I had a look at Reeves’ Mais Lecture 2026. Here are my notes and links, I have not read all the links yet and so have not drawn conclusions. …
Notes and links
- Reeves’ Mais Lecture 2026, the text at gov.uk, or Reeves at Mais 2026 (Video) from Sky News, they say, “She is expected to say that closer ties with Europe and AI are the biggest opportunities for economic growth in the UK”.
- Rachel Reeves to make new push for greater single-market access, by the FT, an article focussing on the single market comments.
- Reeves restates the government strategy, which is to solve the UK’s productivity crisis through investement; I asked Gemini when such strategies relying on private sector money has occurred as I believe that much of the UK capital markets investment goes abroad. It replied, investment led growth, by gemini.
- An important part of the strategy is to make infrastructure investment easier, the government have issued the following announcement, “A new-approach-to-ensure-regulators-and-regulation-support-growth”.
- UK will win AI race as chancellor sets out economic big choices, a government press release, announcing plans to see the UK becoming first country in the world to commit to rolling out Quantum computers at scale while investing £500 million to back most promising British AI companies; although quantum might be a bit science fiction today. See AI perspectives.
- On energy, they say, Government-to-go-further-and-faster-in-becoming-energy-secure, the Guardian comments, Nuclear-power-generation-uk-deregulation-plans-ed-miliband.
- Reeves speech refers to the Nuclear Regulatory Review 2025 aka the Fingleton Review, again not read, but part of the government’s regulatory simplification process; it seems to envisages more Nukes.
- The government announces a subsidy scheme for high demand business energy customers, a scheme called, BICS; Huge-boost-for-uk-industry-as-government-powers-ahead-with-cuts-to-electricity-costs.
- Despite the fact that Reeves said quite a bit about energy, Nils Pratley criticises the speech for not addressing the cost of energy. (I think she does; I need to talk to an expert.)
- I am of the view that energy generation needs to by cool and renewable. I asked gemini about Govt investment in solar.
- This chart, https://elements.visualcapitalist.com/charted-top-countries-by-electricity-generation/ shows the scale of the problem and includes a quote from Elon Musk, typically messianic, that we can’t generate the electricity to drive the AI chips we plan to build.
- Reeves claims the multiplier effect of increased defence collaboration, and the link comments on Eire, which is non-NATO and EU Northern Europe, we also have the HMG announcement on the latter which is a statement of intent although it hopes to come online in 2027.
- She mentioned the Leeds reforms on capital mobilisation, these seem to be mainly supply side, but we/I need to examine capital adequacy rules.
I have diigo version of the text document, see https://diigo.com/0126icl, at the time of writing there are 33 notes, some quotes, some comments by me.