As the Labour Party gathers in Liverpool this weekend to plot its electoral revival, an increasingly “brazen” Moscow is poised to eavesdrop and potentially disrupt the climax of Britain’s political conference season, intelligence experts have warned.
Some 20,000 people are expected to attend Labour’s four-day gathering at the £164m waterside LEX centre as Britain’s ruling party seeks to galvanise its members and capitalise on Andy Burnham’s early success in improving Labour’s standing in the polls.
Among them may be some unwanted guests.
After a week in which the Prime Minister put Russia’s multi-faceted “grey zone” campaign against the UK and its allies in the spotlight by announcing a new body to tackle Kremlin disinformation, it is likely that Moscow – and at the same time Beijing – will quite literally spy opportunity in both Labour’s Merseyside pow-wow and the Conservative Party’s annual gathering in Birmingham the week after.
Both main party conferences are taking place against a backdrop of a sharp uptick in Vladimir Putin’s so-called hybrid warfare tactics designed to drive a wedge between Ukraine and its European allies.
And while MPs and ministers are protected by security, the phones and laptops of lower-ranking officials and advisers are likely to be a key priority target for spies.
60 per cent increase in suspected Russian attacks on Europe
Figures provided to The i Paper by Dragonfly Intelligence, a London-based global security consultancy, show there has been a rise of more than 60 per cent in the number of suspected Russia grey zone warfare incidents in Europe so far this year, compared to the same period in 2025.
Incidents range from sabotage to interference and in the first eight months of 2026, the number recorded – some 194, including nine in the UK – already exceeds the total for 2024 (177) and is likely to beat the record of 331 set last year.
In this context, an event like a party conference where cabinet ministers mingle with attendees ranging from grassroots activists to grandees of the business world constitutes a juicy target for hostile or adversarial states like Russia and China.
French and Lithuanian soldiers taking part in Nato live fire drills in Lithuania this month (Photo: Petras Malukas/Getty)Matthew Ince, associate director of geostrategic risk at Dragonfly, said: “The UK and its allies face a persistent, multi-layered foreign interference threat. Within that context, political parties, their members, the digital infrastructure of those parties and the personal devices of their members are on the front lines in terms of being potential targets for states like Russia and China.
“By virtue of convening a large number of parliamentarians and wider political figures within a concentrated area at a particular moment in time, party conferences create a significant intelligence espionage collection opportunity for those states.”
Intelligence sources and experts point out that since hundreds of Russian intelligence officials were expelled from Britain and other European capitals in the wake of the Salisbury nerve agent attack in 2018, Moscow has become adept at recruiting proxy operatives among crime networks and diaspora communities to do its dirty work.
The Royal United Services Institute (RUSI) think-tank warned last week that the Kremlin’s penchant for “disposable agents” paid with cryptocurrency was increasing the risk of “unintended escalation” with the West.
Kremlin’s ‘hack and leak’ playbook for party conferences
But such risks are unlikely to prevent Moscow from contemplating a range of activities in Liverpool and Birmingham to gather intelligence and conduct operations seeking to further a core Kremlin aim of discrediting mainstream political parties.
While ministers and senior MPs benefit from a higher level of protection, including encrypted phones, conference centres and their environs are routinely packed with lower-ranking advisers and political staff with low-security devices. A tendency for high-octane socialising can also increase the risk of drink-fuelled indiscretions being overheard or elicited.
Ince said that Russian operatives and their proxies in hacking groups could look to deploy tactics including phishing campaigns to harvest the credentials of individuals attending the conference.
He added: “Russia could be trying to get into the communication devices of people there to understand and pick up on some of the friction points and tensions within parties on particular policy issues. And then selectively leaking some of those into the public domain to try and expose those fractures and central disagreements to discredit leadership figures.”
Such tactics would not be new in British politics. Moscow has been accused of meddling in the 2019 general election by stealing and then leaking documents relating to discussions on a possible US-UK trade agreement amid concerns that the then Conservative government was considering offering access to the NHS as part of a deal.
The prime minister this week cited Russian activity in the 2019 election as one of the reasons for setting up a new government unit dedicated to exposing Moscow’s disinformation campaigns.
The Home Office this week emphasised that it was alive to the dangers posed by hostile actors to the UK. A spokesperson said: “We take the threat posed by foreign states incredibly seriously, and our first priority is protecting British interests.
“The police and security services work tirelessly to investigate and stop such threats. Any attempt by a foreign state to carry out such activities in the UK is unacceptable and will never be tolerated.”
Moscow’s arson campaign
While hostile activity around party conferences is most likely to be limited to the cyber domain, including the possibility of denial-of-service attacks to disable party websites or social media platforms, a more “kinetic” strategy from Moscow to symbolically disrupt important gatherings cannot also be ruled out.
Sources pointed to a rash of arson incidents across Europe in recent weeks and months, including a fire this week at a Starlink satellite station in central Poland, which a government minister described as a deliberate “act of sabotage” designed to disrupt the internet service relied upon by the Ukrainian military to conduct drone operations against Russia.
A Toyota car formerly belonging to Keir Stramer was set alight on a London street in May 2025. Two men were later found guilty of conspiring to carry out arson attacks on property and the car connected to the then Prime Minister (Photo: Unpixs)It is understood that direct responsibility for security at party conferences is shared between organisers and the local police force. In keeping with high-profile political gatherings, an extensive security operation will be in place around both Labour and Tory conferences.
Merseyside Police said this week it was putting in place a “robust” operation including the use of Project Servator, a tactic using unpredictable uniformed and covert patrols designed to spot hostile surveillance and “disrupt a range of criminal activity”.
Ince said Russia’s “much more brazen approach” of recent months could translate into actions designed to discredit or embarrass Britain’s party of power during its annual display of unity. He added: “An attack on conference venues would seem unlikely but a fire at a warehouse in a host city ultimately distracts attention away from the conferences and the key messages that politicians are trying to land.”
The use of arson by a Russia-linked group against UK political figures is already established. Earlier this year, two Ukrainian-born men acting on behalf of a Russian contact were jailed for arson attacks in 2025 on a car linked to then prime minister Keir Starmer and his former family home.
Meanwhile… in Beijing
While China’s aims and methods differ considerably from those of the Kremlin, Beijing nonetheless has an enduring interest in the British political system and, by implication, conference season.
Two men, including a former parliamentary researcher, were charged in 2024 with gathering political information and passing it to a Chinese state intelligence agent. Both men strenuously denied the charge against them and the case was dropped in controversial circumstances last year after prosecutors decided the evidence did not meet a requirement of showing China has been formally designated as a threat to national security.
Nonetheless, the intelligence services have repeatedly warned of Chinese pursuit of UK commercial secrets and a wider effort to deter criticism of the ruling Communist Party. The UK’s national security strategy, published last year, warned that “instances of China’s espionage, interference in our democracy and the undermining of our economic security have increased in recent years”.
But while behind the scenes Moscow may be increasingly at ease with being seen to be an active threat to the West, China will adopt a considerably less bellicose position. As Ince put it: “It would be a mistake to consider the conferences in isolation. For China, it’s more about trying to continue to develop relationships, cultivate individuals within positions of influence and ultimately trying to subtly steer and shape policy discussion so that it aligns more to its own interests.
“The focus of China is less on these sort of disruptive acts of physical sabotage and much more on trying to develop relationships with individuals or gaining access through cyber attacks to information it doesn’t have.”
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