Labour Party Spends £1 Million A Month Using AI To Explain Why AI Will Destroy Workers
Westminster Discovers The Future Is Terrible, But Terribly Convenient
Labour warns AI will replace workers, then commissions AI to replace the intern who was drafting warnings about AI replacing workers.
Sam Altman reveals OpenAI’s top token spender burns through 100 billion tokens a month, which Labour reportedly described as “rather modest, actually — we do that before the morning briefing.”
The party spends £1 million monthly teaching algorithms to say “working families” with the appropriate level of moistened sincerity.
Every anti-AI speech in the Commons now opens with, “As ChatGPT so wisely put it in our briefing notes this morning…”
The press office insists automation is a grave threat to British workers, unless it is producing 900 rebuttals before elevenses.
LONDON — The Labour Party has entered what Downing Street communications staff are calling a new era of technological progressivism, characterised chiefly by spending £1 million a month on AI-generated press releases explaining, at considerable length, why AI will annihilate the British worker, undermine collective dignity, and quite possibly convince the photocopier it has a legitimate grievance.
The row follows remarks by OpenAI chief executive Sam Altman, who disclosed that his company’s most prolific internal user burns through approximately 100 billion tokens a month, whilst AI costs have become “a huge issue” for organisations at scale. Westminster insiders were swift to clarify that Labour’s expenditure is categorically different, inasmuch as their AI system possesses genuine empathy, a valid Civil Service lanyard, and has been programmed to mention the NHS no fewer than once per forty-seven seconds.
The Press Release That Made the Press Officer Redundant
A senior party official — speaking anonymously, from behind a recycled-paper partition in a co-working space in Holborn — confirmed that Labour’s AI now produces a full daily bulletin of statements, including: “AI represents an existential threat to working people,” “Robust regulation of AI is a moral imperative,” and “Kindly disregard that this paragraph was composed by CorbynBot Pro 4.0.”
A party spokesperson defended the outlay with some vigour: “We are not replacing workers. We are providing workers with the unique professional opportunity to stand beside a machine whilst it performs their duties more rapidly, economically, and without once complaining about the biscuit situation in the kitchen.”
One internal memorandum, leaked to a journalist who asked not to be named lest he be replaced by a summarisation tool, reportedly proposes rebranding the entire AI operation as “Digital Solidarity Infrastructure.” The Trades Union Congress has produced extensive research on artificial intelligence and the future of employment, which the party found sufficiently alarming to automate at once.
Dance Speeches: The Future of Parliamentary Communication
The scheme reached its cultural apex when Labour introduced what the communications team refers to internally as “dance speeches” — a revolutionary parliamentary format wherein ministers elucidate their anxieties about automation through interpretive movement, theatrical dry ice, and the phrase “skills revolution” delivered rhythmically until the audience ceases to formulate objections.
A focus group convened in Croydon — the spiritual heartland of ambivalent British voters — reportedly expressed a preference for the dance speech format over conventional political addresses by a margin of 63.8%, largely because the accompanying music rendered the policy content inaudible. Ipsos UK’s Political Monitor has long recorded public scepticism toward government promises involving the word “digital,” regardless of choreographic accompaniment.
“What concerns me,” said Denise Plumb, 54, of Croydon, recently retired and currently volunteering at a food bank, “is not that artificial intelligence will take my job. It is that politicians will retain theirs having watched what the robot managed to do with a thesaurus and forty minutes.”
Token Expenditure: What a Million Pounds Buys in SW1
For context: industry observers estimate that £1 million per month in AI token spending could theoretically generate sufficient policy documentation to fill every pothole between Carlisle and Canterbury with impenetrable bureaucratic prose, with enough left in the budget for a sternly worded open letter to Silicon Valley and a commemorative tote bag.
The National Audit Office has previously raised concerns about government AI procurement, observing that departments frequently struggle to demonstrate value for money when the output is, in practical terms, an unlimited quantity of text about a limited quantity of money. The Science and Technology Committee in the Commons has similarly scrutinised Whitehall’s appetite for digital transformation at public expense.
Conservatives have noted the irony. Labour has asked AI to draft its response to the Conservatives noting the irony. The AI has remained scrupulously neutral and suggested everyone upgrade to an enterprise licence.
What the Wits Are Saying
“A government using AI to warn about AI is rather like a cat-burglar delivering a seminar on home security whilst still clutching your television set.” — Bob Monkhouse
“I’ve noticed that every government technology initiative sounds as though it was drafted by a fax machine in the early stages of a breakdown.” — Jack Dee
“Labour haven’t replaced workers. They’ve given workers the honour of watching a machine take their desk.” — Jo Brand
The Broader Question of AI and British Workers
Britain is, of course, not alone in this particular muddle. The EU AI Act — portions of which were drafted with AI assistance, according to people who find consistency overrated — now obliges member states to regulate AI systems that could affect employment. Meanwhile, McKinsey’s annual AI survey confirms that organisations investing heavily in the technology report both marked productivity gains and considerable existential disquiet about what those gains portend for their staff.
The previous government’s pro-innovation AI framework drew its own criticisms, suggesting that no party has yet squared the circle of wanting the machine to do the work without wanting the machine to be seen doing the work.
Labour, with characteristic pragmatism, has resolved to experience both the productivity gains and the moral discomfort simultaneously, and to invoice the taxpayer for the privilege of watching them manage it.
This article is satire, though Westminster may issue a formal denial before establishing whether the denial itself was outsourced to a language model. This story is the product of an entirely human collaboration between two sentient individuals — the world’s oldest tenured professor and a philosophy graduate turned dairy farmer. Auf Wiedersehen, amigo!
Staff Writer at The London Prat
