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Brexit, the Kremlin and the question Britain never answered
Britain has spent a decade arguing over Brexit’s consequences. Yet a more fundamental question concerns the circumstances in which the decision was made. Did Russia attempt to influence the referendum that redefined Britain’s relationship with Europe, and has the UK done enough to establish the extent of that interference?
Prime Minister Andy Burnham has reopened the controversy. Speaking on The Rest Is Politics Leading podcast, Burnham said he had received a clear confirmation that Russia interfered in the 2016 referendum, but didn’t identify the source of that assessment or disclose the evidence behind it. Downing Street has since maintained that the referendum result remains legitimate and that Russian attempts did not succeed. The evidence of an attempt to influence voters is not proof that votes changed, still less that the result would otherwise have been different.
The UK formally left the European Union on 31 January 2020, following the referendum and subsequent parliamentary legislation, including the repeal of the European Communities Act 1972. The constitutional consequences of a vote do not settle whether the process leading to it was adequately protected, and neither should allegations of foreign interference become a shortcut to dismissing the choices of millions of voters. Yet, the more important and decisive question is how the UK investigated the claims insofar as the information that they were aware of.
Russia’s potential strategic interest in a less cohesive Europe would not be out of reach to understand. For example, one could argue that supporting a UK out of the EU would complicate coordination among Western states and the European bloc, including on sanctions, military defence and diplomatic relations with Moscow. Brexit also demonstrated that withdrawal from the EU was politically possible, potentially strengthening divisions within a union whose collective influence could constrain Russian ambitions. This is a plausible explanation of Russia’s interest, but not proof of Russian intent in this particular case because while motive can help investigators understand why interference might have happened, it cannot substitute for the core evidence needed that it did.
The Kremlin did not need to manufacture British Euroskepticism from nothing.
Debates over rising immigration from Eastern Europe and national sovereignty being limited by the EU were already prominent features of the referendum campaign and therefore foreign influence in cases where it has been recognised to have occurred can exploit these existing grievances in a country rather than invent them. This nuance matters because treating Leave voters as passive recipients of Russian manipulation would obscure the domestic political conditions of the time that made the campaign as a whole so divisive. Furthermore, it would also risk confusing the existence of a foreign influence operation with its effectiveness.
The Intelligence and Security Committee’s Russia Report, published in July 2020, exposed a serious weakness in the official response. The committee criticised the government for failing to seek a proper assessment of possible Russian interference in the referendum and noted that no formal post-referendum assessment had been produced. It also highlighted Russian state-backed media and online activity as potential avenues of influence. Crucially, the committee’s concern was not confined to whether interference had demonstrably succeeded- understanding whether a hostile state had attempted to influence a democratic process was itself important. Therefore, it raises a question that survives even if the result was unaffected: why was the extent of the threat not properly assessed?
The available evidence must nevertheless be handled carefully. Russian state-backed outlets RT and Sputnik published substantial amounts of material critical of the EU, while social-media accounts associated with Russian activity reportedly discussed the referendum, referenced by Emily Thornberry in her interview with Cathy Newman. But the scale, reach and significance of these activities are fundamentally different questions. Potential impressions are not equivalent to people persuaded, and online amplification is not proof of changed voting behaviour. As the referendum was contested by domestic campaigns, it began to be shaped by long-standing political divisions and was decided by millions of voters. Without a credible assessment of the evidence and its effects, neither the claim that Russia determined the outcome nor the claim that its efforts were inconsequential can simply be assumed from the outset.
Burnham’s intervention makes the demand for transparency more pressing, but it does not resolve the evidential problem. If the government now possesses information that previous administrations did not disclose, the public interest lies in understanding what has changed: is there a new intelligence assessment, a reassessment of existing material or a different interpretation of evidence already available? Intelligence sources may require protection, but that does not eliminate the case for explaining the conclusions that can safely be made public; a retrospective assessment would not need to prove that Russia changed the result to be valuable. Its purpose would be to establish what happened, identify the limits of the process, and inform future safeguards.
The legal consequences are even more complicated. Evidence of wrongdoing would not automatically invalidate the referendum, and a political demand for a second vote is not the same as a legally enforceable remedy. In Wilson v Prime Minister [2019], claimants sought to challenge the Article 50 notification by arguing, among other things, that illegal campaign practices had compromised the referendum. The challenge failed, with the courts refusing permission to proceed on grounds including delay and lack of merit. The case illustrates the difficulty of translating allegations of electoral wrongdoing into a successful challenge to subsequent constitutional action. A fresh allegation of foreign interference would need to confront its own evidential and procedural obstacles; it would not automatically reopen the legal position.
Miller [2017] adds a different constitutional angle, with the Supreme Court holding that ministers could not trigger Article 50 using prerogative powers alone without parliamentary authorisation. The judgment did not determine whether the referendum had been properly conducted or whether its result was legitimate. Instead, it confirmed that the legal consequences of the vote depended on constitutional procedures beyond the referendum itself, which remain important. Establishing interference, determining legal invalidity and reversing the consequences of withdrawal cannot be decreed as interchangeable exercises and are crucially distinctive questions. Another question posed is whether Russian interference could breach international law. In Nicaragua v. United States (1986), the International Court of Justice affirmed the customary principle of non-intervention in matters that states are entitled to decide freely, identifying coercion as a central element of prohibited intervention. That principle does not automatically make every foreign propaganda campaign or attempt to influence public opinion unlawful- any claim of international responsibility requires careful analysis of the conduct and the applicable legal threshold. The legal argument cannot be settled by a political statement alone, even if it comes from the Prime Minister.
Britain’s unanswered question is not simply whether Russia interfered, nor whether Brexit should be reversed if the claims are true. A democracy cannot credibly guarantee that its citizens will never encounter foreign propaganda- it will! It can, however, investigate credible allegations and critically examine the frameworks through which influence is exercised while also being transparent with the public about what remains unknown still. Ten years after the referendum, that is the standard against which Britain’s response and future should be judged.
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