Today (20 July 2026), Andy Burnham became Prime Minister of the UK, succeeding Sir Keir Starmer. While there is not yet a detailed ‘Burnham tech strategy’, pre-transition briefings and reports over recent weeks suggest a strong focus on AI, including plans for a dedicated AI Minister, the scrapping of the hotly debated digital ID programme, and the potential reorganisation of the Department for Science, Innovation and Technology (DSIT), with its responsibilities redistributed across other government departments.
So, what does the cyber community hope Burnham will do in the realm of cybersecurity, AI and tech as Prime Minister? We asked the industry…
Charlotte Wilson, Head of Enterprise at Check Point said: “Britain’s AI department is at the forefront of the country’s productivity strategy, playing a crucial role in how the technology will be developed and rolled out to drive wider economic growth and defence.”
“Incoming policymakers should take heed; artificial intelligence is the gorilla in the room and will remain so for the foreseeable future. Any suggestion of redeployment or downsizing could send the wrong signal to businesses and cyber criminals about how seriously we take the most transformational technology in living memory,” Wilson continued.
Dray Agha, Senior Manager of Security Operations at Huntress, added: “Smart infrastructure beats a spending war, and fortunately the UK can’t outspend the US or China on AI models anyway, so the new Prime Minister must focus on where we can win: secure public datasets and targeted sovereign compute.”
“Safely unlocking NHS data while fortifying our energy grid will build real domestic leverage without compromising national security. With guaranteed access to US tech currently on ice, relying solely on Washington is no longer a viable security strategy. The UK must leverage our AI Security Institute to build a ‘middle-power’ tech coalition with NATO and Commonwealth allies, pooling resources to ensure collective cyber resilience.”
Additionally, Muhammad Yahya Patel, vCISO and Cybersecurity Advisor for EMEA at Huntress, noted: “The UK doesn’t need to win the frontier model race; it needs to be a serious, trustworthy place to deploy AI at scale. That’s a more achievable and arguably more valuable position. The ally-pooling argument on sovereign compute and cloud interoperability is sensible from both an economic and security standpoint.”
“The UK’s convening credibility on this particularly through the AI Security Institute is a genuine asset that Burnham should be using. Unlocking health data for AI R&D is genuinely valuable but it’s only responsible if the security and governance infrastructure around that data is built first, not retrofitted after the damage is done. Right now the ambition is ahead of the security maturity.”
Jake Taylor, Head of Government NEMEA at Filigran, said: “If the new government wants to bring more critical national infrastructure under public ownership, cybersecurity has to become part of that conversation from day one. National resilience isn’t just about protecting individual organisations anymore. It’s about ensuring energy providers, government, suppliers and operators can share intelligence, understand emerging threats and coordinate their response before disruption spreads.”
“The biggest challenge isn’t a lack of security tools. Most critical infrastructure organisations already have those. The challenge is breaking down the silos that still exist between organisations and turning threat intelligence into something that informs operational decisions, rather than simply generating more alerts. As the geopolitical environment becomes increasingly volatile and nation-state activity continues to rise, collaboration will be every bit as important as technology.”
Taylor continued, “the Cyber Security and Resilience Bill is an important step because it moves the conversation towards common standards and greater coordination. If public ownership expands, cybersecurity needs to evolve from a collection of individual security programmes into a genuinely national capability, where intelligence sharing and continuous threat exposure management become fundamental to protecting essential services.”
Andy Burnham’s long-term plans for the UK’s cyber, AI and technology sectors are still taking shape. The Guru team will be keeping a close eye on developments as his new government begins to set out its agenda.
