New UK Prime Minister Should Elevate Defending Democracy Taskforce to Tackle Bots and Protect Trusted News

Hannah Perry is the Interim Director of Demos Digital.

The pattern is becoming too familiar. A moment of tragedy or injustice is caught on camera devoid of context and spreads on social media like wildfire. No one trusted can explain what happened fast enough, and so that fury mounts. Every other injustice people feel is channeled into a collective moment of outrage—then amplified beyond control.

Engagement-driven algorithms ensure millions have the chance to ride each roar of collective anger. Political actors—at home and abroad—smell an opportunity to score points and drip poison into the mix. Conspiracy theories are amplified from the fringes and spiral through communities. A hot mirage of social consensus is fabricated via bots and virality goes unchecked. A real event is warped by distorted online discourse.

Whether that spark of tragedy is in Southport, Southampton or Belfast, this pattern towards anger and violent disorder has become a predictable, often summertime, event.

Outgoing UK prime minister Keir Starmer’s government recognized the problem, but failed to meet its scale. It has seen how our platform-based information environment is fueling mistrust and sewing division between us. It is investing in local news, promising a permanent BBC charter and setting out ambitious plans to ensure prominence of trustworthy information online. But, it was never enough. A new administration needs to make defending democracy a central mission to show it can take back control on the people’s behalf.

In 2022, Rishi Sunak’s government introduced the Defending Democracy Taskforce—a cross departmental and inter-agency initiative— to protect the democratic integrity of the UK, with a special focus on foreign election interference and disinformation. Andy Burnham's new government should now move that critical task force into Downing Street—and the Prime Minister should personally chair it, leading and publishing a new strategy for Information Ecosystems Resilience.

This strategy should strengthen the UK’s readiness for crises and improve its collective response by designating information crises as part of the Civil Contingency Framework and, via an Online Safety Act amendment, mandate that Ofcom enforces crisis protocols for platforms rather than allowing for voluntary application.

The current Representation of the People Bill also provides a timely vehicle to safeguard elections for the digital age—yet its scope is unnecessarily limited. The UK should curb online threats against candidates by adding an "Elections Code" to the Online Safety Act via the Bill. It should also tackle deepfakes and AI-generated false text claims by clarifying how election law applies and announce new AI legislation that tackles electoral hallucinations and protects against bias.

While mitigating the risks of harmful and misleading content during vulnerable moments should be key to this strategy, so should the visibility of high-quality, trustworthy information. The government should accelerate plans for mandating the prominence of public interest news on platforms in tandem with crucial democratic safeguards, and strengthen the independence and accountability of the BBC—ensuring it maintains the trust of the public in polarized times. Innovation funding for local news is an important first step, but the government needs a longer term strategy for sovereignty and public digital infrastructure that unlocks a plurality of online spaces as alternatives to the current cesspit of provision that only corrodes our democracy.

All political leaders—at every level of the system—need to get on the playing field and be active on social media—providing opportunities to rebuild connection as an antidote to the poisonous void. The government should build a cross party coalition for its strategy; democracy is a cross party concern.

The roll-call of violent flashpoints are not random events, and they will continue. They are a symptom of our democratic emergency: the loss of faith in fairness, justice, our safety and security—and the democratic system’s failure to do anything about it. They are an expression of the disillusionment with the idea that the state can effectively respond to the public’s needs and an attempt to demand that it takes back control.

Digital platforms are not the cause of this frustration, but they are a pivotal and toxic catalyst. If we no longer share the same reality as a country, if we are divided by algorithms and physically separated by mobile phones, how can we act as fellow citizens in a democracy building a more hopeful future together?

The public is clearly demanding an alternative path. The popularity of the social media ban shows that people want the government to have these battles. But the challenge is so much bigger. Successive governments have ceded too much power to digital platforms, distracted by the pursuit of growth and the Big Tech lobby. The public feels it. The rampant effects of digital change is met with a sense of powerlessness, a recognition of elite capture, and a resulting loss of faith in government to tackle it.

The geopolitical threats and technological advances will not slow. As the world becomes less secure, and as adversaries of democracy wage information wars, these issues are only becoming more pressing. Agentic AI is paving a future where citizens no longer need to enter shared online spaces at all, introducing a new set of challenges to the equation. Epistemic security is at risk.

To defend and upgrade democracy, the next government needs to build a more resilient information ecosystem. It needs to take back control.