PM’s new anti-disinformation unit gets cross-party backing, as Farage declares it an attack on free speech – UK politics live

As Pippa Crerar reported yesterday, Andy Burnham has not ruled out fighting the next election on a commitment to rejoin the EU.

The briefing Pippa attended did not leave journalists super-confident that Burnham will adopt this step. But he is being urged to by Ben Judah, who was a special adviser to David Lammy when Lammy was foreign secretary. In a post for Arguably, a platform for policy debate on Substack, Judah argues that there are three reasons why Burnham should fight the next election on rejoining the EU. He says:

The first is that this cause is now more popular than at any time since the 2016 referendum. Average support for rejoining the EU now stands at 61%, according to Prof John Curtice, reflecting both ‘Bregret’ on the part of Leave supporters and a new generation who did not vote in 2016 entering the political marketplace …

The second is that, regardless of when Burnham chooses to call an election, he will not be able to run on Labour’s record. Staking everything on a cost-of-living agenda is a fool’s errand when global economic forces, not the government, determine prices … The economic headwinds from the Iran war and the China shock mean that Labour’s best hope is to run against the Brexit settlement that deepened our economic plight – turning Nigel Farage into the representative of a failed status quo …

Thirdly, this left-right dividing line won’t last for ever and there are ominous political trends. Relatively early in the life of this Labour government, the public are tiring of high taxation (at a postwar peak of 37% of GDP and rising). YouGov polling shows that only 23% now believe that the government taxes too little and spends too little on services, compared to 41% who believe that it taxes and spends too much … Brexit is a time-limited card that, played soon, could help Labour fire up progressives and retain high-earners desperate for growth.

Judah suggests the government should commit to rejoining the EU, either at the budget or in the 10-year plan being published soon, subject to three tests: “which relationship with Europe makes us richest, most secure and best able to manage migration?”

And he ends suggesting that the bravest option would be to announce an election on this at the Labour conference next week.

The bravest thing Burnham could do, of course, would be to stand up on stage at Labour conference and call an election to put Britain back at the heart of Europe, with the three tests in the party’s manifesto. It would probably be the smartest too – the right is more divided than ever but Burnham’s personal popularity has likely peaked and Labour faces a tough winter. Running an election on Europe is the best tactic available to the party, not only to squeeze the left but to motivate our base and explain to an exhausted and demoralised public why we are having an election at all. The alternative – just waiting as things get worse – is ultimately the far riskier move to make.

RUSI, the foreign policy thinktank, has welcomed the creation of the National Centre for Information Defence. In a statement released at around the same time as Nigel Farage put out his video saying the new unit was an Orwellian attack on free speech (see 1.58pm), RUSI also warned about “malign networks” using free speech arguments to undermine its credibility.

Sophie Williams-Dunning, a RUSI research analyst, said:

The new National Centre for Information Defence is a welcome, if overdue, step towards the UK mounting a more strategic response to foreign information warfare in the age of social media and AI.

Despite having a legal basis for countering foreign malign interference under the National Security Act 2023, the UK’s response has been lacking to date, especially when compared to those of countries like France, Sweden, Ukraine and Taiwan, which already have dedicated agencies or centres for information defence. A centre with the job of detecting, attributing and disrupting foreign information operations, and pulling together intelligence, law enforcement and government departments that haven’t always coordinated well, is a sensible response.

Challenges will no doubt emerge. This announcement will stoke debate about free speech and the right level of government intervention – and genuine free-speech concerns will also be instrumentalised and amplified by the same inauthentic or malign networks that the new agency seeks to combat.

Nigel Farage, the Reform UK leader, has claimed the Andy Burnham’s new National Centre for Information Defence (see 8.50am) will be used to launch an Orwellian attack on free speech.

In a post on social media, Farage referred to the new unit and said Burnham was setting it up “using the excuse that Russia wants to interfere with elections”. Farage went on:

Be in no doubt, there are bots online, they come from Russia, they come from India and elsewhere, that do try to influence our thinking, and that’s not a good piece of news.

But you know what will happen with this government.

Already, he’s said it’s to stop far-right tropes etc.

This will be like George Orwell’s Ministry of Information. This will be used to clamp down on free speech.

And the one lesson I’m learning, as time goes on, whether it’s funding of parties, whether it’s cancelling elections, is never, ever trust this authoritarian government.

Farage has no evidence to back up his claim and, given that the government has already said that it will not be using the new unit for “policing domestic political dissent”, it seems little more than a scare.

The PM’s initiative has been warmly welcomed by the cross-party Commons foreign affairs committee. Emily Thornberry, the Labour chair, gave a statement quoted at 10.57am.

Other committee members have backed her up. John Whittingdale, a Tory former culture secretary, said:

During our inquiry, the committee received extensive evidence of the scale of Russian disinformation targeting both the UK and our allies, particularly in order to influence the outcome of democratic elections.”

Having seen how countries like France and Sweden have established national centres to counter this threat, the committee strongly recommended that the UK needs to follow suit as a matter of urgency. At the time, the government only partially agreed, saying it would consider it alongside the findings of the Rycroft review.

It is very welcome that the prime minister has now shared our assessment that Russia is conducting information warfare against the West and is taking action.

And Richard Foord, a Lib Dem member of the committee, said:

As recommended in our report, this should be a public-facing body, placed on a statutory footing, and accountable to parliament.

We look forward to helping ensure that this new centre is a success. We hope it demonstrates a new and robust response from the UK to hostile state information warfare.

UPDATE: I have changed ‘Given that the government has already said that it will not be using the new unit for “policing domestic political dissent”, it is hard to see how Farage’s claims are credible’ so that it now says ‘Farage has no evidence to back up his claim and, given that the government has already said that it will not be using the new unit for “policing domestic political dissent”, it seems little more than a scare’. This is in reponse to a reader who argued the first version might not be accurate.

Andy Burnham has said that he will use his speech to the Labour conference next week to say Britain needs to be honest with itself about the need for change.

The speech will define what he wants to achieve as prime minister, Burnham told the New Statesman, in an interview with its editor, Tom McTague.

Burnham said:

[The speech] is a moment to weave all of these threads together and to lay out the path, I think, and say, ‘Look, Britain’s here, we can be there’ – a much better place – ‘but we’re going to have to be honest with ourselves about what it takes to get from where we are right now to where we should be.’

This has to be a point where the country says, ‘Right, we can’t carry on like this, we need to set a new, clear direction, a new clear path.’

Burnham told McTague that he thought he would be “seriously letting down the country” if he failed to spell out this message.

At another point in the interview, Burnham said he would be building on ideas he has promoted in the past, not toning them down.

Referring to the so-called Manchesterism agenda he set out before he became PM, he said:

People might say you get into government and you dial down. I don’t feel like that. I won’t be dialling it down, put it that way.

Burnham did not announce any new policy in the interview, which largely focused on the leadership challenge posed by his new job. Describing Burnham, McTague writes:

Beneath Burnham’s bashful, almost apologetic exterior lies a will to power as strong as I have seen in Tony Blair or Gordon Brown. He is gripped by a certainty of what he – and he alone – can do with the job.

In the interview Burnham also complained that comment at PMQs recently, when he said “we do everything to support our national security, but it can’t come at the expense of social security”, had been over-simplified by his opponents. He was using social security in an old-fashioned sense, to mean the resilience of society, not benefit levels, he said. This is consistent with how he rephrased it in his speech to the UN last night. (See 10.11am.)

The former Labour minister leading the government’s review into youth unemployment has written to 100 firms to ask them to provide work placements and jobs for young people, the Press Association reports. PA says:

Alan Milburn, who was commissioned by former prime minister Keir Starmer to lead the government’s review into worklessness, has approached “business leaders” in sectors including rail, transport and utilities to ask them to provide more chances for young people.

The Milburn review said Royal Mail, Octopus Energy, Greene King and Lloyds bank are among the companies who are already offering opportunities to school and university leavers. They are taking part in the review’s First Chance scheme, which has come from the review.

In the last 10 years the number of mid-skilled and lower-skilled jobs in the economy has fallen by about 1.6 million, the department said.

Its statistics showed six in 10 young people who are not in employment, education or training (Neet) have never worked.

Andy Burnham has previously said he wants to replicate a system from Manchester which guaranteed some young people six-week work placements.

Milburn, chair of the young people and work review, said: “Since starting this review I’ve been struck by how many employers have come forward wanting to help address our country’s Neets crisis.

“More and more businesses are stepping up to the plate and looking to take action to stop the risk of a lost generation of young people.

“More than eight in 10 young people who are Neet want to be in work or training. They just lack the workplace opportunities to get them a foot in the door.

“The First Chance movement is about closing that gap – bringing together employers ready to respond to young people desperate for a chance to show what they can do.”

A thinktank linked to Reform UK has called for the abolition of the state pension and £75bn worth of sweeping tax cuts in a “radical” report likely to influence the party’s platform for the next election, Kalyeena Makortoff reports.

And here are two posts from the political commentator Sam Freedman on this story.

One of obvious problems Reform has is the views of those in charge don’t remotely match many of their voters.

Even if they somehow won a majority it would be with a swathe of low income seats who would not be keen on slashing welfare and tax cuts for the wealthy

The Conservatives have urged Andy Burnham to fully drop the proposed Chagos Islands deal – giving sovereignty of the islands to Mauritius in return for guaranteed control for the Diego Garcia military base for at least another 99 years – in the light of Donald Trump calling the deal “terrible” yesterday.

James Cartlidge, the shadow defence secretary, said in a statement:

It shouldn’t have taken another intervention from the president for Andy Burnham to ‘review’ Labour’s Chagos Surrender deal.

If Burnham was really serious about our defence he would know that this deal should be binned entirely. It is absurd to hand over British sovereign territory, not to mention billions of pounds of hard-pressed taxpayers’ money, to an ally of China.

Trump was originally sceptical about the deal, but supported it earlier this year after Keir Starmer’s government explained why it thought it was sensible. (Starmer argued it would secure the future of Diego Garcia for at least a century, and that without a deal, the UK would continue to lose sovereignty cases in international courts, which would ultimately make protecting the base more difficult.) But, as Trump’s relationship with Starmer soured, the president reverted to attacking the deal as foolish.

In interviews today Wes Streeting, the defence secretary, said that while Trump’s comments last night were not new, they did show that this was now “his settled view on the treaty”.

Streeting said this meant that the deal that has been negotiated would now be subject to a rethink. He explained:

This deal, as it is currently constituted, can’t go ahead without American support. We have to get a deal to a place where it commands American support, as well as the agreement of the government of Mauritius and our government.

Earlier this year Mauritius and the UK were all set to ratify the treaty. But the legislation going through the UK parliament to make this happen was shelved after Trump started objecting.

Under the deal, the UK would have paid around £120m a year to Mauritius for ongoing control of the Diego Garcia military base, which is mainly used by the US for surveillance in the Pacific and as a base for long-range bombing missions. Washington regards it as a vital military asset.

Streeting said annual payments are not going ahead now while the deal is on hold.

But, asked on Sky News if the UK was still minded to cede sovereignty, Streeting replied: “That’s not really been in doubt since we decolonised.”

Demos, a thinktank that has done a lot of work on tackling disinformation, has also welcomed Andy Burnham’s announcement (see 8.50am) – while also urging the PM to go further.

Hannah Perry, director of digital policy at Demos, said:

Right now, Britain’s information supply is being written in Moscow and spread by algorithms nobody voted for. The prime minister is right to call for a national effort. This is a national security threat, and it ends in real-world harm.

Our research has found Russian propaganda poisoning the chatbots people use every day, disinformation campaigns targeting London, and social media stoking division during crisis moments from the Southport riots to recent asylum housing rows. The door is wide open to these attacks.

We have been calling for a national response and a new centre to coordinate is extremely welcome, but it can’t just mop up the mess. It has to shut the door.

Government has other levers it can pull: protect elections from AI manipulation, bring in tougher protocols for crisis flashpoints, and back trusted news by securing the BBC’s future, protecting local news and making sure public interest journalism shows up on social media. The current green paper proposing regulating algorithms to give trustworthy news prominence needs to be implemented.

Some will say this is a threat to free speech. But there’s nothing free about speech written by a hostile state and amplified by a machine. Britain should decide how information reaches its people, not the Kremlin or Silicon Valley.

Emily Thornberry, the Labour chair of the Commons foreign affairs committee, has warmly welcomed the PM’s announcement about setting up a National Centre for Information Defence. (See 8.50am.) It is an idea her committee proposed in a report earlier this year.

In a statement, she said:

For too long, the approach of successive governments to disinformation has been disjointed and without organisation, allowing states like Russia to amplify lies about this country, to sow division and stoke tensions. This new National Centre for Information Security is an opportunity to finally take on this very serious threat.

The foreign affairs committee recommended exactly this in March. We were extremely worried about what seemed to be a complacency of the British establishment at the disinformation being promoted from abroad, particularly from Russia. We thought the response from Whitehall had essentially been ‘talk to the hand because the face ain’t listening,’ but it seems we were wrong. I’m absolutely delighted.

The outlook for the UK economy has brightened, according to the OECD, with inflation lower than expected while new government support measures are likely to boost growth. Julia Kollewe has more on the business live blog.

You can read the whole of Andy Burnham’s speech to the United Nations general assembly here.And here are the key points.

• Burnham said there is “no national security without a strong, cohesive society”. This is interesting because Burnham was strongly criticised by the Tories and Reform UK, and rightwing papers, after saying at PMQs earlier this month: “We do everything to support our national security, but it can’t come at the expense of social security.” Critics claimed this meant Burnham thought avoiding benefit cuts was more important than deterring Russia. But Burnham did not resile from the argument, and in his speech overnight he restated the same idea in slightly different language. He said:

True resilience depends on this military strength.

But the last 10 years also tells us that it is about something deeper as well.

It’s about the strength of the social fabric that binds us together.

There is no national security without a strong, cohesive society.

That’s the starting point for everything we hold dear and everything we want to achieve.

And we are going to help our people to strengthen their resilience – because faced with this information warfare, security starts in every home.

If you’re struggling with the cost of living and your life is not improving – or if you’re a young person not in employment, education or training – then you are going to be much more vulnerable to this kind of influence.

So part of the challenge is to lift our people up and create the opportunities they need.

Today I am tasking our security chiefs to begin work on a new National Centre for Information Defence – to detect, attribute and disrupt these kinds of hostile state information attacks. To support and defend our democracy.

And I know this is a shared challenge.

So we are going to use our experience in the UK – and the fact that we have already been through this shock – to help other countries.

We have already supported Moldova to protect its elections from Russian interference.

As more elections approach across Europe, more nations are grappling with these issues – some for the first time.

The climate crisis is now a national security threat for countries around the world – as this summer of extreme heat, wildfires and floods has proved beyond doubt.

Britain will continue to lead with others to fight this threat.

• He said he wanted the UK to be an “honest broker” in international affairs, mediating between the US and Europe. Although some in British politics, notably the Liberal Democrats, argue that having Donald Trump in the White House means Britain should seek a closer relationship with Europe, Burnham’s words imply he agrees with Keir Starmer, who repeatedly said he did not accept the need to choose between Europe and the US. Burnham said:

I believe the UK has a unique position as an honest broker to help drive this forward.

We are America’s closest ally.

We have deep ties with our friends in the European Union and will deepen them further.

We work with China and emerging powers like India and Brazil.

We sit on the security council. In the Commonwealth. In the CPTPP.

In a divided world, we have the ability to bring people together – and we will.

We are going to step into that role.

This has been the establishment view of Britain’s foreign policy role at least since the 1960s. Most previous postwar PMs would have said the same thing. But there are those who argue that Trump has made this stance less tenable.

The UK has some of the best tech and AI talent anywhere in the world.

And when it comes to guarding against the risks, we have our world-leading AI Security Institute – working hand in glove with the US and the leading labs on AI safety.

But we need to go further.

Building on the meeting convened by His Majesty King Charles last week, I can announce today that I am going to put AI at the heart of the UK’s G20 Presidency next year.

I look back at how we responded to the financial crisis back in 2008.

We moved quickly in the G20 and smaller groups to deliver an urgent, practical response.

We came together to agree principles – which everyone implemented at home in a way that was right for them. And it worked.

That is the kind of approach we need now.

• He said he wanted the world towards “agreeing a single set of global principles and standards to ensure the transparency and access we need to increase our preparedness – and to ensure that AI development is safe”. This is different from Trump’s view; he told the UN yesterday he was opposed to international regulation of AI.

Outside [No 10 North in Manchester] office stands a statue of Abraham Lincoln.

It marks the personal connection he made with Manchester, and the bond between our two nations. A bond which he described in a letter to working people of the city as “perpetual.”

This was not due to some military or material support.

There was no quid pro quo.

It was because Manchester’s humble mill workers took a principled stand.

During the American civil war, despite the hardships it brought them, they refused to touch raw cotton that had been picked by slaves.

In 1862, people with little power used it to help those with none on the other side of the world.

The best change is change like that, bottom-up change led by people.

And whatever distorted view social media offers today, the world is still full of good and decent people who are ready stand up for what is right.

While this story might relate to a “bond” between the US and the UK, it won’t help relations with Trump. The Trump administration has hounded museums that remind Americans of the negative impact of slavery, and the president gives every indication that, if he had been around at the time of the civil war, he would have sided with the Confederates.

Nothing brings the British people together across age, race and class more than their hatred of injustice – the misuse of power against the powerless.

We will always stand for the underdog against the bully.

That’s why we are so united behind Ukraine.

And let me say, we salute the Ukrainian people.

They are showing depths of resilience and courage that is an inspiration to the whole world.

This is another rewrite of a line that he used at his most recent PMQs. Some rightwingers complained that always standing with the underdog would mean siding with Hamas against Israel, or Iran against the US.

In an interview with the Today programme about the government’s plans for a National Centre for Information Defence, Wes Streeting, the defence secretary, said it was needed to help people “to separate fact from fiction”.

He said:

What we need to do is not just better co-ordination at the centre of government, but the better mobilisation of the whole of society. And that’s supporting the public to separate fact from fiction, and to be able to discern the legitimate, real BBC, or indeed legitimate, real British universities, from the fake and the manufactured. That is extremely challenging in the new world of AI.

Come the next general election, it will be hard to discern the real versions of politicians and BBC presenters from the artificial versions.

Wes Streeting, the defence secretary, was giving interviews this morning to promote a government announcement about the RAF launching what the MoD is calling its “first ever space squadron”. Ben Quinn has the story here.

Good morning. Andy Burnham delivered his speech to the United Nations in what felt like the middle of the night in UK time and he announced that he is setting up what he is calling a National Centre for Information Defence.

Burnham said this was necessary because “over the last decade we have given too much ground to those who want to run a negative, corrosive narrative about life in Britain, which bears no resemblance to reality”.

Over at GB News they seem a bit worried this morning about the prospect of a crackdown on corrosive narratives about Britain which bear no resemblance to reality, and they are running a story with a headline referencing “free speech fears”. It includes a quote from a rightwing commentator claiming the Burnham speech was all “talk of control and censorship – exactly the kind of messaging that the Trump administration absolutely hates”.

But close reading of the speech makes it clear that Burnham is not aiming his fire at any parts of the UK media. Burnham said he was concerned about hostile state actors waging disinformation warfare, especially Russia. He told the UN:

In recent years we have seen an industrial-scale assault by hostile actors on the information environment in the UK and that of many of our allies.

Russian agencies have used every means at their disposal to spread lies and disinformation and prey on people’s fears.

They’ve used bots and fake websites.

Falsified newspaper articles.

Forged the branding of 28 British organisations – including universities and the BBC.

They’ve amplified far-right narratives.

And we have evidence that they tried to interfere with the 2019 general election.

(Burnham did not address the fact that there are some within the Trump administration who have also been amplifying far-right narratives with claims about the UK which certainly count as misinformation, and arguably meet the disinformation threshold too.)

Wes Streeting, the defence secretary, has been giving interviews this morning and, speaking to GB News, he was asked about claims that Burnham’s new unit could be used against Britons who” simply disagree” with the government. That would not happen, he said.

He told the programme:

One of the great things about Britain, and one of the things that I have a responsibility to defend, is the freedom and democracy that we all enjoy.

And that includes the freedom to disagree, the freedom for people to challenge their government, to challenge government policy, to criticise robustly what we are doing and then to have the opportunity to choose a different government.

That is a stark contrast to the position that our friends the Russian people endure under the political system that they suffer under.

Russia is just one of a number of malign state and non-state actors that seek to threaten and disrupt our democracy, including through misinformation and disinformation.

Streeting added:

We’re not interested in policing domestic political dissent.

You can read Burnham’s UN speech in full here. I will be posting more from it soon.

The Commons is still in recess, and most people in government are getting ready for the Labour conference next week, and so there is almost nothing in the Westminster diary. But there was enough news at the UN yesterday to pad out the week, and so I’m sure there will be enough to cover.

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