Some criticism of this being beneath a PM totally misses the fact that this isn’t just an everyday annoyance, the behaviour of enforcement companies is seen as emblematic of a rigged/exploitative system and is entirely the sort of cause of misery people want a govt to tackle.

To give an indication of the problem here's a chart of 12 government agencies around the world and numbers of applications / appeals / complaints etc... The dotted grey line is when ChatGPT was invented.

THREE DAYS LEFT TO GET TICKETS WILL REFORM BE ALLOWED TO RULE? TAKING ON THE BLOB WITH @danny__kruger If Reform UK were to get elected (and it’s a big if), would they be allowed to govern? Already, the largest Civil Service Union (the Public and Commercial Services Union) has announced an increase to its financial resources in preparation to counter the election of a ‘hostile’ government. Some might comment that this shows an outrageous entrenchment of the politicalisation of public servants against the will of the people. The so-called Blob has certainly become an infamous bête noire, seen as an unelected network of senior civil servants, quangos, regulators and public bodies which faces frequent criticism for acting as a gatekeeper for the political agenda of Whitehall. Some say even new Prime Minister Andy Burnham has escaped to No10 North to break the stranglehold of ‘you can’t do that Minister’. In theory, the civil service should work for a Reform government as dutifully as for any other. But, even under the previous Conservative government, civil servants were accused of ‘waiting out the Tories’ through disengagement and aversion tactics. How can a democratically elected government act on behalf of the electorate if it must first fight the very people that are employed to serve it? Some point to other barriers, from international treaties to bureaucratic checks and balances, that hold back any can-do approach to running the country. However, unlike all others, Reform UK faces the additional problem of an all-party, indeed all-system, consensus that Farage and his team should not be allowed close to power, regardless of the electorate’s wishes. Is this all too gloomy? Yes, the barriers stack up: a civil service that can slow-walk instructions, a House of Lords with no Reform peers to carry legislation through and new bureaucratic layers that could create even more guardrails to protect the establishment from fundamental change at its core. But surely, in a democracy, the people must be allowed to decide? With such serious obstacles for Reform’s plans for radical change, are they prepared? Let’s ask them. Danny Kruger MP has been charged with Reform’s preparation for government and has started mapping out plans for ‘fixing the centre’. How will he lead such a major structural overhaul? How will Reform handle the House of Lords, where the party has zero institutional presence? What are the plans for an incoming cohort of 300-400 new Reform MPs, arriving with little to no experience of governing, navigating Whitehall or steering Reform through a resistant system? If established parties with decades of institutional knowledge have failed to deliver reforms over the last decade, can an insurgent movement really free us from the Blob? And, if they win, is Reform able to convince those who won’t vote for them of the importance of loser’s consent for democracy? DETAILS - battleofideas.org.uk/session… TICKETS - battleofideas.org.uk/battle-…

This is key: Foreign Office minister @SDoughtyMP says Russia was NOT successful influencing Brexit referendum “Did they succeed when it came to the Brexit referendum? Was that an effective attempt? Stephen Doughty: Well, the security minister has spoken about this before, and he's been very clear that they've attempted to [but] they haven't succeeded. They do attempt to interfere in our processes, have attempted to interfere in a whole number of them. And of course, it's not just Russia, it's other countries, too. but this is a whole society effort.

Kemi Badenoch delivering the most powerful anti-racism speech I've seen from a mainstream British party leader.

This is a deeply, deeply important piece of analysis by @GHWTowler, comparing the "new" Tory plans in Kemi's governing handbook to long-standing Reform UK plans. As you might expect, the media hype around "Kemistry" is high, but the practical implications are stunningly milquetoast.

Attitudes towards AI in the UK are shifting. AI and Technology is increasingly seen as one of the biggest risks facing the country, with 1 in 3 voters placing it in this top 3.

Two weeks ago I posted the below on LinkedIn. This is just getting started. "Any UK AI strategy that depends on AISI’s existence beyond the next two years is unserious. First, a bit of context. The UK's discourse on AI safety has never been popular in the US, especially under the current administration. At Bletchley, disagreements over China's involvement significantly reshaped the U.S. delegation, and at the tail end of the Biden administration, the diffusion rule that was passed made it clear that America would write the rules for AI.  Similarly, under the Trump administration, the American institute – CAISI – has remained largely underfunded and understaffed. Even more important is the broader discourse shift that has occurred within this administration around the preeminence of the American technology industry and the perceived attacks by Europe – Brussels in particular – on its industry. Yet, as model capabilities continue to advance, the defence, security and intelligence communities within the US are becoming more interested in how best to secure the technology and, in the process, America’s security interests. While this might make it seem like the UK’s AISI should become more important, I think the exact opposite is likely to be true. The emerging US position combines two beliefs: that America enjoys an overwhelming technological advantage it needs to protect, and that growing regulatory pressure from Europe threatens the companies responsible for that advantage. The UK’s AISI risks being lumped into this basket, and unfortunately the broader UK strategy will only add to the pressure. The clearest example is the effort to spread a growing international network of AISIs, many of which would ultimately depend on early access to American technology. From Washington, this could easily be interpreted as an attempt to build a new international governance architecture around technology overwhelmingly developed by American companies. At the same time, the UK continues to position itself as a regulatory superpower and global convenor on AI, reinforcing precisely the perception it should be trying to avoid. What I expect to see over the next two years is as follows. The U.S. national security and intelligence communities continue to grow their interest in the technology. The idea that the United States must share its most advanced capabilities with the UK AISI or other actors will grow increasingly difficult. Internal coordination across relevant US institutions will likely increase to outline the testing and evaluation capabilities they need, with industry likely to respond quickly. What would then follow is a renewed conversation around the need for an institution like CAISI in the US or AISI in the UK."

Watch this from @ZiaYusufUK

The way in which British AI policy has been developed in recent years strikes at the heart of a core debate about where power lies in Whitehall. During the Starmer administration, and especially the Sunak era, the prevailing view amongst those shaping AI policy was that what most MPs and ministers thought about AI wasn’t what drove government. The key players that mattered were the PM and bits of No. 10, the Cabinet Secretary, a few key Secretaries of State, and a small number of highly effective officials who largely worked with special advisers and the private office. A small, politically empowered centre can achieve outsized policy change by assembling unusually capable officials and giving them direct access, authority and protection from the wider system. This approach fell squarely within the Cummings theory of Whitehall. Indeed, many of the people involved in working on AI policy at the time were in a similar orbit to the misfits and weirdos. And it has largely proven highly effective in recent years, while the majority of other aspects of British industrial policy have struggled. MPs and most ministers, frankly, did not care about AI in those early years. They had not reckoned with the scale of impact that the technology was going to have: gradually, then suddenly. What interest there was didn’t register within Whitehall very much. The early Bletchley days are an excellent example of this theory of power in action. There were lots of aspects of the Summit work that were hugely contested within the wider tech policy ecosystem. Only around 100 orgs were invited to the Summit, to reflect the specific focus on frontier risks from bio, cyber, and loss of control: the major risks that we are seeing warning shots from today. But a lot of civil society felt spurned that they weren’t at the table. They were frustrated that other risks were not being covered. I recall a well-respected civil society leader talking at the 2023 Labour Party Conference that year, saying that we should scrap the £100m spending on AISI and put it all into ‘funding AI ethics’. That was before you got to the debate about Britain (rightly) inviting China to Bletchley. Each of these decisions was highly contested at the time. But it didn’t matter in the end. The Bletchley agenda did not sway very much. And that was because the ‘Cummings theory of Whitehall’ had proven correct. Sunak was aligned. Senior leaders from the Foundation Model Taskforce (which became AISI) reported to him every couple of weeks. There were some extremely effective spads who got the machine working and had a very strong sense of direction. Largely, this theory of change was sustained in the Starmer era as well. As the demands of the AI response grew, more of Whitehall needed to be taken on a journey. But again, it was the officials, not the ministers or MPs, who were at the wheel. An evolution of the Starmer era from Sunak was the hollowing out of the No. 10 operation. There was now a great No. 10 AI team in place, but the overall weakness of the Starmer No. 10 operation meant that they could not adjudicate between competing departmental demands. This became increasingly important for AI, where issues such as building AI data centres, copyright, and public service adoption required not just DSIT, and saw departments adopt very different positions on what to do. Where there were particularly competent Secretaries of State, such as at DESNZ, this actually scuppered the AI agenda in the absence of a strong PM operation. But by and large, UK AI flourished under Starmer, thanks to the compounding effect of building exceptional state capacity targeted at a clear theory of change, enabled by the authority of a handful of ministers. This theory of power, that it rests with the officials and not the politicians, is now about to be tested immensely. All MPs are now expected to have a response on AI. The level of political concern demands it. With hindsight, I think the people working in UK AI policy who largely subscribe to the Cummings view have failed to sufficiently engage a broader suite of MPs on AI. I count myself in this group. And I think it is could be coming back to bite these folks. At the same time, other campaign groups, ones that I consider to have net negative policy positions, have been putting in the yards engaging backbench MPs and the House of Lords. This has played out already in a few ways, with Lords championing the Kidron amendment on copyright and the latest Superintelligence Bill shaped by groups such as ControlAI. Both bits of prospective legislation would, in my opinion, be damaging, and in the case of Kidron, have already helped to weaken our ability to train frontier models in this country. We are now in an era where parliamentary scrutiny of AI is mainstream, and entrepreneurial backbench MPs can have a real impact. Many MPs will be looking at the way in which Bernie Sanders is shaping the national conversation in America and wondering if they could have a similar scale of impact. While the quality of parliamentary debate on AI has largely been woeful, there are some very thoughtful MPs who I hope will play a role steering the country in the right direction. Largely, the first phase of UK AI policy rewarded elite executive coordination. A major question is the extent to which AI politics now increasingly rewards coalition-building across the executive, Parliament and organised outside groups. I still believe that the Cummings theory of power will endure, especially as the securitisation of AI continues on current trends. The strength of No. 10 and the quality of officials working on AI will determine, in my view, where the direction of UK AI policy is decided. But it is clear that the theory of change needs to update, in my view, towards new kinds of coalition building.

JD Vance defends Trump's ban on the free press: "They're just not going to get an office in the White House anymore, and I think it's totally appropriate -- unless of course they start to behave like real news organizations"

It's a cult.

Thread - I’ve long thought the assisted dying bill was a major party of why things went so wrong for Keir Starmer so early. A deeply personal conscience issue which had to be decided by brand new MPs only just finding their feet and forging alliances.

But we don’t believe there is a right to be killed by the state. It appears in no rights convention. It is not a natural right. No moral philosopher in 3,000 years has proposed such a right. Where does it come from? It is not a right just because it appears to you to be one.