The AI revolution is coming for Westminster’s next generation

LONDON — The robots are coming for us all — even the parliamentary researchers.

British politicians — and the industries seeking to influence them — are increasingly embracing artificial intelligence tools in a bid to make their jobs easier. 

But the rise of the emerging tech is prompting big questions about the output and job security of young people working in politics — and the vital ladder into the world of Westminster their entry-level gigs provide.

“Across the whole of public affairs, you’ll be able to write and communicate better. I think there’s a positive here,” said Peter Heneghan, a former No. 10 deputy digital communications director and now an AI advocate in the public affairs world. 

“The negative side of that is there will be a lot of roles that go alongside it,” he added. “It’s inevitable.” 

Politicians and the people supporting them are already jumping on AI to help write everything from books, speeches and media briefings to policy proposals and responses to constituency casework. 

In public affairs, it’s already proving useful for all manner of run-of-the-mill jobs, including drafting strategies, press releases, communiqués, timelines and media monitoring. 

It’s cutting the need to trawl through large documents like Hansard — the official record of the British parliament — or Westminster’s register of all-party parliamentary groups, a frequent source of influence for lobbyists. 

Both sources have hundreds of pages added in each routine update — and entry-level staffers can often be found combing them for insight to brief their bosses or clients. 

So far, British officialdom is leaning into the trend. The government’s own AI incubator has even created “Parlex,” a research tool leting anybody with a government email address examine a parliamentarian’s stated position on even the most minor issues in little to no time. 

Proponents argue these tools will free up people working in politics to do the kind of work AI simply can’t. 

But there are frustrations too.  

The only sanctioned AI tool for the majority of parliamentary work, as outlined in House of Commons guidance, is Microsoft’s Copilot, which the government has licensed for internal use. The use of other chatbots — including ChatGPT, Elon Musk’s Grok, and Claude — is still frequent in parliament, however, amid some grumbling about the official offering. 

In June last year, one MP included in a trial emailed the Parliamentary Digital Service — which oversees tech in the Commons — to fume that they “do not want my staff to spend time testing Copilot when the productivity tools are not those that we want or need,” according to correspondence obtained under freedom of information by POLITICO Pro. 

Robots talking to robots 

Parliamentarians in the digital age are already inundated with correspondence over email. And artificial intelligence could turn that deluge into an unmanageable flood. 

AI-generated email campaigns are now a frequent bugbear for MPs’ offices, with staff feeling pressured to respond to more and more material of a lower and lower quality. One person working in public affairs called it “slop campaigning.” 

Heneghan suggests that the “sheer volume” of constituency correspondence that MPs are now getting — and the need to sift through it and reply — means the future of interacting with parliamentarians could become “AI talking to AI.” It would, he says, be “awful” for an already record-low trust in politicians. 

Tom Hashemi, the boss of comms consultancy Cast from Clay, echoed that concern. “It’s almost insulting to the point of democracy. MPs are there to respond to genuine constituent concerns, not to have to spend hours of their time responding to AI-generated messages.” 

He added that, in his own conversations with ministers and MPs, “they always say those campaigns” — labelled “clicktivism” by Labour MP Mike Reader — “don’t work.” 

One parliamentary staffer said: “I can tell that now lots of the email campaigns [by charities] are written by AI — the ones that we get in — whereas before they weren’t. They want it to seem like lots of people are, so they use AI to change the subject lines in the first line of the email very slightly, and the language is all bizarre.” 

Squeeze on jobs

AI’s widening use in politics comes amid an increasingly difficult job market for U.K. graduates across the board. 

Heneghan suggests there will be a “massive squeeze” on junior jobs available for people working in public affairs, which he argues represents a “double-edged sword” in that menial tasks can be performed more efficiently — while the gains that young people themselves could make from performing them will also be lost. 

Prospective job losses will, he predicts, go further than just junior level jobs, with roles for middle managers, human resources, sales and more all being affected. 

Meanwhile, Hashemi suggests a route for public affairs firms to continue to expand would be to train new hires to use AI, saying the tech will “affect junior public affairs jobs in firms that don’t adapt to using it and integrating it.” 

As trivial as these jobs can seem, many a high-flying politician or adviser got their start shifting around a lot of paper. None other than the prime minister’s chief of staff Morgan McSweeney, for example, got his start in Labour’s headquarters entering data into spin doctor Peter Mandelson’s famed “Excalibur” rebuttal machine. 

Current parliamentary aides expressed less concern that AI is coming for them just yet. 

Almost all those POLITICO spoke to in parliament said they wouldn’t use AI to write speeches for their bosses, because it is too easy to spot. 

However, a Conservative adviser said they imagined junior staffers could become “checkers” of work as opposed to creators of it, due to the ease of asking AI to generate a first pass at materials. 

Meanwhile, a second parliamentary staffer said: “It’s like an aid. I don’t think it can replace jobs yet.” 

AI’s one attempt to imitate an MP has so far have been widely derided. Labour MP Mark Sewards became the first parliamentarian to create an AI version of himself that constituents could speak to at any hour — to mixed results. It garbled a Guardian reporter’s Northern accent into unintelligibility, and offered relationship advice, alongside producing a deficient haiku about Nigel Farage to PoliticsHome. 

That might be the case right now. But as AI continues to develop at breakneck pace, it could soon seem like child’s play.