts the working class. Just like grammar schools.

“The internet will be awash with derivative drivel written by authors with pretensions in excess of their quality. Most will use AI improperly, turning it into a regurgitating sycophant. In an overwhelming ocean of mediocrity, how do we find Thus Spoke Zarathustra? The Wealth of Nations? The Aeneid?"

Tom Roxburgh, 2026

Last month, to kick off this series on the rise of Artificial Intelligence, I wrote of the explosion in content that will inevitably occur. This leads us to a significant problem. How do we separate the genius from the mundane? In this essay, the critic steps forth as the professional uniquely positioned to dismiss the sewage and hold aloft the transcendent. Yet, unlike part 1, this is by no means an inevitability.

The Maligned Profession

“It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood, who strives valiantly: who errs and comes up short again and again…”

Theodore Roosevelt, 1910

No one likes the critic. Sitting snootily at a distance from the action, they have the power to make or break a career with the strike of their pen. There is nothing more spine-tinglingly loathsome than a man or woman slouching in judgement, like some spoilt medieval king, and obliterating a man’s life for sheer distaste. It goes against our instincts to allow someone we regard as a failure to take charge of other destinies: for someone without a stake to judge those who dared.

The particular disgust towards the critic stems, I think, from their tremendous power to shape opinion and influence culture. But why the critic, you might ask? Why should we allow this profession to dictate the merits of certain works? And the problem is one of miscommunication rather than disagreement because we already do. Whilst there is an inherent hostility to criticism in culture, particularly popular culture, there is far less resistance in the academic world.

Because a large swathe of academia is criticism. Whether it is of what others have written yesterday, or what Plato wrote two and a half thousand years ago, the academic thrives on response. Even the Greats, whose contributions far exceed their critique, were performing the role of the critic by the simple act of response.

This can take the form of a commentary (Machiavelli’s Discourses on Livy), a direct rebuttal (Nozick’s Anarchy, State and Utopia) or a historiographic critique of previous literature (Nietzsche’s On the Genealogy of Morality). Criticism can take subtler forms too: treating older writers as thinkers worth answering, as Locke did with Hobbes, and, therefore, determining what survives. In responding to some works rather than others, thinkers help establish a canon. The only difference with the AI revolution is that the volume of work makes critics more important, not less.

But why the critic?

I still haven’t answered your question. Even if academia is a form of criticism and we have accepted it for years, it doesn’t necessarily follow that the critic is the premier judge. To make the case, I’m going to look at film criticism - maybe the most contentious and distrusted of all.

Let’s imagine two people. One is the aforementioned film critic and the other a highly intelligent adult who has never watched a film in his life. Who do we think the better judge of the film will be? The novice may have a certain advantage: a freshness, perhaps, and an ability to relate to things beyond the cinema. But the film critic’s knowledge is far broader, leaving him in a much better position to contextualise the motion picture. For the beginner, it’s both the greatest and the worst film ever made.

Okay, Tom, fair enough, but what about the layman who has watched lots of films but not as many as the critic. Surely their opinion is just as valid as the critic’s? Well, no, not in the sense of value. They may have an opinion of the film that more accurately aligns with your own opinion, but their opinion is unquestionably less well-informed. With greater breadth and deeper knowledge of a subject area, the critic is in a better position to evaluate the film and, therefore, their opinion is of more value.

This is not about agreement - critics, after all, disagree vehemently - but about quality of argument. I strongly dispute Pauline Kael’s pan of Raging Bull, for example, but still find a certain insight that would not be there in the everyman’s “don’t like it, it was boring”. It is not that a critic’s opinion is more or less likely to be correct or to agree with you but that their opinion is of a substantially different quality.

So, if that’s the case with film criticism, then the case for the critic of philosophy, politics, history and economics should be a lot easier. These are subjects that require specialist knowledge to understand, even on a basic level. Unlike film, the average Brit is not going to pick up Kant and understand it, even superficially. For these subjects, the need for specialist knowledge is even more stark.

It’s not only specialist knowledge and sheer accumulation of aesthetic experience that the critic holds over the audience, though. They also possess a more sophisticated understanding of the interplay between one text and another, can identify a genuinely original argument and can exercise independent judgement. Most of all, the critic has the professional time and ability to cultivate these things.

The Counterfactual

“Because something is happening
But you don't know what it is
Do you, Mister Jones?”

Bob Dylan, Ballad of a Thin Man

The alternative is much more unpleasant. Imagine the world I described before: a place awash with works of contemptible averageness, the volume of which is simply too large for any human to comprehend, let alone read. Without a filtering mechanism, without quality control, we will be completely overloaded - unable to keep up with the sheer slop produced every day. This is already happening on streaming services, which pump out content at a pace where reflection and curation cannot keep up.

AI would be the obvious alternative. Not beset by the sporadic subjective errors of judgement that sometimes plague a critic, it might prove to be a more consistent arbiter of quality. And I partially concede this: AI would have the ability, given the right prompt, to evaluate the strengths of different works.

Critics, after all, get it wrong. Modernity can pass an old critic by, leaving them lost in the fire of time - just ask Dylan’s Mr Jones. Yet, there is something that AI would be more likely to miss: the immeasurable spark that animates most, if not all, of the great works cannot be reduced to mere words or existing aesthetic criteria. If a human encountered Shakespeare’s work with no current standard to judge it by, the art would lead him to abolish the very standards he relies upon. If AI sat in the Globe, Hamlet would still pass it by.

Unlike with our lone genius who employs AI as a creative tool, this is asking AI to mass-curate. If AI is used in this way, there would be no scope for humans to push back or suggest something different. The predictive nature of LLMs means that good works, maybe even great works, will be found but they will revert to conventionalism. The outsider, the loner, will be lost. Even if AI gets it right ninety-nine times out of one hundred, the one time it matters it will fail.

And that’s why the critic must be indispensable. The quality of their criticism means that even if their opinion is wrong, their review is still valuable. Even if they dismiss the genius, the well-informed critic who acts in good faith will still provide insight, still admire a certain quality of the work. This itself is an important record in the establishment of a canon.

Without the critic, we will struggle to identify the ideas that matter. And if we lose ideas in the clutter, we could lose civilisation.

Criticism Reborn

“Indeed, that’s really what I’ve been doing for the 55 years since I began appearing in print. I always just wanted to bang a drum announcing the greatest shows on earth, the films that constituted the alternate universe for me ever since I could remember.”

Andrew Sarris, New York Observer, 2008

And so the critic must be reborn. Not as the spirited amateur but as a hard, seasoned professional. If we are not to drown in the sea of content, we require a lifeboat and a compass. The critic provides the ability to sift the new from the old, the great from the mundane and the inspired from the worn.

As the rapid democratisation of learning allows genius to spring forth from outside traditional circles, academia’s purpose should be remodelled on the relationship between the artist and the critic. Then, its weaknesses become strengths: the discipline, the reliability, the emphasis on restraint. All those things that hamper originality can serve the critic.

Of course, there will be people who move between the two roles - as there always are - but not nearly as many as now. The critic will need reactive individuality but not radical originality and their greatness will be limited but their influence infinite. And so, the world of ideas will morph and universities will be the guardians of quality, not the engines of transcendence.

But the ideas will live on. And, sooner or later, it is ideas that govern us all.

That is where I will turn next time.

This is the second part of a ten-part series on Artificial Intelligence. The next article will be published on 19/11/2026.

“I had a State to preserve, as well as a State to reform.”

Edmund Burke, A Letter to a Noble Lord, 1796

Of the major policies announced in Andy Burnham’s conference speech, introducing proportional representation (PR) is the least sexy and most consequential - a daring attempt to remake British democracy with the express aim of increasing trust in politics. However, despite what the Prime Minister hopes, proportional representation, no matter the model, will foster distrust.

The case against first-past-the-post (FPTP) is simple. Under our system, major parties win a disproportionately large share of seats whilst smaller parties gain many votes but few seats. As a result, many ballots are “wasted” and we end up with a parliament unrepresentative of the people. For Burnham, the product of this is distrust and alienation from the voting system in particular, and politics in general.

I do not deny the unrepresentative end-result of FPTP, but do question why this means the mechanism itself is wrong. Votes are not “wasted” in the sense they do not count, only in the sense that their candidate did not win. This may make voters feel hopeless or not heard, but it should not breed distrust. They know why their candidate lost and they may think that no one cares about them, but there is no mathematical formula that masks a deception.

Proportional representation, on the other hand, will erode trust by severing the link between voter and representative. In the party list system, which was used for European elections, the electorate is grouped into larger regions spoken for by several different representatives. As a result, accountability is washed away by shared responsibility between representatives and fewer local links, which would likely become regional as opposed to constituency-based. This would also be a significant problem with the Single Transferable Vote system (STV) which elects multiple MPs per constituency, diffusing responsibility.

However, the additional member system (AMS), used in Scotland as well as the London Assembly, would avoid this problem as it combines FPTP with proportional representation. This comes with its own problems, though, as the number of MPs would, according to one model, balloon to over 1,000, which the public would be highly unlikely to accept. Alternatively, it would require a reduction in the number of constituencies which would weaken accountability, albeit in a less extreme way than above.

Leaving the constituency-MP link aside, the relative simplicity of FPTP is a significant advantage at a time when politicians are almost universally distrusted. The voting system, no matter how disproportional, makes sense to the ordinary voter: allocating seats according to a formula, as you would in STV, AMS or party list, is opaque to the layman, and therefore prone to distrust born of misunderstanding.

Proportional representation would not just undermine faith in the democratic process, however, it would also gut any remaining credibility out of parliament itself. We would likely be consigned to routine coalitions; not even Tony Blair, in his pomp, would have won a majority. If Westminster looks indecisive now, imagine the spectacle of Burnham trying to control a Labour Party in revolt, whilst tying together a coalition made up of Ed Davey and Zak Polanski.

The Conservative-Liberal Democrat coalition from 2010-15 is potentially lethal to my argument. The only post-war Westminster example, it was our most stable government after the end of New Labour, lasting the full five years. Since then, we’ve had a succession of short-lived Tory governments and then Starmer’s premiership which survived little over twenty-four months, despite a monstrous majority.

Set amidst this context, perhaps a coalition government wouldn’t be so bad. Yet, the institutional success of the Cameron-Clegg coalition, and therefore its ability to drive policy decisions, was dependent upon several factors that wouldn’t be present in a future move towards proportional representation. Firstly, the coalition relied upon two leaders who prioritised pragmatism over principle, had relative control over their parliamentary parties and were, themselves, ideologically similar. Such historical contingency is unlikely to replicate itself going forwards and certainly not consistently enough to enable stable coalitions. Our political culture of whips, debates and parties, developed over hundreds of years, is inherently hostile to consensual government.

Secondly, the Fixed-term Parliaments Act. This was a piece of legislation passed, by Cameron’s own admission, to reassure the Liberal Democrats that he would not call an early election. Whilst a similar piece of legislation would theoretically require parliament, rather than just Downing Street, to go to the country, the reality would likely be different. We saw this in the absurd situation at the end of 2019 when the government repeatedly tried to dissolve parliament, only to be rebuffed several times. The Fixed-term Parliaments Act was ultimately bypassed through separate legislation. Such episodes deteriorate the very trust in politics we are aiming to restore. Any implementation of PR, therefore, would also require a serious re-thinking of the constitutional framework.

Yet, there is a final argument against proportional representation. Introducing a new voting system signals a carelessness with Britain’s history, traditions and institutions that cannot be calculated in electoral arithmetic or measured in voting surveys. The continuity of the British constitution and the evolving nature of our system is something to be lauded, not condemned. Our current predicament was not caused by our constitution, nor will it be solved by it.

Britain’s traditions of adversarial politics make it a poor fit for proportional representation, in any case. Despite the childish reputation it has attained, adversarial politics fosters innovative ideas and radical policy in a way consensual government cannot. The compromising nature of coalitions could not give rise to an Attlee or a Thatcher because the areas of agreement must be so broad. Nor would it produce a Blair whose ambitions would have outpaced any coalition partners. Instead our coalitions lie within parties. Starmer failed precisely because he could not retain the support of the Labour Party, not because he ran an ‘elective dictatorship’. Change is necessary, but change must be thought through.

This isn’t. Fundamentally rewiring the mother of all parliaments will foster even greater distrust in politics through the obfuscation of the electoral process, subsequent fragile governments and careless constitutional carnage. If Burnham wants to rebuild trust, he should start by using his inherited, and enormous, majority to make the decisions that improve people’s lives. Or he should call an election.

“And even if, which I do not for a moment believe, this island or a large part of it were subjugated and starving, then our Empire beyond the seas, armed and guarded by the British Fleet, would carry on the struggle, until, in God's good time, the New World, with all its power and might, steps forth to the rescue and the liberation of the Old.”

Winston Churchill, June 1940

Andy Burnham has had a busy few months on the global front: sanctioning Israeli settlements on the West Bank, joining Saudi Arabia in bombing Yemeni rebels, and reviewing the Chagos deal. He is now considering rejoining the European Union. Surprisingly, and with haste, something resembling a Burnham doctrine is beginning to emerge. Yet, that doctrine looks increasingly lonely in the modern world - a joyful centrist ode to an environment that existed decades ago.

Starmer’s dogmatic international legalism has been replaced by a nimble statecraft that emphasises projecting values through a display of strength. Yet, Burnham’s assertion of values is anachronistic, adhering to an international environment that no longer exists. The past ten years have seen a rapid disintegration of the post-war international order and a reassertion of expansionist empire-building, even in the West. It would not have been conceivable, pre-Trump, to imagine America invading Greenland or declaring that Canada should be part of the union.

Even in its most brazen realist displays of hard power, America had always maintained the pretence of acting according to moral values. This is no longer the case. Last week, Trump openly talked about annihilating a centuries-old civilisation. It is not the war that should bother you but the language: “annihilation” not “regime change”, “drive them into hell with no chance of survival” not “target the perpetrators”. It is the language of a country hellbent on decimating another power. It is Rome destroying Carthage.

What’s worse about this new American attitude is that it is a display of all the nation’s worst attributes: ignorance, superiority and tastelessness. The problem is not expansionism, per se. It is the manner in which America’s own form of colonialism, through economic and financial means as much as military strength, is exercised. There is little respect for people, civilisation or history. Power is exercised for its own sake.

This rapidly approaching new world requires Britain to think differently. We have a long history of being in the right. From defeating Napoleon and abolishing the slave trade to standing alone against Nazi Germany, it is easy to forget the British Empire achieved admirable good, as well as evil. No, Britain was not perfect. Her empire was often exploitative, murderous and cruel. Yet, alongside this, Britain exported laws, parliaments, constitutions, civil services, education. It wasn’t simply the extractive, soul-sucking parasite that some imagine. Crucially, the size of its empire, controlled by the world’s predominant navy, allowed Britain to enforce a Pax Britannica.

After World War Two, this role shifted to the United States. Britain had been exhausted, financially and militarily, by the war and could no longer hold onto its power. And so, the Western centre of gravity moved from London to Washington. Britain’s predominance had ended. And that was better, for we no longer had an empire enforcing peace but a nation-state encouraging self-determination. No longer. If America continues on the Trumpian path, its displays of power will become increasingly backward-looking and destructive towards civilisation.

So where does our future lie? For a while, I thought it lay in Europe - and so does Burnham, apparently. A united Europe could once more be a great power that brings back a Renaissance humanism to a world descending into a new dark age of dogmatic, ideological fundamentalism. Yet, Europe seems to be taking a different path and one we cannot follow.

As right-wing nationalism sweeps across the old continent, the European Union looks like an increasingly out of place institution: an Americanised, multilateral, impersonal and corporate body that strips life and vitality out of the political process. It is unfit for purpose at a time when France, Germany and Italy are beginning to rediscover their national identity under the old guise of nationalism. A federal Europe is possible but it must be uniquely European.

And we will find ourselves on the outside: not because we chose to but because, in a Europe on the path of nationalism, we simply do not belong. Support for Reform UK has hit its natural, relatively low, ceiling whilst the fringe parties of the ultra-right, like Restore, shout loudly but have no chance of gaining power. Even if this was dramatically reversed, and the UK did take a nationalist turn, it would likely take a different form from that on the continent.

We are the country of Locke and Hume, of empiricism, of the Glorious Revolution, not the Reign of Terror. Our national identity is too separate, too global, too cosmopolitan, to be part of it. Europe’s future is richer and darker: a nationalist backlash against the American-imposed internationalism of the twentieth century.

Britain, therefore, finds itself alone, stranded between Europe and America, with a storied history and an outlook on the world that demands the capability and status to back it up. We’re a Great Power without a sphere of influence. Our soft power is waning even as our hard power has systematically been eroded by successive governments. The Commonwealth is no meaningful successor to the Empire.

The world needs a power like Britain, more than Britain needs the world. We could set up shop, Switzerland-style, in our virtually impregnable island but that would be a betrayal of who we are and what we stand for. Burnham knows this yet his European instinct is misplaced in the continent of tomorrow. Across centuries, the world has had deeply flawed powers, first Britain and then America, prepared to stand up to tyranny and global domination. All nations are better off with a great power ensuring peace than a competitive land-grabbing game of individual quasi-empires. Britain can no longer fulfil this role. America doesn’t want to. It’s the world’s loss.

“Britain is not perfect. It can be better and we will make it so. But it still stands for something worth saving, worth fighting for.”

Andy Burnham, September 2026

For the first time since at least Tony Blair, and maybe Margaret Thatcher, we have a leader with a radical vision for the country that isn’t composed of half-baked marketing slop or clever consulting catchphrases. This isn’t a politician driven by ideas from behind the throne (Theresa May), or by the raw pursuit of power (Boris Johnson, Keir Starmer) or even one who defines themselves as a safe pair of hands (Rishi Sunak). Andy Burnham doesn’t want to be Prime Minister. He wants to be a Great Prime Minister.

His summer “tour” of the country that heralded a thousand social media clips, ranging from “splitting the G” to pontificating about the correct word for “bap”, showcased his folksy charm but his conference speech revealed a gravity of purpose. His critics hated the litany of small, arguably pointless, policies. Like Nero, he had fiddled while Britain burnt. No more.

Whatever you think, he’s no longer fiddling. In pledging to reform the pensions triple-lock to fund a National Care Service, he has grasped the third rail of British politics and risked handing an election to Farage or Badenoch. It is a move of stunning bravery but also significant guile. The triple-lock had to change. Burnham, at least, has used the savings to pay for social care - something that also affects older people.

Thus, the complaint cannot, or at least should not, be made that Burnham is robbing the pensioners to pay for the young, or the disabled, or those on benefits. He’s using it to fund an essential saving for the NHS that will overwhelmingly benefit older members of society. A National Care Service will reduce pressure on hospital beds through fewer ambulance callouts and A&E admissions whilst also improving the level of care for the elderly.

Ironically, the political project closest to Burnham’s in style is Margaret Thatcher’s. A man intent on rolling back the Thatcherite revolution is replicating its radical tendencies. As Thatcher moved to the right, Burnham has shifted to the left. As Thatcher rolled back the frontiers of the state, Burnham wants to re-impose them. As Thatcher dismantled the 1970s, Burnham seeks to re-constitute the post-war settlement.

The biggest difference in the political landscape is the bland banality of the current opposition, which repeat platitudes of various kinds but refuse to meaningfully engage with Britain’s decline. Badenoch likes to be known as the person who “makes tough decisions”, itself a vacuous marketing line, but limits these to playing to her base with benefits cuts, leaving the ECHR and ending Net Zero. Farage, on the other hand, responded to the speech by lambasting the foreign aid budget and immigrants. To quote Bond, “shocking, positively shocking”.

Leaving aside the change to the triple-lock, Burnham also promised greater public control of water companies, electoral reform and a reset with Europe (which has now developed into discussion of rejoining). These are substantial policy announcements that represent a new direction for the country and a fresh battleground for the next election. It may be that Burnham is wrong. His policies may well be bonkers. He could just be a time-travelling nutter who has decided Margaret Thatcher is the Antichrist.

In my view, Burnham’s ideas range from sensible to deeply flawed but his speech had me salivating because of its character. Because he’s serious about changing Britain. And if Britain wants to start taking itself seriously again, Burnham has offered a path. At the moment, it is the only visible path. As the opposition parties repeat banal phrases that fix nought but a campaign slogan, Labour’s leader has stepped forth and announced the slaying of the sacred cow of British politics.

Do not take this as endorsement or criticism. The only thing I endorse is vision, the only thing I condemn is cowardice. Kemi Badenoch may talk about how she makes the hard choices but there’s only one person with a dream of Britain. As Burnham’s road unwinds, there is only one obstacle left. One obstacle before he can unleash his fateful revolution of state, society and economy. A revolution as consequential as Thatcher’s, for better or for worse.

He has to conquer the country…

“But apart from this contemporary mood, the ideas of economists and political philosophers, both when they are right and when they are wrong, are more powerful than is commonly understood. Indeed the world is ruled by little else”

J.M. Keynes, The General Theory of Employment, Interest and Money

The emergence of artificial intelligence means accessing information has become extremely cheap. Even now, it is possible to ask AI to curate reading lists, analyse arguments and review work. As its capabilities increase, it will soon reach a level at which it can perform functions that were once mostly limited to universities. Once this democratisation of learning is complete, self-taught individuals, free from institutional groupthink, can create works of genius that sparkle against the dark mass of mediocrity.

Finding those works is the role of the critic. I shall examine that next month.

The Role of Philosophy, History, Politics etc.

Philosophy, history, politics, political economy, classics: these subjects (which I will label humanities for ease) pose a problem for the educational instrumentalism of our age. Only two weeks ago, Chris McDonald, the Labour minister, launched a fresh offensive for STEM subjects, arguing that they offered “the greatest personal, social and economic value” to the individual. Yet those comments, well-intentioned as they are, betray a deep misunderstanding of the world.

This isn’t to insult science, mathematics or modern languages. The cumulative nature of knowledge, as well as the constraints of the school day, means that STEM, English and MFL are prioritised by schools up and down the land. Practically, that makes sense. We don’t need philosophers like we require doctors nor do we require historians like we need engineers. We cannot perform titration experiments in the kitchen but we can read Thucydides.

The skills and employment prospects that STEM provides make its instrumental economic value self-evident. Less obvious are the advantages of humanities. They cannot be listed as a litany of practical abilities nor as an applicable library of knowledge. Their virtue lies in a holistic conception of humankind; they provide insight into the why and the how. And so we have a critical problem. The foundational subjects for understanding and organising society are also the least essential to the everyday functioning of that society. So they are neglected. It is an issue which extends into higher education.

At University

“You dropped a hundred and fifty grand on an education you coulda picked up for a dollar fifty in late charges at the public library”

Matt Damon, Good Will Hunting

The scene in Good Will Hunting where a Harvard student tries to impress a girl by pretentiously spouting what he had learnt at his alma mater before the self-taught Will Hunting promptly puts him down, illustrates this problem. These subjects are primarily studied by reading and then by writing. The role of the critic first, the creative second. Teaching takes a back seat to self-study; instruction is supplementary.

And I have experience of this. I read Philosophy, Politics and Economics at Oxford. The vast majority consists of reading. There are also optional lectures that are functionally similar to online lecture series run by other institutions. The real point of difference is the tutorial system, where you are rigorously grilled by your tutor, usually with one other student. Most universities have no such system.

There are two advantages conferred by universities that you cannot get from self-study. Firstly, time. With a full-time job, devoting substantial chunks of your life to studying history or philosophy becomes increasingly difficult, unless you have substantial wealth. Secondly, the economic and social status degrees confer. Our Harvard student from Good Will Hunting understood this perfectly. Those interested in the humanities will be shut out of parts of the labour market without the qualifications to signal their economic value.

Of course, universities also provide numerous non-academic advantages: the chance to live away from home in a controlled environment, a wealth of social opportunities, the chance to get involved in societies and clubs. Yet, from a purely intellectual perspective, the marginal advantage of attending university is shrinking. They might provide a curated reading list, a lecture series which you don’t have to find online and the chance for discussion and critical thinking in some kind of seminar format, but the uniqueness of their academic expertise was already fading even without Artificial Intelligence.

With AI the picture is even starker. It is not difficult to see even Oxford’s world-class tutorial system being surpassed by ever-advancing artificial intelligence. How long will it be before an LLM can provide the rigorous cross-examination of an undergraduate tutorial? In this world, the advantages of university will increasingly become lifestyle-related rather than academic.

The Great Thinker

When you imagine the great scholar, the great thinker, the genius, I suspect a certain image comes to mind. Perhaps the Platonic ideal of Immanuel Kant strolling to deliver lectures on a rainy Königsberg morning before his afternoon walk and an evening writing a few pages of A Critique of Pure Reason. Yet, in truth, this is a relatively modern idea.

Plato travelled outside any formal educational apparatus before founding the Academy in Athens. Tacitus wrote The Histories after reaching the height of his political career. Hobbes penned Leviathan whilst in exile tutoring the future Charles II. Marx spent his time researching Das Kapital, not in a university department but in the British Museum. Rousseau was working as a secretary and a musician before winning the essay prize that brought him widespread fame.

One could just as easily provide a list of counterexamples: Aristotle, Aquinas, Hegel, Locke, Smith, Hayek. It would be pointless. The idea is not to describe one as greater than the other or to prove greatness lies in the maverick, not the insider - strangely, it appears remarkably even - but to acknowledge that educational institutions do not have a monopoly on scholarship.

What is required is a means by which scholars can learn. This is exactly why universities are so effective - they provide people with time, resources and interlocutors to learn. Our outsiders also had this. Marx, for example, had access to the British Museum, frequent discussions with Engels, who also supplied him with funds. Crucially, these means are becoming democratised by AI.

The Individual Unleashed

The principal academic advantages of university are increasingly available elsewhere. The concentration of bodies of thought within institutions leads to more homogeneous perspectives. Much of what they offer - discussion, critical analysis, curation - is now also provided by AI. This gap will only narrow as AI gets better and better. If most of what university professors provide is replicable by AI, then they look an awful lot like a typewriter in 1980.

Instead of a standardised institutional experience, AI tailors learning to the individual. Used correctly, it is an intellectual weapon like no other. Not as a writer, but as a tool that recommends, advises and criticises - one which serves as a personalised way of studying and allows the individual to create their own tapestry. The right prompt transforms learning from something handed from above to something emanating from inside the individual. Something powerful, something original, something extraordinary. A radically egalitarian instrument of inequality which lets greatness soar and mediocrity drown in its own abundance.

Just imagine, in some far-off corner of the world, a lone individual typing prompt after prompt into ChatGPT constructing her knowledge of the world from the neglected classics that only interest her, and her own personal AI tutor. As she slowly builds her understanding, not in the flash of a degree but painstakingly over many years, ideas occur to her, ideas that she cannot quite place. Nor can ChatGPT. So she writes and she writes and, instead of the turgid, hierarchical stasis of academia, she has an intellectual partner at her fingertips. Soon, it is finished. And it is a masterpiece! But who picks it up? Who reads it? Who distinguishes it from the AI dreck produced by the masses?

Because most people aren’t geniuses. Even with the help of AI, most people won’t produce works of stunning originality. The internet will be awash with derivative drivel written by authors with pretensions in excess of their quality. Most will use AI improperly, turning it into a regurgitating sycophant. In an overwhelming ocean of mediocrity, how do we find Thus Spoke Zarathustra? The Wealth of Nations? The Aeneid?

That is the role of the critic. That much-maligned profession is invaluable in the coming age. It is there I will turn next month.

This is the first part of a ten-part series on Artificial Intelligence. The next article will be published on 22/10/2026.

Ten years ago, climate change was the issue of our time. No more. The eradication of nature is now a mere distraction as we hurtle towards the middle part of the twenty-first century. Artificial intelligence will be the great Faustian pact of humanity - like the invention of the printing press, it is a critical juncture in our story. For the first series of articles on this publication, then, there really was no other choice.

But why write a series in the first place? Why not just continue with the same free-form approach I adopted at Watchtower Politics?

The constraints of a series on the same topic force a writer to develop an intellectual framework and a connected set of ideas. Each article flows into the next, elucidating another aspect of the world in a way which would not be possible in a less structured setting. It allows you, the reader, to hold me to account. I cannot simply say one thing one week and another thing the next. I do not yet know what my future writing will be. I am unaware how my views will evolve. And so are you.

How the Series Will Work

The AI series will consist of ten articles, which will be published roughly monthly, at four week intervals, on a Thursday. So the first will be published on Thursday 24th September, the second Thursday 22nd October and so on. This introduction is separate from those articles.

The series will be organised in three broad sections. We will begin with ideas and how they are both created by the intellectual and then chosen by the critic. Then, we will transition to institutions and everyday life, examining the effect of AI on political institutions, economics, domestic policy and personal life. Once we have completed this journey, from ideas to the individual, we will look at coercion, violence and power through civil liberties, war and global governance. Finally, we will confront the unique risks of AI itself and its effect on truth.

Why ideas first? There are many places I could start: the stark warnings this week of an AI takeover is clearly the most obvious. Yet, I want to turn to the genesis. Not the genesis of code, but the genesis of ideas. After all, thinkers as disparate as Keynes and Nietzsche have regarded ideas as architects, crafting the world in their image. And AI’s impact on this will be profound.

After that, the subject matter will flow naturally from the way ideas filter down, through curation by the critic and then adoption by the political class, into everyday life, to the use of government, corporate and digital power to constrain individuals, states and nations.

I. Ideas

1. The Intellectual Revolution

2. The Role of the Critic

II. Institutions and Everyday Life

1. Political Institutions

2. The Economy

3. Domestic Policy

4. Personal Lives

III. Power

1. Crime and Civil Liberties

2. Defence and War

3. The International Order

4. Risk, Power and Truth

Links to each article will be added once they are published.

The AI series is monthly, not weekly. If you were worried about the rest of my writing - a new article (probably not AI related) will be published every Thursday on this site. So, if it’s not an AI day, you’ll be in for a surprise!

The entire AI series will remain available, once published, in the AI section of the website.

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