Burnham tells the UN Britain is under 'industrial-scale' information attack, and promises a new centre to fight it

Britain will fight disinformation at home and abroad and push for worldwide safety standards for artificial intelligence, Prime Minister Andy Burnham told the United Nations General Assembly on Monday evening, in his first address to the body since taking office.

Speaking in the General Debate of the Assembly's 81st session, Mr Burnham said recent years had seen "an industrial-scale assault by hostile actors on the information environment" in the UK and many allied countries, and singled out Russia. "Russian agencies have used every means at their disposal to spread lies and disinformation and prey on people's fears," he said, listing bots, fake websites and falsified news articles among the methods.

The account below draws on the UN's own report of the speech. The full text and video are available through the General Assembly's debate portal and Downing Street, both linked in the sources.

What he accused Russia of

The Prime Minister's charge sheet was broader than most British leaders have put on the record at the UN. "They've amplified far right narratives. And we have evidence that they tried to interfere with the 2019 General Election," he said. "We also know that they have tried to stoke tensions and unrest in the wake of horrific events."

That last remark was a reference to the summer of 2024, when false claims spread online about the man who killed three young girls at a dance class in Southport. The UN's report of the speech notes that false information shared online helped to spark the riots that followed. Mr Burnham also said the Kremlin spends roughly $1.7 billion "on manipulating information", and that British companies and institutions had suffered cyber-attacks. "And we know that AI will multiply the threat," he added.

Two of those claims are worth handling with care. The 2019 election allegation is stronger than anything in Parliament's Intelligence and Security Committee report on Russia, published in 2020, which was notable mainly for finding that the government had not seriously looked for interference at all. Mr Burnham said the government now "has evidence"; he did not say what it is or whether it will be published. The $1.7 billion figure was presented without a source. Estimates of Russian state spending on information operations vary widely depending on what is counted, and the number should be read as the government's estimate rather than an established fact.

The new centre

The concrete announcement was a National Centre for Information Defence, which Mr Burnham said will "detect, attribute and disrupt" information attacks while "supporting and defending" British democracy. He framed it as something the UK can export: the country has already helped Moldova protect its elections against alleged Russian interference, and he offered the same help to others.

What the speech did not say is as telling as what it did. There was no figure for the centre's funding, no indication of which department will house it, no timetable, and no description of the legal powers it will have, if any, to "disrupt" anything. The UK has run government counter-disinformation work before, under more than one name, and some of it drew criticism from civil liberties groups and MPs for monitoring domestic voices rather than foreign ones. Whether the new centre is a fresh institution or a rebranding of that work is the first question it will face at home.

AI: a pact with Washington, and a call for one rulebook

The second half of the speech turned to artificial intelligence. Mr Burnham called frontier AI, the most capable systems at the edge of the technology, "one of the most significant challenges and opportunities of our age", and announced that the UK is developing a new AI defence partnership with the United States to protect critical national infrastructure.

He then made a political argument that will be familiar to anyone who has followed his domestic career. Fundamental decisions on AI "are too important to be left to chance", he said, and "must be taken by elected governments who serve working people." The UK, he said, will "work 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."

Britain has some standing here. It convened the first international AI safety summit at Bletchley Park in 2023 and set up a government institute to test frontier models, since renamed the AI Security Institute. But the call for a single global standard runs into the same obstacle it always has: the United States, China and the European Union have each gone their own way on AI rules, and none has shown much appetite for a common one. The UN's own position, restated in its report of the speech, is that shared principles and commitments agreed between countries are the best route. That is easier to say from the podium than to negotiate.

What was announced, and what is still unknown

What to watch

Three things will show whether Monday's speech was policy or positioning. First, whether Downing Street follows up with a written statement on the centre that answers the questions above. Second, whether the 2019 evidence is put in front of Parliament's intelligence committee, which has complained before about being kept in the dark. Third, whether the United States confirms the AI partnership in its own words. A defence partnership announced by one side is a proposal; announced by both, it is a policy.