Keir Starmer Used Dodgy Figures to Claim 4,000 New Jobs. In Fact, It’s Only 400
Does he think we’re stupid?
When Keir Starmer announced the creation of a £10 billion AI datacentre at Blyth in Northumberland last year, it was with a promise that the site would bring 4,000 jobs to the north-east of England.
For an ex-mining town, once home to two coal power stations, this was welcome news. The area had been let down once before: the new “artificial intelligence datacentre” will open on a site once destined to host Britishvolt, the startup planning to employ 3,000 people making batteries for electric vehicles that collapsed spectacularly in 2023.
However, it has since emerged that the true figure for job creation is closer to just 300 to 400 permanent staff, a tenth of what Starmer promised. Other media outlets have noted the yawning gap between Starmer’s hype and the disappointing reality. But the apparent willingness of the government to launder dodgy figures provided by the PR machine of a rapacious private equity firm has not been scrutinised – until now.
When asked in January by Labour MP Chi Onwurah what the evidential basis for the 4,000 claim was in a parliamentary question, Chris Bryant, a minister in the culture and science department, said that it had been supplied by Northumberland County Council.
However, in a freedom of information request seen by Novara Media sent by Foxglove, a legal campaign group monitoring big tech, the council revealed that that source was in fact Blackstone, the vampiric US private equity giant behind the data centre’s construction. The 4,000 figure came from Blackstone’s “evidence of the anticipated job creation numbers” put forward in the planning application.
Martha Dark, Foxglove’s co-executive director, said that Starmer had either “willingly promoted US Blackstone-owned developer QTS’s PR spiel on jobs, in effect laundering the dubious credibility of the claim through association with his office – or he didn’t know the claim came from them.
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Article continues at https://novaramedia.com/2025/06/04/keir-starmer-used-dodgy-figures-to-claim-4000-new-jobs-in-fact-its-only-400/
