Keir Starmer's attempts to placate big tech were a disaster. Andy Burnham must take a stand | Beeban Kidron

D uring a recent conversation in the House of Lords, a former senior US government official told me that “democracy was broken”. When I asked why, they pointed to research that showed that governments – regardless of party – represent the interests of the wealthy and not the people who vote for them. Nowhere is this more visible than with the tech lobby, which has effectively thwarted all attempts to hold the sector to account, while at the same time embedding its services into the heart of the state and our personal lives. Powerful interests, aided by seemingly limitless cash fund thinktanks, pay for friendly research and deploy armies of lawyers, consultants, preferred academics, thinkers and government relations professionals who spin a tale in which technology is both too complicated to regulate easily and too important to refuse. What they want isn’t a world without regulation, but one in which big tech itself writes the rules. And while the lobby problem might have started in the US , where most tech firms are based, it has not stayed there. Looking at the past two years of UK tech policy, we can see the results of lobbying in action. In opposition, Labour was at the forefront of efforts to effectively protect children online. It made a commitment to protect creative copyright and workers whose jobs might be disrupted or displaced by technology. …