Prime Minister Andy Burnham has said Russia interfered in the 2016 Brexit referendum, according to BBC reporting on his appearance on The Rest is Politics podcast. He did not, however, give details of the nature or extent of those activities. His comments also do not establish whether Russian interference affected the result.
According to the BBC, Burnham said that after taking office he asked about possible Russian interference in the referendum and received an unequivocal answer that it had happened. He also argued that the public had not been adequately informed about foreign attempts to disrupt Britain’s political process. The BBC says the full interview will be available on Monday.
The crucial distinction is between attempting to interfere and successfully influencing voters’ decisions. The BBC’s report contains no disclosed intelligence evidence that would allow the scale of the activities described by the prime minister to be assessed, nor does it establish that they changed the outcome of the referendum on Britain’s membership of the European Union.
Dispute over the referendum
The pro-Brexit group Britain Unbound criticised the remarks. According to the BBC, it viewed them as an attempt to undermine the legitimacy of voters’ decision. The group said foreign interference was unacceptable, but challenged the basis for concluding that Russian activities had affected the referendum result.
A 2020 report by Parliament’s Intelligence and Security Committee remains part of the backdrop to the debate. As the BBC notes, it did not reach a definitive conclusion on whether Russia had attempted to influence the outcome of the EU referendum. It did, however, criticise successive British governments for failing adequately to assess and counter the threat. That is a different finding from confirmation that foreign activities determined the result.
The BBC also cites Russian denials from 2020: the foreign minister rejected the report at the time, while a Kremlin spokesman said Russia did not interfere in other countries’ elections. Those statements concerned the report published then, rather than being a response to Burnham’s latest comments.
The prime minister also discussed Russian disinformation in Germany and France, and a conversation about the issue with Chancellor Friedrich Merz. Meanwhile, a spokesman for Downing Street, the prime minister’s office, told the BBC that the government was focused on protecting citizens and institutions from the activities of foreign states and their proxies.
