Shocking, isn’t it?
Suffrago, my tech startup aiming to create a UK operating system (GovTech), has hired the “hard man of Brexit”, Steve Baker!
As the Harrogate Advertiser reports, the former Northern Ireland minister and MP for Wycombe has joined us as a strategic adviser. I’ve been talking to Steve for about 18 months.
Steve is a top guy, with a background in tech pre-Parliament. We haven’t agreed on two issues that matter enormously to me: Brexit and modern monetary theory/reality.
But that’s the point! Work with intelligent, thoughtful people who want to make the country better, and who know how to listen to opposing views. Most of the comments on social media about his appointment are evidence of precisely why I hired him.
Where Steve and I do agree is that the UK desperately needs an operating system, like iOS or Windows.
Did you know that if an MP wanted to know how many schools were in their constituency, they might need to go on Google Maps, draw their constituency boundary and manually count the schools?!!!
This is bananas. This is why the UK is faltering.
What irks me is that if news of a high-profile appointment to a tech startup broke in America, most Americans would be thrilled for you. They’d encourage you to build, build, build.
But that’s not really the British way. Ambition makes people uncomfortable.
Are you unsettled – dear reader – of my outrageous – and altruistic- ambition? If you are, please don’t speak to me again. Negativism has no place in my inner circle.
Suffrago may not work out. But I know that if we can build a UK operating system, connecting people, places, public data and decision-makers, we can make this country vastly better.
We’ve already created what we believe is the first constituency-level suicide map. Imagine what else we could do if the country understood itself better.
And perhaps we’ll create a viable, ethical company along the way.
What saddens me is that I suspect I’ll need to go to America to secure sufficient backing to build something that Britain itself desperately needs.
Tragic, really.
