London Tech Week: Sunak and Hunt’s charm offensive was no light touch

Charlie Conchie, City A.M. investment editor, reflects on day one of London Tech Week.

What’s a growth mindset and how can I get one?

Solving the UK’s tech investment gap is not just tweaking rules and regulation, Chancellor Jeremy Hunt said yesterday, but also “looking at our mindset”.

“That’s something I think we need everyone’s help in – changing that mindset into a truly growth mindset,” Hunt told an audience of tech investors and aficionados.

What though, we might reasonably ask, is a “truly growth mindset”? And how can everyone muck in on the national effort to get one?

There aren’t really answers to those questions. But even so, the call is becoming a common one among the Square Mile figures and policymakers. A recent report launched by the Capital Markets Industry Taskforce will among other things deep dive into the “culture and mindset” of the City to try to reset it for the modern age.

Top city figures like Schroders chief Peter Harrison and L&G boss Sir Nigel Wilson have called for greater appetite for risk. The founder of Oaknorth Rishi Khosla similarly lamented our pervasive tall-poppy syndrome in the UK yesterday.

But those questions and points swirl around without anything concrete to land on. The end goal is there, but no one is really talking about the levers that can be pulled to achieve it. Perhaps the Capital Markets Industry Taskforce report will provide some clarity, but until then, the calls look set to just keep swirling around conference halls and newspapers without much tangible impact.

Tory comms coup

There will be some happy faces in the comms teams of numbers 10 and 11 today. The government managed to stack the morning of London Tech Week with ministers and fire a barrage of key messages at an audience of tech figures and overseas investors.

Sunak was confidently dishing out lines on the Boris Johnson debacle while sketching out global AI regulation – all this presumably went completely according to plan.

But there is surely a question for the organisers here: yes, Sadiq Khan came in and landed some good jokes and stressed the strength of London’s tech scene. But in a packed room on a mid-morning panel on day one of the conference, which bruising interviewer was grilling the Chancellor and HSBC UK chief Colin Bell, the boss of the bank formerly known as SVB UK?

Hunt’s colleague, the science and innovation minister Chloe Smith.

Mojo back

But even so, sat in the steaming hot QEII centre it was hard not to feel something was ‘back’. Some mojo, it seemed, had been restored. Prior to 2016 the UK was the centre of the world for fintech and ministers shouted its name from the rafters. 

Here, scores of foreign trade delegations hurried between meetings; the Prime Minister flipped into full Silicon Valley mode, lending a quote to a press release announcing the London launch of VC firm Andreessen Horowitz; while his chancellor backslapped with banking bosses.

Yes, there was slight political overkill in the morning, but the fact the top two figures dedicated a whole morning’s work to charming the tech sector was testament to something. Albeit that something may just be a looming election.