Nicholas Beale

#unethicalOptimizationPrinciple paper now out in @royalsociety Open Science. Thanks to brilliant co-authors Heather Battey, Anthony Davison & Robert Mackay. @DameWendyDBE gave us quote for press: "This is a really important paper. It shows that… (1/n) royalsocietypublishing.org/doi/10.1098/rs…

@rthonbwooster @timchap When in opposition they can select a loon (like Corbyn) & the voters can then keep him out of power. But they have NO democratic mandate to inflict a PM on the country - & nor do Conservative Party Members (consider Truss)

@Starcourse @timchap MPs have a democratic mandate to represent their constituency, that's all. Like it or not, Labour members do have a democratic mandate to select the leader. 2026 Rule Book, Chapter 4 II C vi: "Votes shall be cast in a single section, by Party members and affiliated supporters."

Although it’s now happening, I remain astonished at the Labour Party unseating their party leader and PM via an unseemly coup less than 2 years from securing a massive majority; all without reference to Party members or the wider public. Am I alone in my astonishment?

@wmarybeard Was the author of Hebrews (who I think was Priscilla) influenced in her alliterative opening πολυμερῶς καὶ πολυτρόπως πάλαι ὁ θεὸς λαλήσας τοῖς πατράσιν ἐν τοῖς προφήταις By the opening of the Odyssey?

Your 50 minute guide to the Odyssey is here. What you need to know before you do (to the film!) is here! 90 combined years of homer reading distilled in under an hour! podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/ins…

@rthonbwooster @timchap Party Members are very unrepresentative of voters & have no democratic right to choose a PM. MPs have a democratic mandate & should use it.

@Starcourse @timchap Do you distrust all voters or only the ones who've joined political parties?

@LeaderofKCC Pathetic disinformation- we see you. You’re terrified of a strong female leader who can eat your corrupt grifter for breakfast in any debate, & is miles ahead of him in Net Favourability.

This is true, I’ve heard it said from deep inside the party. Nothing has actually changed, the same core people are still pulling the strings. “There is no point in Kemi encouraging more great talent to step forward. The system is still rigged to serve an inner core of self-appointed manipulators and shadowy interest groups. Some of these are running candidate training. Real talent is being led up the garden path.”

@Miss_Snuffy I’m told Starmer tried to sack Philipsson but she refused to be sacked⁉️

100%. 👇 Laura Trott is generally spot on when it comes to education. If only she were the Education Secretary instead of Shadow.

@toadmeister I’m told that Starmer tried to sack her but she refused to be sacked (⁉️)

Bridget Phillipson blew £500,000 of taxpayers’ money trying to kill university free speech laws, was then legally challenged by the Free Speech Union – and lost. The High Court has ordered the Government to pay up. dailysceptic.org/2026/07/19/edu…

@rthonbwooster @timchap To help & support the party you want to get into government. NOT to inflict a loon (eg Truss) on the voters as PM,

@Starcourse @timchap Why? What's the point of joining a party if you're not included in the decision making processes?

@TaxJusticeUK @andyburnham It would be good if you’d admit that you are proposing a tax that has never been tried, anywhere in the world. And that there are serious objections to it taxpolicy.org.uk/2025/07/22/uk-…

@rthonbwooster @timchap MPs

@Starcourse @timchap Who should then?

@poll_checker Only another 20% to go.

Lowest Opinium polling for Reform since 2024 At Reform's peak, Opinium had them at 34% in October 2025 - a 10pp drop in less than a year

@TomSoede UK GEs are almost invariably win by the party whose leader is the preferred choice for PM. Most support for Reform is still a mid-term Protest Vote.

What if Burnham’s strategy is actually simple? Scrap Labour’s most unpopular policies-starting with digital ID (like he did yesterday) re-energise the party, show some visible delivery (Oil and Gas), then call an election before the right can recover. He will not wait until Reform is dead. The ideal moment is when Reform is weakened (highly likely late fall 2026 with their scandals) but still splitting the Conservative vote. Labour revived. Reform fractured. The Tories not yet rebuilt. That could give Burnham what he really needs: his own mandate and five more years.

@keiranpedley @Ipsos_in_the_UK Utterly depressing that people fall for the “cost of living” nonsense ahead of economic growth.

Andy Burnham becomes PM tomorrow. Public mood is pessimistic and impatient for change. But in what areas? @Ipsos_in_the_UK polling sheds some light. Public are most likely to want radical change in immigration / border control and reducing the cost of living. Healthcare, running of utilities, social care & housing are also areas significant numbers recognise the need for radical change too. Interestingly, public are less convinced radical change needed in devolution of power.

@Tom_Westgarth15 @UKSovereignAI Trouble is that brilliant CEOs come & go, but state control remains.

@Starcourse I used to be more inclined to that view, but an example that weakens this is that Isomorphic Labs and Ineffable Intelligence let @UKSovereignAI on their cap table. I also think this only succeeds if you have a genuinely brilliant CEO. Otherwise don’t merge them!

SIX IDEAS FOR ANDY BURNHAM’S SOVEREIGN AI POLICY The moment Andy Burnham walks into Number 10, the briefings will start. The new Prime Minister will learn about the nuclear deterrent, about state and non-state threats. Then the securocrats will tell the Prime Minister about the critical importance of AI to our security and prosperity. Dylan Rogers (ex @AISecurityInst) and myself (ex @UKSovereignAI) were chatting recently about the lessons from working on AI policy under Keir Starmer. Lots of good work underway. Some progress. So much more to be done. AI might not be a priority for Burnham and his closest allies today. When so many of the basics are broken, it is easy to understand why. But events will soon force Burnham to confront the technology of our time. Here are six suggestions for how AB should approach AI. This is also posted on Dylan’s Substack (link below). 1. DON’T SETTLE FOR SECOND BEST AI SYSTEMS The UK needs access to frontier AI. In many domains, marginal differences in capability matter. Take cybersecurity and scientific research as examples. AISI research describes models like Mythos as a ‘step up’ in cybersecurity capabilities. On expert level tasks, which no model could complete before April 2025, Mythos succeeds 73% of the time. In this context, relying on sub-frontier systems means accepting vulnerability. Scientific research similarly privileges frontier AI. Creating hypotheses, running experiments, and evaluating data requires systems that reason over long time horizons. Small differences in per-step reliability determine whether an autonomous research loop closes at all. Relying on sub-frontier systems could mean ceding the UK’s edge in scientific discovery. In two of the areas the new Prime Minister plans to differentiate himself from his predecessor, defence and innovation, access to frontier AI is essential. 2. SEEK LEVERAGE THROUGH INTERDEPENDENCE There is justifiable interest in building frontier AI here at home. But the UK will not win by playing catch up with the US. Well-capitalised efforts in France (Mistral) and Canada (Cohere) demonstrate the difficulty of closing the gap to the US. As new compute infrastructure comes online, and the leading US companies begin to automate aspects of AI research itself, the gap will only grow. There is certainly value in a fallback option for the UK. But we should acknowledge the reality that a sovereign LLM is a hedge, not a route to the frontier. When we bet on AI companies, it should be labs pursuing novel research directions which capitalise on the limitations of LLMs. Following the same recipe five years late only makes sense if the state plans to backstop a second best system. So instead of competing with the leading US companies, the UK should seek leverage through interdependence. This leverage can only be arrived at by building infrastructure to enable frontier AI deployment, creating conditions for category defining companies to emerge, and adopting a new approach to how we leverage scale-up finance for the very best firms. 3. BUILD AI INFRASTRUCTURE THAT BENEFITS COMMUNITIES Building infrastructure is one of the best ways to create leverage over the US. Compute is likely to be supply constrained in the near term. This makes even small buildouts matter. Many have been critical of the government’s AI Growth Zones, claiming they are creating value for US companies with little captured by the UK. The Prime Minister should establish a new social contract for compute infrastructure: one that rapidly delivers the benefits of AI to the public. Currently, the costs of building datacentres are borne by local communities, but the benefits are more distributed. This needs to change for durable democratic consent for infrastructure that is absolutely essential to the UK economy and our global position. This could involve letting local authorities keep business rates from datacenter builds, negotiated on the ground, not in Whitehall, or guaranteeing consumers will not see higher energy bills. In return, the government should want infrastructure built fast. 4. CREATE THE CONDITIONS FOR CATEGORY DEFINING COMPANIES Beyond infrastructure, it will be difficult to identify assets that confer leverage over in advance. Even the most expert state would have struggled to predict toilet maker Toto as a winner from the AI infrastructure buildout. This does not mean giving up. Instead, it advantages ecosystem-level interventions. Ultimately, sovereign AI policy should be startup policy. The new Prime Minister should create the conditions for category-defining companies to start and scale in the UK. These companies will provide both leverage (including over frontier US AI labs) and economic opportunity. Building these companies therefore represents both a unique economic life raft as well as an existential challenge to the future of the country. There are many steps the government could take to improve the environment for startups. Talent is evenly distributed across the UK, but the ability to start companies is not shared. We need high-speed rail to connect our second cities, and realise agglomeration effects. We should continue to expand EMI, and eliminate non-competes across most sectors. While enabling the best British entrepreneurs, we should also lower the barriers to global talent. This could include advertising visa routes more broadly, reducing application costs and waiving the NHS surcharge, and starting proactive headhunting programs. Why not offer junior IMO medallists a university place here in the UK? 5. CONSOLIDATE SCALE-UP FUNDING, UNDER THE RIGHT LEADERSHIP What is being built at the Sovereign AI Fund (SovAI) has the potential to be the defining intervention in the UK’s industrial strategy. But its budget over the Spending Review is the same as the government’s annual pothole budget. It also is focused on smaller cheques for earlier stage companies. The maximally ambitious version would combine the deepening expertise, network and speed of SovAI with the scale of the British Business Bank (BBB), enabling £2bn annually to be spent on helping to scale the most ambitious UK companies. This could be called British Sovereign Capital, as advocated by Andrew Bennett. This wouldn’t cost any additional money. This would only succeed with a truly world class CEO leading British Sovereign Capital. The current BBB CEO is due to step down in September. Ensuring the appointment of an exceptional new CEO with an extensive understanding of frontier AI will be decisive, and gives the new Prime Minister an opportunity to make a bold statement of ambition. 6. KEEP DSIT AS A DISTINCT DEPARTMENT Responding to the scale of AI’s challenge and opportunity demands a department that is dynamic and has focus. Many of the successes of recent Labour and conservative governments, such as the AI Security Institute, only could have emerged through a department like DSIT and with senior No10 backing. Messing around a lot with its functions, or merging it with another department like DCMS or DBT, would be a major mistep. The stakes are too high with AI to be slowed down by a machinery of government change that will dilute focus. A Cabinet Minister for AI would be a great move, but ensure that the appointee understands the technology and is happy to stay in the role for the rest of their parliamentary term, rather than just looking for the next promotion. CONCLUSION Not all of the problems this country faces relate to Artificial Intelligence. But how the country responds to this new technological era will determine whether we have the agency to address our most fundamental challenges. Burnham should back the builders. Develop a new social contract for AI infrastructure. Upgrade local transport. Don’t shutter DSIT. This is the way to reindustrialise the country, give the country their first pay rise in a generation, and to revive our sense of purpose and destiny.

@profserious This relates to a paper I have in the works on the impact of AI on cybersecurity. We should chat.

On Toxic Tech Ecosystems ... tech debt can be repaid but toxic ecosystems trap customers and vendors alike ... @profserious considers the options profserious.substack.com/p/toxic-tech-e…

@wmarybeard @RupertMyers Well it’s one of the greatest stories of all time

@RupertMyers Wot. I enjoyed. But do you really mean that.

I can’t stop thinking about The Odyssey - I think it might be one of the greatest films of all time.

@antoguerrera Indeed. Because junior ministers have very little/no influence on the whole government.

Former Minister of State for Policing and Crime from a government of the same party that approved such visa schemes is now “investigating” on them. What a time to be alive.

@aswren It could be someone with a shred of integrity in Reform, disgusted that a felon was buying his way to control of the Civil Service from a leader who takes secret bungs.

There’s no other way I can think of that a journalist would know the outcome of an NCA investigation without either the NCA or someone very senior at the home office leaking it. This is actually pretty serious.

@timespolitics And this (presumably) is the man who Reform plan to install as PM’s Chief of Staff & give authority over the entire Civil Service, sacking the Cabinet Secretary. Amazing what bungs can buy from a corrupt leader.

The convicted criminal who funded Nigel Farage opened an account with an obscure overseas payments company days before it was used to channel an “unexplained” £500,000 donation to Reform UK #Echobox=1784396088-1" target="_blank" rel="nofollow noopener">thetimes.com/uk/politics/ar…