Steve Hilton, the British political strategist and former adviser to David Cameron, has announced a bid to bring ‘common sense’ back to California, promising to export a political model that blends Silicon Valley optimism with London-style pragmatism. Hilton, who now lives in the Golden State, sees an opportunity to reform a region he describes as ‘drowning in bureaucracy and woke ideology.’ His platform focuses on deregulation, school choice, and cutting taxes, all wrapped in the narrative of a tech-friendly, small-government utopia.
Hilton’s move is a curious inversion of the typical transatlantic policy flow. For decades, US innovations from Reaganomics to Silicon Valley’s disruption culture have influenced British politics. Now, Hilton argues that the UK’s centre-right ‘common sense’ brand, exemplified by Cameron’s ‘Big Society’ and the recent Conservative push for tax cuts, can rescue California from its progressive excesses. He points to the UK’s experience with free schools and lighter regulation as models for America’s most populous state.
But does this translation work? California is not the UK. Its economy is larger, its diversity greater, and its political landscape far more polarized. Hilton’s plan to repeal environmental regulations, for instance, clashes with the state’s identity as a global climate leader. Meanwhile, his emphasis on ‘digital sovereignty’ and data privacy aligns awkwardly with his free-market instincts. The tension is real: can Hilton champion both individual freedom and the collective oversight needed to prevent tech abuses?
From a user experience perspective, Hilton’s campaign feels like a splinter in the operating system of California politics. He diagnoses the state’s problems—homelessness, high housing costs, failing schools—as bugs in a system corrupted by special interests. His solution is a reboot: a citizen-driven recall of bureaucracy, using technology to empower direct democracy. It is a classic disruptor narrative, but one that ignores the messy human factors that resist optimisation.
Hilton’s rhetoric taps into a deep frustration with California’s governance, but his solutions may prove as problematic as the problems they aim to fix. The lack of nuance in his ‘common sense’ approach mirrors the very absolutism he criticises. As a technologist, I recognise the urge to simplify complex systems into clean code. Yet society is not a platform. It is an ecosystem where unintended consequences echo.
What worries me most is the ‘Black Mirror’ potential of Hilton’s plan. If his digital sovereignty agenda leads to a fragmented internet, or if his deregulation allows AI-run surveillance systems to flourish unchecked, the future may look less like a utopian startup and more like a dystopian chatroom. The user experience of democracy must not be optimised for efficiency alone. It must protect the vulnerable, even at the cost of speed.
Hilton’s pledge is a fascinating experiment in political cross-pollination. But as we import models from across the pond, we must ask: whose common sense are we talking about? The answer will define California’s next chapter.
