Andy Burnham, the UK's prime minister in waiting, lacks direct defence experience, but this could be his greatest asset. According to political analyst Jessica Berlin, Burnham's background as mayor of Manchester, where he focused on domestic resilience, positions him to lead Nato's response to hybrid warfare.
From Local Resilience to National Defence
Burnham made his name running the UK's second city, not building a Whitehall foreign-policy career. As mayor, he faced serious security threats: the Manchester Arena terror attack, floods, fires, and the Covid-19 pandemic. Rather than just react, he rebuilt how Manchester prepares. After the arena attack, he commissioned an independent review and acted on its findings. He appointed Greater Manchester's first chief resilience officer and boosted an existing resilience forum that now coordinates more than 80 agencies to assess risk and respond to crises.
This approach, Berlin argues, is precisely what a prime minister dealing with hybrid war needs to do at national scale. Russia has turned the home front into the frontline, using psyops, bot farms, cyberhacks, sabotage, assassinations on British soil, and the buying of political influence. Even former PM Keir Starmer faced a campaign of online vitriol and disinformation; when he resigned, Vladimir Putin's special envoy Kirill Dmitriev crowed "We did it" – overstating Moscow's influence but a telling boast.
The Threat Is Not Remote
In May last year, a car and two properties linked to Starmer were set alight by a Ukrainian and a Romanian national recruited and paid by a Russian-speaking handler. Even after a senior counter-terrorism police officer described the case as fitting the pattern of Russian state-backed sabotage, the UK gave a collective shrug. That shrug, Berlin says, is the real security threat, helping Moscow more than any warehouse fire.
Russia cannot sink the Royal Navy and does not need to. More effective is corroding the solidarity, trust, and sense of identity that holds a democratic society together. Hybrid warfare turns institutions, media, industries, and minds into the battlefield. Hybrid defence must start at home.
Lessons from Ukraine and Finland
When Ukraine was invaded in 2022, it was outmatched on every conventional measure: manpower, hardware, money. It survived because society mobilised. Community-level resilience enabled Ukraine to survive and build a thriving defence innovation industry. Finland is the global benchmark for comprehensive security, integrating government, businesses, and civil society. Its 50,000 civil defence shelters can protect 85% of the population; one Helsinki shelter doubles as a sports hall and playground. Finns teach media literacy from age three, understanding that citizens' ability to think critically is a security asset.
Burnham's Blueprint
Burnham has already sketched a blueprint by promising to decentralise decision-making from London to the UK's nations and regions. He frames this as socioeconomic renewal, but it is also a model for rewiring Britain's defence. A country whose prosperity and power are spread across every region is harder to break. A nation's resilience is built from within communities, not commanded top-down from a ministry.
Burnham faces the challenge of correcting Starmer's defence underspend. He has an opportunity to bring forward a national defence and resilience strategy that funds traditional military strength and deterrence, paired with serious investment in the home front: education, critical and digital infrastructure, and jobs. The point is not to choose between tanks or teachers – all are vital in an era of hybrid warfare.
Britain isn't alone. Europe and Nato need to embed resilience in defence because Ukraine and Finland remain exceptions. Germany, for example, is uniquely unprepared for societal resilience, with crumbling roads, railways, and bridges – a defence vulnerability even without Russian sabotage. At the Nato summit in Ankara this week, European leaders may doubt Burnham's foreign policy chops, but Berlin argues a country that strengthens its communities and hardens itself against hybrid war is a stronger ally.
