Thousands share video making false claims about Labour MPs resigning over ‘scandal’

Several thousand people have shared a video that appears to show GB News presenter Patrick Christys reporting on the “biggest UK scandal in decades” and claiming that 43 Labour MPs have “just resigned” after £22 billion supposedly “vanished” from Labour’s finances.

But the claims in the video are false—there’s been no mass resignation of Labour MPs, there’s no evidence of any such scandal and this is not a genuine news report. The audio on the video is almost certainly AI-generated.

The clip starts with footage of Mr Christys before featuring generic photos of Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer and other Labour MPs, as well as roads, offices and buildings, among other things. Overlaid text says: “Breaking news ‘Labour caught in the Biggest UK Sc@ndal in decades’ ‘£22 Billion STOLEN? Starmer’s Circle Uncle F!re’ [sic]”.

The audio, which resembles Mr Christys’ voice but isn’t in sync with the opening footage of him, says: “Keir Starmer’s leadership is unraveling in real time. 43 Labour MPs have just resigned—not backbenchers, senior voices, insiders, loyalists—and here's why. Over £22 billion has vanished from Labour's finances linked to shell companies, shadowy contracts and firms tied to Starmer’s own allies.”

Comments on the post include “the ship is sinking” and “Scotland Yard.....arrest the lot”, which suggests some people believe the video is real.

The claim that 43 MPs have resigned is groundless. A handful of Labour MPs have resigned since Labour took office, for reasons which have nothing to do with the various false claims made in this video, but there has been no announcement or media reporting of MPs resigning en masse.

It’s also not correct that “MPs are going public” or “documents are flooding out”, as the video goes on to claim. There are no credible reports of any such “scandal”, despite it supposedly being a big breaking news story.

There has been lots of reporting around a £22 billion figure, but this is completely unrelated to the claims in the video. In July 2024, Labour said that the government had inherited a “£22 billion black hole” from the Conservative government, which we’ve written about elsewhere.

Almost certainly AI-generated

We wrote last week about another video which similarly appeared to be an AI-generated report featuring Mr Christys. In that video, Mr Christys was supposedly reporting that, from January 2026, operating a vehicle without a valid licence would no longer lead to criminal proceedings. Mr Christys told Full Fact the video was “most definitely an AI fake”, and the Department for Transport also told us the claim was false.

When we asked Mr Christys about the most recent clip, he said: "Every single day somebody sends me a clip of a social media post with my face and an imitation of my voice on it. Some of them are relatively benign, for example 'me' talking about car insurance. Normally they are quite obviously fake, but they're becoming more realistic and harder to detect.”

It’s difficult for us to say for certain how the audio in the most recent clip was created—for example, we can’t rule out that it is a recording of an impersonator. But there are a number of clues suggesting it was generated with artificial intelligence, including the cadence being extremely even and the intonation appearing unnatural.

Some of the phrasing also doesn’t make sense, and there are no pauses where people would naturally pause for breath. This can clearly be heard from 48 seconds into the clip when the audio says: “Inside Labour HQ it’s lockdown mode to security’s tight staff are being investigated. [sic]”

We’ve previously written about other footage supposedly of journalists that appears to be AI-generated. You can find more tips about recognising this type of content in our guide to spotting deepfake videos and audio.

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