10 years ago today, the first same sex marriages took place in the UK.

It remains one of my proudest moments.

pm-priorities.campaign.gov.uk/david-camerons…

1/ 11 weeks ago I agreed to Chair the UK's efforts to accelerate state capacity in AI Safety - measuring and mitigating the risks of frontier models so we can safety capture their opportunities. Here is our first progress report: gov.uk/government/pub…

I’m honoured to be appointed as the Chair of the UK's AI Foundation Model Taskforce.

A thread on why I'm doing this and how you might be able to help us.

New issue of the Conservative Reader out today:

Miriam Cates: Rishi realignment in UnHerd
John Gray: political collapse in The New Statesman Sarah O'Connor: low-skilled migration in Financial Times
Louise Perry: conservative feminism @Spectator

Subscribe and read
conservativereader.substack.com

This is brilliantly insightful on the role of faith in Rishi Sunak's political values and temperament.

This argument, made frequently, makes the mistake of assuming the immigration system is an administrative/economic system, rather than an essential part of the UK's security architecture. Breaking up the Home Office would make us materially less safe.
conservativehome.com/2022/10/28/sun…

“The most enthusiastic adopters of industrial robots are found in Asia, which accounted for 74% of all deployments last year. China led the field w/ a 51% increase followed by Japan, the US & South Korea. The UK was a rare exception in recording a 7% fall”
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There are lots of advantages to working in a thinktank, but one of the best is having your work turned into a John Burn-Murdoch graph in the Financial Times.

ft.com/content/940323…

Super proud of the original MPs on the Onward advisory board:

Kemi Badenoch - Trade Sec
Gillian Keegan MP - Education Sec
Tom Tugendhat - Security Sec
Chris Philp MP - MoS Home Office
Neil O'Brien MP - PuSS Health
John Lamont MP 🇬🇧🏴󠁧󠁢󠁳󠁣󠁴󠁿 - PuSS Scotland

They give me hope for the future.

Could Rishi Sunak complete the Conservative realignment? Brilliant case by Miriam Cates - herself one of the most interesting MPs of her generation- on UnHerd:
buff.ly/3ziPEmp

Welcome focus on driving up value for graduates and creating better technical routes. These two policies - greater scrutiny of degree value and prestigious technical institutions - are from Onward research by Guy Miscampbell Francesca Fraser respectively
buff.ly/3DcLEF5

If the Conservatives want any chance of keeping their 2019 voters, they would do better to follow the Suella Braverman position on migration rather than the Liz Truss position.

On Monday, Onward called for the next PM to return to the national conservatism of the 2019 election and focus on competence and integrity if they want to win again. Today we saw Rishi Sunak do just that.

Welcome return to proper knockabout at PMQs. Serious lines of disagreement, real arguments, decent questions and answers, backbenches fired up. As it should be.

I can’t help but feel that Keir Starmer may come to regret attacking the new PM for shifting government funding out of major cities to coastal, post industrial and rural communities.

Sensible decision to postpone the Chancellor's fiscal statement to the 17 November. Markets have stabilised in recent weeks and while the Bank may have preferred to see OBR forecasts before 2 Nov MPC meeting, the risks of rushing huge fiscal decisions (again) are much greater.