Is Rishi’s tech revolution all it’s cracked up to be?

Social media users were treated to a mysterious post this morning. Just before lunchtime, the Prime Minister tweeted out a stylish QR code featuring the number ‘10’ at its centre. The post – captioned ‘Innovation means growth’, along with a phone emoji – was entirely without context.

Keen to figure out what ‘innovation’ and ‘growth’ the PM was referring to, Steerpike thought he’d have a go at cracking this particular code. However, Mr S soon encountered the first stumbling block in Sunak’s bright idea. As many Twitter users were quick to point out, it turns out that to access whatever lies behind the code, you need two devices: one to display the QR code, and another to scan it with. Doh!

Undeterred, Mr S fired up his laptop and scanned the code. A pop up appeared asking to open the mysterious ‘Adobe Aero’ interactive augmented reality app. Still no explanatory information – not a virus, surely?  A text box declaring the ‘Prime Minister’s Announcement’ appeared in place of the QR code, complete with a presentation worthy of GCSE Science flashed up. 

We’re talking multicoloured fonts, word art, text spinning and floating from the top to the bottom of the screen – all complete with a clip art cartoon robot and DNA strand, of course. ‘£250 million investment in AI, Quantum and Engineering Biology makes us science superpower by 2030 and creates jobs, economic growth for people of the UK (sic),’ it declared. Having made it to the end, the presentation gave way to a government press release. Here, it became clear the Prime Minister was using a bit of tech wizardry to launch the government’s plan to ‘cement the UK’s place as a science and technology superpower by 2030’.

All in all, Mr Steerpike must confess that the ‘innovation’ element of Sunak’s quirky QR stunt was lost on him. If the number of amused and confused comments under the PM’s post are anything to go by, he’s not the only one. One can only hope that the Tories’ plan to make the UK a science superpower involves a great deal less head scratching than this…