For decades, British politics has lived in the shadow of a major failure of social and economic policy: the imbalance between graduates and those who don’t go to university.
Many politicians have understood the need to do better for the ‘other 50%’ who don’t go to higher education. But few have delivered real change.
From Boris Johnson’s ‘levelling up’ to Keir Starmer’s newfound focus on ‘higher-level skills,’ the goal has remained constant: to provide a better deal for those who don’t go to ‘uni’.
Yet despite the speeches and the promises, the divide remains a major fault line of our politics. It explains Brexit (grads were Remain, non-grads Leave) and the crumbling of the Red Wall – Labour is increasingly the party of metropolitan graduates. It persists because no one has properly addressed slow wage growth and a perception of being ignored among many non-graduates.
What if the great rebalancing – that fabled parity of esteem – is delivered not by policymakers but by Artificial Intelligence?
The Reform UK platform has strong appeal for those who didn’t go to university and who feel alienated from a national conversation dominated by graduates and their liberal values. The British Social Attitudes study found that – across all age groups – only 5% of graduates voted Reform at the last election; it was 25% for non-grads.
In Whitehall, a graduate-dominated Civil Service has always struggled to take vocational education and training seriously – the promise of ‘parity of esteem’ for further and vocational education is seen as a bad joke by many in FE. At the highest level of economic policymaking, the Treasury naturally leans into comparative advantage – doing what we’re best at. That favours graduates, who gravitate to the South East and the financial services.
Dislodging PPE types from their (OK – our) perch is not easy. I used to run a think-tank trying to get UK policymakers to take non-university routes more seriously, and I largely failed. I concluded that as long as politicians, officials and journalists go to university- and want their kids to do the same – British discourse will favour HE and graduates.
But what if the solution isn’t a government white paper, some clever policies or even – gulp – some clever columns? What if the great rebalancing – that fabled parity of esteem – is delivered not by policymakers but by Artificial Intelligence?
The narrative surrounding AI and jobs is usually one of dread for the laptop classes. Graduate recruiting is waning as white-collar employers replace grads with machines. The latest reports say European banking is facing a bloodbath of automation. For the comfortable graduate, AI is starting to look like very bad news – not just for their own careers, but for their children’s prospects.
But there is an overlooked physical reality to this revolution. AI is not an ethereal concept; it requires vast, sprawling infrastructure – vast acres of data centres that need to be built, powered, and maintained. This is where the oceans of cash AI companies and institutional investors are spending will flow to. And money on this scale changes things.
In Britain, spending on these sites is projected to surge from £1.75bn today to £10bn annually by 2029, with nearly 100 new projects in the pipeline. Blackstone’s site at Blyth alone is expected to require 1,200 construction workers.
Here is the irony: you cannot prompt a data centre into existence. You need electricians, pipefitters, ventilation engineers, and steel fixers. You need specialists who can do industrial work to exacting standards and on time – delays are intolerable. These are very people the British economy is currently desperate for.
The Construction Industry Training Board says Britain’s construction industry faces a significant workforce shortage, needing approximately 239,300 new recruits over the next five years.
The economics here are not complicated. When demand for specialised industrial work surges and the supply of workers remains constrained by years of neglect, wages rise.
In the US, tradespeople moving into data centre construction are seeing pay jumps of up to 30%, with some earning well into six figures.
Britain is not America, but the mechanism is the same. Some recruiters in the UK already talk of ‘data centre premiums’ of 10-20% over traditional commercial work because the work is specialized and the schedules are tight.
As datacentre spending rises toward that £10bn-a-year trajectory, this premium will spread beyond the fenced-off server-farms into grid connections, substations, and the sprawling supply chain that supports them.
This isn’t just about the money in the bank; it’s about the status that politics measures. For years, governments have tried to make technical routes attractive through slogans and moving money around – but nothing really changed. By and large, the politicians’ kids kept choosing uni.
But a sustained wage premium for skilled manual work would change the default choice for teenagers and their parents when it comes to education and employment.
Public opinion is open to this. Nearly half of Britons think too many young people go to university, and the majority now see apprenticeships as better preparation for the future. BAE Systems – which runs coveted apprenticeships – says six in ten young people see apprenticeships as more appealing than a degree. For now, graduates’ lifelong earnings exceed non-grads’, but will that always be so?
If the graduate bargain continues to look less like a bargain – with fewer entry jobs and less security – the plumber becomes the new professional in terms of pay and esteem.
AI might just do what years of politicians fiddling couldn’t: make the trades the most rational, prestigious, and lucrative path for the next generation.
This shift is where AI could be politically transformative. For years, ministers have tried to rebalance Britain by changing slogans. AI offers a shift in the underlying labor market that makes trades visibly and immediately more attractive to the next cohort.
If you are 18 and can see graduate roles fading while skilled trades command higher wages and clearer progression, your calculation changes. And in time, society changes too. Keep an eye out for politicians talking publicly about their own children choosing a trade rather than a degree.
The Red Wall was lost and Britain left the EU because of a sense of economic and political alienation among those who didn’t go to university. Nigel Farage could well become PM for similar reasons. That would be a big change. But if the future belongs to the people who build datacentres rather than those who move money and data around, politics will change more dramatically still.
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