This is the most important unlock for the UK economy. Couldn’t agree with @alanchanguk more!
Most of the pushback on PM’s announcement, including from pro-growth accounts, says he’s solving a non issue. I can certainly empathise on why people feel this way because thats true for majority of the UK economy.View quoted post on X
But look at who actually uses 6 to 12 month non-competes and long gardening leaves: Google DeepMind, high Frequent trading firms, prop shops, hedge funds. The companies hiring the top 0.1% of engineers and researchers in the UK.
In the age of AI those people matter more than ever. Look at Anthropic and OpenAI. Divide the market cap by the headcount and you’re at billions in enterprise value per person and accelerating.
Half of US’s 2026 GDP growth came from AI.
Both Anthropic, OpenAI and the same company hoarding all the UK AI talent Google were all built from California, which has banned non-competes for over a century.
If Britain ends up banning non completes and lengthy gardening leave, the following will happen:
- Top talent breaks free from incumbents.
- That talent lands in British AI and hard-tech startups.
- Those startups create GDP growth Britian keep saying it wants.
