Burnham Says Russia Interfered in the Brexit Referendum
“I asked the question coming to Downing Street: well, was there interference in the 2016 referendum from Russia? I’ve had the clear answer that yes, there was,” the prime minister said. He did not say who gave him that assessment, what it rests on, or whether it affected the result — and announced no inquiry.
The distinction matters more than the claim. No British government has ever conceded interference in the referendum; one has conceded it in the 2019 general election, when the previous administration said it was “almost certain that Russian actors sought to interfere”. Parliament’s Intelligence and Security Committee reported in 2020 that it could reach no definitive conclusion on 2016, criticised successive governments for failing to assess the threat, and noted that no post-referendum assessment had ever been produced — while arguing that whether a hostile state tried to influence a democratic process matters regardless of whether it succeeded. That is the ground Andy Burnham has now stepped onto, and his reason is forward-looking rather than retrospective: “I think we’ve been too much on the back foot on that actually and we haven’t informed people sufficiently about the extent to which people are seeking to disrupt the political process from overseas,” adding that putting it on the record would help voters in Germany and France understand that “some of this politics is instigated via our enemies, namely Russia”. Downing Street’s response does not mention the referendum at all, listing existing measures under the National Security Act. The pro-Brexit group Britain Unbound calls it “another crude attempt to undermine the legitimacy of the decision that the British people made in 2016”. Neither the Conservatives nor Reform had responded by Sunday evening. The interview airs on Monday.