Almost a year into Labour’s tenure, the mood across Britain’s tech scene is utterly divided. On one hand, we’ve seen a refreshing sense of urgency around AI, digital infrastructure, and upskilling. On the other hand, there are signs that we’re still stuck in old patterns, especially when it comes to where and how our technology foundations are built.

I’ve spent over 20 years building cloud platforms in the UK. I believe wholeheartedly in this country’s potential to lead on innovation, talent, and, most importantly, sovereignty. So while I welcome the ambition in much of Labour’s agenda, it’s hard to ignore the inconsistencies that threaten to undermine that vision.

Here’s my personal take on what’s working and where we need to make some changes.

What Labour got right: 

AI Opportunities Action Plan

The AI Opportunities Plan is a step in the right direction. It moves the conversation away from abstract hype and toward practical innovation, focusing on how AI can improve everyday services like healthcare and scientific research.

Equally important is the tone it sets. The Labour government has consciously framed AI as a national responsibility. The plan signals a shift toward considered growth: recognising that progress isn’t just about speed or scale, but about purpose, safety, and long-term public value.

It’s encouraging to see the UK stepping up with an ambitious and grounded approach to AI. It shows a willingness to lead, not just in capability, but in how we shape AI to serve people, not the other way around.

Spending review 2025: real investment in AI compute

Labour’s £86 billion pledge to modernise government IT and support AI adoption is long overdue. Decades of technical debt have made transformation in areas like the NHS, HMRC, and local councils painfully slow. This investment signals an understanding that capability starts with reliable, flexible infrastructure.

But scale alone doesn’t guarantee progress. If that money flows into the same legacy systems or gets tied up in multi-year deals with foreign hyperscalers, we’re just reshuffling dependency. True transformation means investing in systems that are interoperable, auditable, and locally accountable.

With Trump’s tariffs casting an uncomfortable spotlight on just how dependent we’ve become on US Big Tech, the UK now has a real opportunity to carve out a model of its own. One that’s pro-innovation but also grounded in resilience. This level of investment is a big win for the UK’s tech sector, but the next phase of spending must prioritise infrastructure we can shape and trust.

NVIDIA skills partnership: closing the talent gap

Another high point has been the government’s effort to close the compute and skills gap, most notably through its recent partnership with NVIDIA, announced at London Tech Week. Combining high-performance data centres with AI engineering education is exactly what’s needed to build real capability.

This initiative is a smart step toward closing the compute and talent gap. By giving UK developers hands-on access to accelerated computing resources and training in areas like model development and deployment, we’re strengthening the pipeline from innovation to impact.

Where Labour fell short:

Hyperscale lock-in: The HRMC contract

The recent HMRC cloud tender, reportedly worth £500 million, was a sobering moment. Despite all the rhetoric around digital sovereignty, the government appears poised to hand control of one of its most critical systems to a single, US-based provider under a 10-year contract.

Ten years is an eternity in tech. The industry has gone from ChatGPT 3 to GPT-4o in 18 months. Locking into one vendor, under one legal regime, for a decade undermines the very principles Labour claims to support. It introduces long-term risk and strips the UK of flexibility at a time when geopolitical tensions are more volatile than ever.

When even the Competition and Markets Authority is flagging concerns about the lack of competition in the cloud market, we need to be asking: why aren’t British providers getting a fair shot?

DSIT overseas cloud guidance: A damaging message to UK tech

Earlier this year, the UK’s Department for Science, Innovation and Technology (DSIT) issued guidance suggesting that overseas cloud platforms should be the default choice for public sector projects. Their rationale was essentially that they offer better scalability and innovation.

That argument might have held in 2015, but it doesn’t today. The UK now boasts a thriving ecosystem of cloud companies offering secure, scalable alternatives to the Big Three. Choosing foreign platforms by default sends the wrong message, not just to British providers, but to the investors and engineers we’re trying to keep here.

This guidance is also out of step with broader trends. Across Europe, regulators are doubling down on digital sovereignty. In the US, concerns about the concentration of power in the hands of a few cloud giants are being taken seriously. Yet here in the UK, we’re still encouraging public bodies to send taxpayer-funded workloads overseas. It’s short-sighted and, frankly, unnecessary.

No clear cloud sovereignty framework

Perhaps the most frustrating gap is the absence of a concrete framework for what data sovereignty actually means in the UK. We hear the term often, but without clear criteria for jurisdiction, transparency, or even architectural independence, it remains a purely abstract term.

France andGermany have both moved to define and enforce standards for public sector cloud usage. Meanwhile, the UK risks drifting, relying on a patchwork of procurement decisions rather than a coherent national strategy.

Without leadership from the top, departments will continue to make decisions based on price tags and short-term convenience. That’s a recipe for fragmentation and future regret. We need a clear, enforceable standard that prioritises trust and resilience.

Final thoughts

Labour has made some encouraging early moves, particularly around AI investment and skills. But if we want those efforts to deliver lasting impact, they need to be backed by something more ambitious: an infrastructure strategy that treats cloud not as a commodity, but as critical national infrastructure.

We don’t need to close ourselves off from the world. Openness has always been one of the UK tech sector’s strengths. But we do need to stop building the foundations of our digital economy on platforms we can’t fully control.

Because the reality is, we’ve got the talent. We’ve got the innovation. We’ve got the capability to lead. What we need now is the political confidence and monetary investment to back that. With the Industrial Strategy expected next month, there’s still time for Labour to show it’s serious about building a sovereign, future-ready tech sector. I hope they take it.