Britain has a problem.

The Government needs to find billions of pounds to balance the nation’s finances, with figures around £24 billion now being discussed as the scale of the challenge.

What is the political response?

Tax more.

Tax banks. Tax wealth. Tax property. Tax investments. Reduce reliefs. Cut spending.

The argument then becomes about who should pay.

 

Perhaps we are asking the wrong question.

What if we asked AI to solve the problem?

Not to run the country.

Not to replace Parliament.

Not to decide what sort of society Britain should be.

To answer a much more interesting question:

Given the economic problems Britain faces, what combination of policies would produce the best possible outcome for the country over the next 10, 15 or 20 years?

We now have technology capable of analysing an extraordinary amount of information and examining relationships between variables at a scale that humans simply cannot replicate.

So why aren’t we using it to tackle one of the most complicated problems we face

 

Imagine giving AI the whole problem

Imagine giving an independent AI economic system access to the UK’s economic data.

Tax receipts.

Government spending.

Debt.

Interest costs.

Productivity.

Business investment.

Employment.

Wages.

Housing.

Planning.

Demographics.

Energy.

Infrastructure.

Healthcare.

Welfare.

Education.

And international comparisons.

 

Then give it a clearly defined objective:

Improve Britain’s long-term economic position while maintaining sustainable public finances and improving living standards!

 

Instead of asking:

“How can we raise £24 billion?”

we ask:

“What combination of policies gives Britain the best chance of achieving this?”

That is a completely different question.

 

It could test thousands of possibilities

At the moment, political debate tends to revolve around a relatively small number of ideas.

Increase this tax.

Reduce that spending.

Change this allowance.

Introduce a new levy.

Increase borrowing.

Cut borrowing.

But these policies don’t operate independently. They interact with one another. An increase in capital gains tax, for example, might raise additional revenue.

But what happens next?

Do people change their investment behaviour?

Do they hold assets for longer?

Do businesses restructure?

Does investment fall?

Do entrepreneurs become less willing to start businesses?

Do wealthy individuals change their residency?

Does the tax base become smaller?

What does that eventually do to GDP and future tax receipts?

 

The immediate tax calculation might say:

“This raises £5 billion.” but the real economic question is:

“What does it do to the economy over the next ten years?”

That is where AI could potentially change the way governments make decisions.

 

What if the AI found a better answer?

Let’s take the current £24 billion problem.

Imagine the AI examines thousands of possible combinations of taxation, spending and economic reform.

It might conclude that simply increasing taxes would raise £24 billion relatively quickly—but reduce investment and economic growth sufficiently that Britain would be worse off in the longer term.

It might find another combination:

    £6 billion of genuine government efficiency savings

    £4 billion from reforming poorly designed tax reliefs

    £3 billion from welfare and employment reforms

    £3 billion from additional financial-sector taxation

    £8 billion generated over time through higher economic growth, investment and productivity.

 

Perhaps that combination produces a stronger economy, higher wages and greater tax receipts than simply imposing £24 billion of new taxes.

Or perhaps it doesn’t. That’s the point. We wouldn’t have to guess. We could ask the machine to test it.

 

AI shouldn’t decide what Britain values

 

There is an important distinction here. I am not suggesting that we hand the country over to an algorithm.

AI cannot decide whether Britain should prioritise equality over economic growth.

It cannot decide how much we should spend on healthcare compared with defence.

It cannot decide what level of taxation is morally acceptable.

Those are democratic decisions.

Parliament should determine the objectives.

AI should help determine the consequences.

In simple terms:

Democracy decides where we want to go.

AI helps us work out the best way of getting there.

That distinction is crucial.

It should be independent of political parties

This is where the idea becomes particularly interesting.

Imagine Labour, Conservative, Liberal Democrat and Reform politicians all having access to exactly the same independent economic AI.

They could each put their policies into the system.

The AI would then model their likely consequences using the same underlying data and methodology.

 

If Labour says:

“This policy will raise £20 billion.”

and another party says:

 

“No, it will cost £5 billion.”

 

The question becomes:

Which assumptions are different?

The parties could still disagree.

But the economic analysis would be much harder to manipulate.

There would be a common analytical foundation.

 

What if the AI says the government is wrong?

 

This is where I think the idea becomes genuinely radical. Imagine an independent system tells a government:

“Your proposed tax increase will raise £10 billion over five years, but is likely to reduce investment, productivity and long-term tax receipts. Alternative policies could achieve the same fiscal objective with considerably less economic damage.”

Should the government be forced to obey?

No.

The government is elected but it should have to explain why it is rejecting the evidence. That would actually strengthen democracy.

Politicians could say:

“We accept that this policy has an economic cost, but we believe the social benefits justify it.”

That’s a perfectly legitimate political argument.

What would be much harder to justify is simply pretending that the economic consequences don’t exist.

Britain has already taken the first step

This isn’t as futuristic as it might sound.

The UK Government has already established an AI Economics Institute, jointly between HM Treasury and the Department for Science, Innovation and Technology :

https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/introducing-the-ai-economics-institute/introducing-the-ai-economics-institute

Its purpose includes developing economic models, data and scenarios to understand how AI is affecting the economy and to improve economic policymaking.

 

So Britain has already recognised that AI and economics belong together.

The question is whether we should go further.

What if, rather than simply using AI to understand the economy, we used it to systematically test alternative economic policies before implementing them?

What if we built a permanent, independent national economic intelligence system?

 

An AI economic “flight simulator”

Perhaps the easiest way to understand the idea is to think about a flight simulator.

A pilot doesn’t wait until the plane is in the air to discover what happens when they pull the controls in a particular direction.

They train in a simulated environment.

Governments could do something similar with economic policy.

Before introducing a major tax change, spending programme, housing policy or regulatory reform, the government could ask:

What happens if we do this?

And then:

What happens if we don’t?

And:

What happens if we do something else instead?

The system could model thousands of scenarios.

It could identify the policies that appear most robust.

It could show where the uncertainties lie.

It could tell politicians:

“These are the consequences you should expect.”

That would be enormously valuable.

 

It could change the nature of politics

Imagine every major Budget being accompanied by something like this:

Government proposal

Policy: Increase tax X.

Expected revenue: £X billion.

10-year GDP impact: -X%.

Investment impact: -X%.

Employment impact: +/−X.

Debt impact: -X%.

Alternative policy: Planning reform + infrastructure investment.

Expected 10-year GDP impact: +X%.

Risk range: X–X%.

The public would be able to see not just what politicians propose, but the likely consequences of the alternatives.

Political debate could then move away from:

“Labour says this.”

“The Conservatives say that.”

and towards:

“Which outcome do we actually want?” That would be a very different kind of politics.

 

It wouldn’t have to start with the whole economy The Government could test the idea.

Give an independent AI economic system one problem:

How can Britain improve its fiscal position by £24 billion while maximising long-term economic growth and living standards? Ask it to produce 100 possible strategies.

Then have independent economists, universities and other AI systems challenge the results. If the exercise produces genuinely better options than conventional policymaking, expand it.

If it doesn’t, we’ve learned something valuable at relatively little cost.

There is a bigger prize than £24 billion

The £24 billion is simply the immediate problem.

The bigger opportunity is productivity.

Britain’s economic problem isn’t just that the Government needs to raise more money. It is that the economy needs to become more productive.

More productive businesses.

More investment.

More houses.

Better infrastructure.

More efficient public services.

Higher wages.

Lower costs.

More economic growth.

A bigger economy makes almost every fiscal problem easier.

And AI could potentially help identify the combination of policies most likely to produce that growth.

 

We don’t need an AI government

In fact, I think the phrase “AI government” is misleading. What Britain might need is something much more useful:

An AI economic intelligence system that makes it much harder for governments to make decisions without understanding their consequences.

The politicians remain in charge.

Parliament remains sovereign.

The public remains the ultimate authority.

But governments would have access to a much more powerful analytical tool. And importantly, the system would be independent of political parties.

Labour would use it.

The Conservatives would use it.

Reform would use it.

The Liberal Democrats would use it.

And, potentially, the public could use it too.

 

What if Britain became the first?

Britain has a remarkable opportunity.

We have world-class universities, financial markets, economists, technology companies and a sophisticated civil service. 

We have already established an AI Economics Institute.

We could now take the next step.

We could attempt something that, as far as I am aware, no major democracy has yet fully implemented:

A genuinely independent AI system designed to test and compare the economic consequences of government policy before those policies are implemented. It wouldn’t guarantee that governments made the right decisions.

AI can be wrong.

Economic forecasts can be wrong.

There will always be genuine disagreements about what constitutes a good society, but wouldn’t it be better to make those decisions with more information rather than less?

Wouldn’t it be better to know that an alternative policy was likely to produce a better result before committing billions of pounds? and wouldn’t it be better if every political party had access to the same evidence?

 

Perhaps the question isn’t whether AI should run Britain.

Perhaps the question is:

Why wouldn’t we use the most powerful analytical technology ever developed to help us run Britain better?

We don’t have to surrender democracy to AI.

We could do something much more interesting.

We could use AI to make democracy better informed.

 

And perhaps the £24 billion problem is the perfect place to start.

Research :

https://inomics.com/news/uk-government-launches-ai-economics-institute-1554110

"The UK government has established the AI Economics Institute (AIEI) to analyze the economic effects of artificial intelligence (AI) and inform policymaking, ensuring equitable growth amidst AI advancements.The AI Economics Institute is stated to be the first government-backed research institution of its kind in the world.Announced on the UK government's official website, the AIEI aims to build a robust evidence base to assess AI's impacts on productivity, labor markets, and overall economic growth.The government acknowledges that while AI presents extraordinary opportunities for increased productivity and innovation, it also poses risks as the economy evolves. By establishing the AIEI, the government intends to proactively manage these challenges and ensure that the benefits of AI development are shared across society.The AIEI will focus on creating analytical frameworks and data infrastructures necessary for rigorous assessments of AI's economic impacts. This includes evaluating the potential distribution of AI gains among different demographics, regions, and sectors.Under the leadership of Professor Simon Johnson, a Nobel Prize-winning economist and former Chief Economist at the IMF, the Institute will work closely with major tech firms such as Google, Microsoft, OpenAI, and Anthropic. In addition to collaborating with industry leaders, the AIEI will engage with academia and civil society to inform its research and ensure that it addresses pressing policy questions. The Institute is poised to play a vital role in shaping UK governmental strategies regarding AI's evolution."

About Michael Morris Estate Agents

Established in 1994, Michael Morris Estate Agents has over 30 years' experience serving Finsbury Park, N4 and the surrounding areas. We provide expert advice on property sales, lettings and property management, including valuations and market appraisals.

 

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