This week both parties have been attempting to manage expectations ahead of the imminent local elections. The Secretary of State for Transport Mark Harper has been reiterating the worst-case prediction that the Conservatives could lose up to 1000 seats. But Keir Starmer told Sophy Ridge he thought the Conservatives should be making ‘significant gains’, given their result in the last local elections in 2019 was their second worst ever:
‘Are you embarrassed when you look at that map?’
Mark Harper was questioned by Laura Kuenssberg over his record with the HS2 rail project, which has been plagued by soaring costs and delays. She asked whether the railway would end up being a fraction of what was originally planned, but Harper insisted the government was still committed to connecting Manchester to central London:
Shabana Mahmood – building homes ‘the only way around the problem’
And with rents soaring, Green Party co-leader Adrian Ramsay told Kuenssberg that a freeze on rents was necessary to deal with the crisis. But Labour’s campaign coordinator Shabana Mahmood insisted that freezing rent would only be a temporary help, and that their plan to prioritise the building of new homes was the only way to fix the problem long-term:
Green Party opposing local solar farm proposals
Laura Kuenssberg asked Adrian Ramsay whether examples of the Green Party opposing local solar initiatives showed some double standards. Ramsay said that you needed to look at the full impact of each proposal, and was adamant that his party were fully behind more renewable energy of all kinds:
AI system are developing ‘faster than our ability to control them’
And finally, AI continues to be a hot topic, with government tech advisor Matt Clifford telling Kuenssberg that the vast potential of AI was both exciting and frightening. A new government AI taskforce was announced this week to invest in the country’s capabilities in the space, but Clifford said more investment was needed in technology to make AI safe:
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