iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

If I were Labour HQ I would be a little worried about how high Badenoch’s approval ratings already are among Labour voters, even before seeing the clip. Dangerous to underrate her in my view.

030

Tim Bale @timbale.bsky.social · 14/10/2026

I'm not sure I would strictly 'recommend' watching PMQs but the Burnham / Badenoch exchanges are quite distinct from the last few years not least in that they show two leaders commanding a lot of support and enthusiasm from their parties and with confident deliveries.

1222

Reposted by Ben Ansell

Great read as always from @warringfictions.bsky.social - this time on scarcity and fairness (parables.substack.com/p/scarcity-a...)

Graph showing where parties voters stand on the two issues, with Reform and Restore Britain thinking the economy means people like them don't get their fare share, especially because wealth and resources are so tight.

86722

Ian Dunt @iandunt.bsky.social · 14/10/2026

Isn’t this rather different in the age of generative AI though. Regardless of whether being able to look at texts is good or not (could argue either way), it seems to me there is a difference in knowing whether someone actually wrote their exam themselves or not.

250

Reposted by Ben Ansell

Burnham praises Badenboch at PMQs over her conference attack on Reform: "In a spirit of unity... I'm going to commend her for drawing a line... with the party over there for suggesting that her children weren't British... She was brave and she was right to call it out."

866163

Yes that’s fair. Unfortunately for them not as widely shared as superficially looking at public opinion might have you think.

140

I'm clearly not their biggest fan, but I think this speaks to a huge mistake by Blue Labour, who seemed to believe that there was an inevitable Labour/Reform face-off and trimmed their sails accordingly. As if one could discount, of all historically successful parties, the Conservative Party.

150

Andrew Jackson absolutely would have

0120

Chris Hanretty @chanret.bsky.social · 13/10/2026

Indeed comrade, or should I say ‘correlate’

090

Reposted by Ben Ansell

Aside from anything else, it's just terrible writing. (If you want litotes, you've got to go full Hirohito)

1193

Reposted by Ben Ansell

Torsten Bell @torstenbell.bsky.social · 13/10/2026

New IMF forecasts tell you 2 things about UK economy. Firstly, the British economy has proved resilient in face of the Iran conflict: IMF have UK growth as joint second fastest in G7 this year (forget forecasts, in hard data we’ve seen the fastest growth in G7 so far this year)

510235

Indeed. We have more reason than most to keep deficit down.

090

Arthur Snell @snellarthur.bsky.social · 12/10/2026

The UK with joint highest current growth and lowest forecast deficit in the G7 is… um… not what you might imagine from reading the newspaper.

930281

Reposted by Ben Ansell

British Conservatives: "Russia has disgracefully interfered in politics in France, Germany, Sweden, Hungary, Moldova, Romania and invaded Ukraine. They even meddled in the US elections." Also British Conservatives: "What? Russia! Interfere in Brexit? Ridiculous! Just a tired old conspiracy theory."

91283372

Reposted by Ben Ansell

Andy Bruce (Reuters) @bruceandy.bsky.social · 12/10/2026

Update: UK now shares the "fastest growing G7 economy in the first half of 2026" honour with the USA. So joint fastest.

31711

Jonathan Portes @jdportes.bsky.social · 12/10/2026

Uh… some of us also oppose this thanks

000

Reposted by Ben Ansell

The Times, once again, calling for mass deportations of care workers and other legal migrant workers.

33407151

Reposted by Ben Ansell

Matt Muir @mattmuir.bsky.social · 12/10/2026

I know you all reflexively HATE AI, but, also, if you can't see that this has *something* genuinely quite interesting about it then you're not thinking hard enough imho

5212

Sam Freedman @samfr.bsky.social · 12/10/2026

Politico consistently being surprised that Burnham / Miliband do things that don’t get the reaction they think they’ll get. Theme of the last two months.

260

Reposted by Ben Ansell

Apart from once again proving himself a dead eyed socipath, Jenrick is forcing Reform down a cul-de-sac. "How about war crimes" is not winning 35% of the vote.

36626106

I think a similar issue has long dogged Labour and an underrated part of Blair’s success was his ability to humiliate his opponents.

280

See for example Josh’s point bsky.app/profile/josh...

1110

Worth thinking about the British context here where Burnham seems much better at this kind of politics than Starmer.

6160

Twlldun @twlldun.bsky.social · 12/10/2026

Honestly if Russia had actually swung Brexit or indeed Trump there would be political science dissertations as far as the eye could see debating how robust the finding was. And there aren’t any.

030

Reposted by Ben Ansell

This is absolutely correct. Blaming the Russians is externalising the problem.

3927532

Jeffrey M. Binder @jbinder.bsky.social · 11/10/2026

Weird way to refer to UKICE but enjoy @anandmenon.bsky.social’s cocktails while you can

130

Reposted by Ben Ansell

Saying that LLMs “just predict the next word” isn’t the deflation people think, because it puts all the weight on “just.” It’s hard to place limits on what sorts of knowledge and inferential capability might be relevant to next-word prediction.

2784

IIRC I basically fit the timeline to exactly one hundred years later. So enter the EU in 2033

3110

Benefit of being an academic in that we are so timely that sometimes our predictions happen within decades

2250