UK Column News — 23rd September 2026

Mike Robinson (0:08)

Good afternoon, it's Wednesday the 23rd, September 2026, just after one o'clock. Welcome to UK Column News. I'm your host, Mike Robinson. Joining me by video link today are Charles Malet and Vanessa Beeley. Welcome to the programme both. Now later in the programme, we'll have a report on Climate Week and the latest on the surveillance war here in the UK and in fact in other countries as well.

But we're going to be focusing quite a bit today on the United Nations General Assembly and of course we're going to start with Britain's latest Prime Minister, Andy Burnham. Now he gave his first address to the General Assembly yesterday, first ever. It came hours after he had met Donald Trump for the first time and he framed it as a post-Brexit reset. He told delegates that ten years on from the referendum, Britain is back.

He pitched the UK as an honest broker, able to bridge the US, the EU, China, and emerging powers such as India and Brazil. He is positioning the United Kingdom as being some kind of arbiter of peace in the world. We'll come on to that much later in the programme. But he also continued to, has replaced that we would provide continued defense spending and that NATO would receive all the commitments that it's had from the British government. He accused Russia of an industrial scale information campaign against Britain using bots, fake websites, forged branding. He said, in fact, there was forged branding of 28 British organizations, including the BBC.

He said that Russia was amplifying far-right narratives and attempted interference in the 2019 general election. Now, Burnham's rhetoric over this was amplified by Britain's Secretary of State for War, Wes Streating, on the BBC Radio 4 Today program this morning. Let's just have a listen to that.

Wes Streating (1:55)

Well, what we know of Russian intent is that they already pose sub-threshold threats and hybrid threats to this country.

Russia does not take action that constitutes war against this country, but it does pose a material threat, and we see that threat manifest itself in a variety of ways, some of which the public can readily see from some of the performative exercises we've seen in the channel, as well as the mapping of underwater cables that the public are aware of. The public also saw and was outraged by the poisonings that took place in Salisbury. So we know what Russian intent and capability is, but the information domain is one that we need to be as vigilant about as every other, one of our bits of critical national infrastructure.

Mike Robinson (2:50)

So the information domain is now being placed as an item of critical national infrastructure, and this is vastly important. We'll talk about this much more in extra, but of course, this is continuing the rhetoric that has been on Russia for the last 10-15 years. It includes Integrity Initiative, and of course, he mentioned Skripal affair there, the poisonings in Salisbury. Now, if anybody isn't familiar with those, if you get onto the UK Column website, use the search button and type in the word Skripal, you'll get a number of articles and videos that are very important to this. That'll give you the background. Coming back to Burnham, he put Kremlin spending on information manipulation at around 1.3 billion pounds a year and announced a new National Center for Information Defense to detect and disrupt state-backed attacks. He tied vulnerability to disinformation, to the cost of living and youth unemployment. It's amazing what this information is capable of doing. And he announced a 10-year plan for Britain, which is going to come out later this year. And on Ukraine, he said that fall, and of course, this is following on from his visit to Kiev last month, Burnham promised to help with air defense and repairs to heating power plants before the winter. And he called on Russian strikes and civilian infrastructure.

He alleged Russian strikes and civilian infrastructure. He called those war crimes. And he urged Moscow to accept a ceasefire.

He went on to talk about the Falklands and the right to remain British. On the Middle East, he condemned Hamas and stood with Israel against Iran. We'll see that in a second. But he criticized Israeli actions in Gaza and the West Bank. And he opposed the E1 settlement. And he cited UK measures, so a ban on trade and goods with illegal settlements, which as we know is just PR, but also recognizing that the occupation is unlawful and the placement of sanctions on settlement builders.

So as we say, he stands with Israel. Let's just have a listen to that and then I'm very keen to get Vanessa's comments.