The cop-out answer is, ‘Yes there is, but we mostly don’t know yet what it will be.’ So this post is more about the qualities of books and articles that others are writing, but with a political spin.

For me, and many others, AI will change society as profoundly as did the steam engine and the electricity grid. This anticipation has led to boosterism and to a bandwagon of snake oil applications. A few of the more thoughtful commentators are reminding us of the old adage, ‘when the gold rush starts, sell shovels.’

Currently I am ploughing through a number of the better AI textbooks. And there is are many books out there which are, in my view, no more than paperback versions of clickbait. AI and Home Decorating – I’ve just made that up, but you get the idea. Currently I trawl the bookshops near to universities in London, where some have created new shelved sections for AI books, most of which can be readily skipped over.

AI books are also out of date before they are printed, but that said, for me the best in class at the moment is ‘Mastering AI’ by Jeremy Khan (2024), written by a tech journalist who knows (a) tech and (b) how to write about tech for the politically smart generalist.

Because my bachelors degree was in Computation I’m also reading a translation of a German textbook, which is good, but not for a general audience.

I would suggest that, if you want to follow AI developments you need to read political economists as well – the dark doings of tech bros in Silicon Valley and Seattle will shape it as much as the raw science will.

I also humbly suggest that people with a humanities background are at a disadvantage currently in terms of AI. My masters degree was in the humanities, so I hope this is taken in the spirit it was intended. I can imagine some universities where the humanities profs are glaring out of their windows at the sciences block, and committees are busy fixing last year’s problem.

I guess a wider issue is, how best can analogue staff teach a born-digital generation. For example, the Elicit website uses AI to help postgraduate researchers do what I would still call a literature review, and to share their latest papers with other researchers. And embedded AI will probably reach a point soon when it is no longer worth commenting on. For example, we don’t say that cars or washing machines or hair dryers have embedded electricity.

On the social and environmental impacts of AI companies – such as demand for power and cooling, trawling of intellectual property without permission, job displacements – I think most people argue backwards from whether they like (or worship) tech or not.

The pro side are saying, everything will be fixed and these are just teething problems.

The anti side are saying, it will add to inequality and exclusion, another aspect of creative work in society being enclosed and strip mined for profit by the tech bros. For example, you can imagine that somewhere in a garage in Hollywood is a geek or two working on an app that turns a 200-word prompt into 90 minutes of film, ready for viewing.

Jeremy Khan covers these pro and anti points in detail and without boosterism, in my view. His conclusion, which I paraphrase here, is that the future path of AI will continue to throw up some surprises, but how we deal with all this is a political choice where governments around the world are struggling to regulate tech companies, and tech companies are always trying to ‘innovate’ to evade laws and taxes written for an earlier age.

You might call it unregulated capitalism.

The political aftershocks of Trump 2.0 are still in force, and any consensus will have to wait until the acrimony and blame has receded. My sense is that in the USA it will cause an entire generation of politicians to be retired from the stage. And they probably won’t leave holding hands. Expect books.

But I think the shock requires more than a change of personnel or even a generational clear out.

What Trump 2.0 has shown us, along with Project 2025 etc, is that the extreme right has been playing a very long game, from packing the US Supreme Court to the Tea Party insurrections within the Republican Party. In hindsight they were doing what the European New Left in the 1960s called, The Long March Through the Institutions, taking a leaf out of the writings of Gramsci and Italian Marxism.

But sixty years later, left wing politics seems to have retreated from an analysis of how to best win, keep and use institutional power. Instead it feels at times that the Left is most comfortable within the personal space of identity – as if the personal is political has become, only the personal is political. In this narrative we just become consumers of the services of the state where we have rights to be enjoyed, but we forget we could also gain power to change them. At worst, our politics can become one of personalities and identities above policies.

Not to be too gloomy, there needs to be some hope for a better world. But perhaps for the Left we need to find a way to synthesise the newer thinking around identity with the older thinking about the state and institutional power.

Currently any political discussions in the UK on the power of the state are focused on terms such as productivity, efficiency and even league tables. Perhaps the main lesson from Trump 2.0 is that we need more impactful plans that begin to use institutional power for income and wealth fairness, for ending destitution, and for sustainable living. A long march, comrades.

After the previous government scrapped plans for the HS2 railway to go north of Birmingham, the current government has recently announced that it will look at new plans to reinstate a Manchester-Birmingham leg which would cost less, plans which the transport secretary Louise Haigh MP called “perfectly viable”. (Financial Times, 9 Nov). A decision is said to be due in Spring 2025.

The moniker HS3 is already earmarked for the transpennine Liverpool-Manchester-Leeds-Hull upgrade, much overdue, so perhaps the Manchester-Birmingham leg will be known as HS4.

Twelve years ago I published a pro bono business plan to show how a Manchester-Paris train service could be achieved using existing rail systems and trains in use. I still believe this is possible, and with some careful planning the proposed HS4 Manchester-Birmingham leg can play its part.

The key issue remains the three different signalling systems, which are:

• HS1 – this uses the French TVM-430 system (in cab).
• HS2 – this will use the European Train Control System (ETCS) at Level 2 (in cab).
  • HS3 and HS4 – these will need to be ETCS for ease of through services.
• Conventional Rail – this uses trackside visual signalling (outside cab).

As well as the signalling system for HS4, the other significant design choices are maximum running speed, and whether to rely on tilting trains or not. Once these design choices are known, the trains can be ordered or modified.

I would add a further consideration, that the trains should be built to be compatible with Channel Tunnel safety rules, especially if these align with UK safety rules for high-speed tunnels.

A good decision has been announced in the recent Budget to extend HS2 by tunnels in north London from Old Oak Common to terminate at Euston, but the connection to HS1 at St Pancras still means using local conventional rail near to the two stations, probably the busy North London Line (aka London Overground).

Whether there is enough political capital available for the tunnels to run on to St Pancras is for another day, but it would open the UK outside of London to international rail services in a more sensible way. The design at St Pancras should be for through platforms to run on to HS1 and to the Channel Tunnel, not terminus platforms.

In railways it seems the political maxim remains true, we eventually do the right thing, after exhausting all other options. (Abba Eban, 1967, but often mis-attributed to Churchill)

What might be the implications for the UK of the second Trump presidency?

Many government departments and thinktanks will be drinking the strong coffee this morning as they ponder the implications.

For what it is worth, probably:

1 – more refugees from Eastern Europe, starting with Ukraine

2 – more rightwing regimes being elected in EU countries in the coming years

3 – trade with China becoming more volatile

4 – world powers realigned around (a) authoritarian, (b) western liberal, (c) what used to be called the non-aligned South

5 – soft power overseas becoming more important.

On the first point, most refugees are working age people, some with children, both much needed in the ageing UK, so the priority task will be to manage community cohesion and integration, possibly with a focus on language skills and training.

On points 2, 4 and 5 we might begin to see the political, economic and cultural advantages of a more internationalist agenda.

Fingers crossed.