Andy Burnham has said Russia did interfere with the Brexit referendum and warned that similar activities were taking place in France and Germany.
The prime minister told The Rest is Politics podcast that upon arriving in No 10, he had asked about possible Russian interference in the 2016 vote, adding: “I’ve had the clear answer that, yes, there was.”
“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,” he added.
First time?
Everybody thought the wall coming down was the end but Russia has had a hell of a comeback with their Brexit-Trump 1-2 punch to Democracy. They might’ve overreached in Ukraine but even our best efforts haven’t stopped Donald from helping Russia.
No shit…
It was obvious while it was happening. At the same time the US was electing Trump and a far right nationalist was gaining popularity in France. You weren’t connecting the dots?
At the same time, Canada, of all places, had a hard right showing.
We know Russia was in on in, and doing dirty work, but were they the Origin? Is this a multi-national cabal? Is this Oligarch central?
I genuinely think that Europe didn’t have US capitulation on their bingo card.
Nope they are just bragging now. Reminiscing about all the cool things they used to do.
That’s the first thing I’ve heard Andy Burnham say and I’m liking the guy.
Second reason: the Triggonometry guys seem to be triggered by him, so there’s another reason I guess.
Trigonometry guys?
Oh wait just googled. Now I get what you mean
There are only so many times you can say no shit sherlock.
True, but he’s the first PM to actually say it out loud. Starmer, Sunack, Truss, Johnson, May and possibly Cameron all either knew and didn’t think it was important enough to mention, or were satisfied enough with the outcome that they didn’t want anyone questioning it.
I think it’s awfully convenient to blame Russian disinfo campaigns for everything you don’t like about your country. Is it projection, because of all the influence ops we have always run in other countries? Is it a way to distract from our very real problems that we’ve created all by ourselves? Is it a way to disregard legitimate political differences?
If Russia didn’t want to be blamed, they could stop; but their whole government rests on the narrative that “sure we are bad, but everyone else is bad”.
What? I don’t think Russia cares much if it’s blamed or not. I’m saying that the US (and the UK) have plenty of their own serious problems that don’t require “ze Russians” to explain. We’ve been building our own domestic spin machines forever.
Then show us the iron-clad evidence and cancel the results of the referendum.
Curious how he’s forgot all about Cambridge Analitica which was paid with American money …
Not to mention the very local, very British (mainly English, even) assholes that pushed for Leave as well as the (British and American) billionaires whose newspapers in Britain pushed for it.
Don’t get me wrong: I’m pretty sure Russia did try. China too. And then of course there’s Israel.
It’s just that in my experience living in Britain (including during, before and after the Leave Referendum) if you’re really looking for foreigners to blame it’s America which seems to interfere the most in British politics, by far, though even they don’t have the level of influence that the local “elites” have.
So it’s funny seeing Andy whitewashing the likes of Murdoch and the Rothermere family, most of the Tory party, as well as American money and Israel-funded Tory-aligned British Jewish Associations (though the latter were much more visible after Brexit during the attempt at moving the Labour Party back to it’s Leftwing roots with Corbyn).
it’s all useful idiots. Brexit used to be a marginal thing and then it wasn’t and the way it stopped being marginal is questionable. you don’t really need real assets to do much when you can just give a little nudge to some useful idiots and make their yapping louder and then you just keep the volume until you get the desired result. russians do it all the time.
As I see it (having been there since before 2008) Brexit was very much a natural consequence of how the 2008 Crash was handled, especially of the Austerity that was used to pay for saving the banks and the wealth of large Asset owners.
After a while of that and as people started getting restless, the solution found by the British elites who fucked it all up was “blame the foreigners”, and that was mainly immigrants (including EU immigrants) and the EU itself (it was said that the “straight jacked” of EU rules was stopping Britain from the growth that the country would get if it deregulated and aligned even more with America).
Brexit was born and bloomed in a field plowed, fertilized and sowed by British interests and actively pushed by people who wanted Britain to have the hardest of Neoliberalism, aligned with the US not with the EU (for example, to allow things like the infamous “bleached chicken”).
It’s the adding of the votes of the desperate people who lost faith in mainstream politics to the votes of the useful idiots that creates the voting majorities for things like Brexit and far-right populists in government (both the likes of Boris Johnson in Britain and Trump in the White House).
I think this is spot on. Russian propaganda can pull on a thread but that thread has to exist in the first place.
In both the UK and US case, you got a bunch of upset people scratching their heads wondering where all the fuckin money went. And the answer is generally the same in both cases.
“It wasn’t Russia despite all the evidence. it was actually your own fault”
Fuck you, you Russian fucking hack.
Sure mate, it’s wasn’t the Brits that did it to themselves, it was foreigners.
Fucking foreigners, always pulling Great Britain and its Superior People and Superior Culture down from it’s hollowed state of Greatness.
It if wasn’t for foreigners, Britain would still be an Empire.
I don’t even need to change a word to rebut your weak-ass attempt at propaganda.
“It wasn’t Russia despite all the evidence. it was actually your own fault”
Fuck you, you Russian fucking hack.
Sure mate, your nation is a great and very important nation and its people and culture are superior to the rest, which is why foreigners want so much to bring Britain down from it’s greatness and it couldn’t possibly be Britons having most of the blame as “such things don’t happen here” and definitely it couldn’t possibly be the product of the British elites blaming the EU for every shit that happened there for decades before Brexit and then pillaging the country like crazy in the aftermath of the 2008 Crash, especially during the Austerity period all the while blaming the EU and immigrants.
The only thing that makes sense is that Russia is entirely responsible for what Britons did in Britain and anybody who doesn’t totally agree with that and who doesn’t, for good measure, immediately starts an impromptu rendition of “God save the King”, is a “Russian fucking hack”.
Dude you’re a Russian shill. I literally don’t give a shit what your opinion is. Not even going to read it to be totally honest.
As far as I’m concerned, I hope you catch something untreatable and the only people who can save you are Western doctors…and then we just don’t.
lmao
The Russians made me do it mum!
Are the Russians in the room with us now?
Not as many, since the Ukrainians bombed the data center hosting them, comrade.
and then it turns out things don’t magically get better
Well, yeah, all that shit was anchored on some massive Nationalistic Delusions Of Grandeur to the point that the Tories were before the Referendum pushing Leave with the idea that “When we leave the EU will give us the same rights as an EU member but without the obligations such as Freedom Of Movement for people from the EU to come here”.
Lo and behold in the real world rather than fantasy la-la-empire things weren’t at all like that, just like many like me (not necessarily immigrants in Britain, rather people who favored Remain) predicted again and again.
Partly the reason why I’m so pissed of at the “Blame Russia” distraction that pops up once every couple of years when a British politician wants to distract the plebes from some fuckup or other, is that this crap dovetails with the insane Nationalistic Delusions Of Grandeur of the place (on one side, the message is that Britain is so important that Russia was obsessed by it rather than, you know, doing their usual shit same as they would for France or Germany if the conditions were right, on the other it exonerates Britons, British Culture and British Politics, thus maintaining the far too common idea there that they’re all inherently better than the rest of Europe) and part is because it’s letting free of consequences serious assholes who even before the Referendum would use “blame the EU” as a get out of jail free card for the consequences of their own policies and even more so those who were hard at work during the Referendum swindling the useful idiots and the (thanks to almost a decade of Austerity) desperate to vote Leave and who thus have most of the blame for that shit show, like Boris Johnson, Murdoch and the Rothermere family.
well, it’s not like British political class lost the plot overnight during the whole Brexit shebang. Its been like that little by little since like late 60s maybe mid 70s. Brexit was more like cherry on the pie at that point and everything past that is frosting.
Russia was one of the biggest supporter, using some outfit in Northern Ireland. That’s actually old news. It is public knowledge for ages, but now it if officially confirmed.
Sure mate, I must just have imagined the daily pro-Leave articles in the Murdoch and Rothermere owned newspapers pushing for Leave and peddling anti-imigration and anti-EU bollocks during Leave Referendum, not to mention the shit coming out of the mouths of the likes of Boris Johnson who was constantly on TV.
Oh, they have been a good part of it. But a lot of advertising over several different channels had already been identified to be coming from the same sources. This has been known even during the referendum. The source was semi-identified shortly after as Russian.
Remember the fishing boats doing a procession up the River Thames? That was one of them. The money they got for showing up was paid out of this fund. That Murdoch had a field day spreading the “news” was just a normal development.
Russia interfered AND NOBODY ELSE DID!!!
What’s your point? AFAIK the debate is not about what “nobody else did”, but the fact that Russia heavily influenced the debate in UK on a democratic election. Something that is against international law. It is pretty obvious that Farage was financed by Russia.
Fuck Russia but I think it is pretty clear that the big aggressor is the USA, and when they interfere then really nobody cares.
Interference from USA regarding the Brexit referendum was minimal and nothing compared to Russia.
As I mentioned Farage was financed by Russia, and it has also been very clear that Boris Johnson has close Russian ties.
And those were the two most significant and well funded proponents for Brexit.UK cannot accuse America of interfering because they are allies and UK needs US more than US needs UK
Yes, foreign interference in an election of a sovereign country is against international law.
Europe also don’t meddle in US elections for the same reason. It’s also very much against democratic principles.
Something USA unfortunately has lost all respect for, so they have interfered multiple times in European elections. Most notably Germany and Hungary, since Trump became president.
Something that is against international law.
The point is that this is a double standard. It’s hypocritical misdirection. Hiding the actual causes for the shit we’re in. It’s neoliberal and US empire propaganda.
The more complex point would be that our social media networks are unmoderated spaces owned and operated for profit and political power. It should be independent, meaning the workers and users have some democratic input on how it operates and how well it is moderated. This is the root cause - you cannot operate a system on “greed is good and nothing else is allowed” and expect good outcomes. You cannot. It’s a lie. It makes assholes out of all of us. A whole generation of people has been trained like dogs from social media that is why even in moderated space like lemmy you see this bullshit. Everyone fucking clapping like seals: “Yes Russia bad! Kill Russia and everything will be good again! Just one more coup in South or Central America!”
Against international law lol. Despicable.
Why do you need to make Russian interference into US propaganda?
You sound like a tankie when you do that.I’m saying blaming the decline of the west mainly on Russian disinfo is propaganda.
Which stage are you?
Politicians being so out of touch with international politics that they’re not aware of outside interests in destroying the EU… That they’ll do a Brexit without expecting international interference. That’s the ridiculous thing.
That Britain went ahead and did it, is the ridiculous thing.
What’s more elections these days are becoming questionable and will only become more questionable with the prevalance of AI culture bots.
Look at it this way: States that don’t have democracy are common in the world today. States that don’t have democracy tend to be rightwing and authoritarian.
It should be assumed that outside interference will then be rightwing and authoritarian in nature… And we’re seeing that trend play out globally now. Gee I wonder why!
Rightwing authoritarianism benefits corporations (helps them consolidate power) as well I think.
You think buck tooth farage didn’t know he was doing precisely this?
“Russia is behind the problems in our country” is the Liberal’s version of the Far-Right’s “Immigrants are behind the problems in our country” - blame the foreigners rather than the extremely wealthy people who own the news media that relentlessly pushes this shit and subsidize far-right politicians and lobbyist offices and hard-neoliberal “Think Tanks” pushing for laws that help their economic interest whilst making life worse for everybody else.
Specifically for Britain and Brexit, it takes some seriously selective memory to “forget” how the Newspapers owner by Murdoch and the Rothermere family were pushing extra hard nationalism and anti-immigration for decades in the run-up to Brexit, very openly for people voting Leave during the Referendum and some seriously unhinged takes on how Britain should negotiate the Exit Treaty with the EU.
Also, don’t get me started on how the choices made by both New Labour and Tories in the aftermath of the 2008 Crash, both the unconditional saving of the wealth of the Asset owners (both the way banks were saved and the choices of the BOE which went way beyond just setting interest rates and even included buying corporate bonds from selected companies) and making most of the population pay for it with crushing Austerity. very much plowed, fertilized and seeds the field upon which Brexit was born.
Next to what was done by 100% local billionaires and their politician minions, foreign interference was minuscule.
More things can be true at the same time, it’s absolutely possible tha both russia influence and rich idiots influence politics
Oh, I have no doubt in my mind that Russia put their thumb on the balance to try and move things towards Brexit - geostrategically it makes sense for them to do so.
Most definitely America did the same - again it makes sense for the nation were many politicians saw the EU as an adversary and who lost tons of influence in Europe when the countries pooled together into forming the EU (especially amongst small countries, which used to be a kicking ball for great powers).
Quite possibly China did too - weakening an adversary Trade coalition makes sense for them.
It’s just that their ability to influence Britain and Britons is minuscule compare to the influence of Britain’s own elites, especially the ones who own newspapers that have been spouting rabid far-right bullshit for decades.
Brexit was build in Britain layer by layer over the last 3 decades or so, it wasn’t just cast into being in an otherwise perfect country by nasty Russian magicians.
The point I’m making is that in this Russia is an excuse to, as usual, move people’s attention away from far more powerful people in Britain and from the politicians who willingly act as their minions.
Further, having seen Brexit first hand as an immigrant in Britain, the “blame Russia” from the politicians given the huge amounts of Jingoism in Britain (much more than other European countries I lived in) stinks with the same smell as the “blame the EU” so beloved by politicians in both New Labour and the Tory Party before Brexit and shares the same ideological foundations as “blame immigrants” - blame foreigners so that the 100% British people that did most of it suffer no repercussions for their actions.
Hey I’m from the Soviet Union. I’m sadly pretty familiar with how russia does shit. Your “omg libruls tussia lol” comes from a place of abject ignorance. Just don’t say anything. Don’t pretend that you know. I know you’re full of BS. I can see right through you.
I’m not denying that Russia put their thumb on the balance, I’m saying that this shit has long been brewing in a country were amongst other things it was for years common for politicians from both main parties to blame the ills of the country on the EU.
In the “List of people who are to blame for Brexit”, Britons come first, then far behind comes America and then Russia.
I lived in the bloody place since before the 2008 Crash and throughout the whole Brexit thing and for me as an EU immigrant there it was painfully obvious that the Media and Politicians kept pushing Nationalistic Delusions Of Grandeur, anti-immigration and anti-EU, all of which then used very openly by Tory Party politicians to weave ideas such as that EU regulations where what was stopping Britain from recovery after the Crash (and beyond, to almost a British version of the MAGA ideation), that EU immigrants were the ones making cost of living go up and keeping salaries low and that when Britain left the EU the EU would give Britain the same rights as an EU member but without the obligations.
That shit was coming out of TVs, Newspapers and the mouths of British politicians.
He was either paid, or was a useful idiot.
It’s almost certainly both.
they’re not aware of outside interests in destroying the EU
They’re aware. They were just avoiding the issue.
…and also masquerading as left wing goons to spread confusion
this is why social media needs authentication. can’t be social media without real people
also check out mr hindsight blaming the victim lol
The internet does not need authentication, that is single-handedly the worst thing that can still happen to us is to lose our free spaces.
If you want authentication. Go join Facebook, Reddit, and all the other large corpo sites that are rolling it out en masse so your face can end up in a Palantir or similar database which will not lead to anything good happening for you.
I agree with this. Getting online in general should NOT require authorization/authentication. But the big guys - Facebook, reddit, tiktok, etc? I do see the argument there.
We need to normalize bombing AI not factories like this. Precision strikes to IRA locations. Russia wouldn’t do shit in retaliation or Putin goes down as well.
In before .ml users tell them it’s in their head and to stop believing imperialist lies
The actual Kremlin shills are popping up everywhere, haven’t seen anything but the normal cognitive dissonance from .ml. They’re clearly cheap and not well organized this time though. Its very odd
I wonder if there’s a connection to the Russian bot farm that was destroyed recently
It wasn’t a bot farm, it was a search engine data centre. The impact of that on trolling is likely to be minimal to none, though there’s been evidence that search spidering originating in Russia has declined a bit.
I doubt it.
Most of them have been created before the destruction of it, and are still active after.
Plus those data centers targeted much more popular platforms. Around smaller parts like these they use astroturfing on a much more manual basis.
TIL the UK has a new PM. I just read a little about him and he seems worlds better than starmer.
Any Brits who would like to chime in? I always like hearing local perspectives
If you were to take Burnham’s pulse, he’d have one. I’m not sure about Starmer in that regard.
There has been a significant presentational change, plenty of symbolic gestures with little practical impact (for example, sanctioning Israeli settlers but still selling weapons to Israel to kill Palestinian civilians) and Burnham has had the good sense to dump some unworkable Starmer policies, but overall, there is still significant continuity with Labour under Starmer. So I’d say it’s too soon to tell if Burham’s going to deliver anything more than Starmer did (which was almost nothing). I sincerely hope he does, but I’m not optimistic.
I see. I suppose it makes sense to reserve judgment until he’s had a few more months to deliver. We’ll see where it goes I guess.
But overall this seems like a good course-correction. All the Brits I talked to in the last couple years seemed almost convinced they would end up with a Reform government. They seemed to view it as inevitable. You could really sense the dread.
Now that dread has lifted. And that’s a positive, even if the new PM isn’t perfect.
i don’t think i ever heard anyone say anything good about Starmer. He’s one negative person.
He was a token though. That’s basically all he had going for him…
Oh and his support for Ukraine was a redeeming quality, but I feel anybody besides Reform would support Ukraine by default, so I’m not sure that says much about him…
Support for Ukraine is basically UK’s honest attempt at doing the right thing regardless of ideology.
I was honestly blindsided leading up to 2024 when I was telling people that the republican congressman in our district supported ending aid to Ukraine, and I got hit with the response: “Good, why should we be paying for that anyway?”
Like, how do you even begin trying to reason with someone so crass, callous, self-centered, uninformed, and short-sighted that that’s how they view the situation?
given that politicians usually represent some big business benefactors first and stand for their interest, it is natural to expect that they are thoroughly uninformed about anything above their pay grade.
Brit here. Starmer spent two years doing absolutely fuck all. That’s an absolute gift to far right parties; why bother voting for Labour OR the Tories if they don’t make any difference to your life at all? Vote for us, and we’ll make life hard for poor brown people and trannies, that’ll fix decades of underinvestment in your communities. I can’t blame people with hard lives who have been betrayed by politicians for so long, for grasping at any straw available, but it should be so easy to shut down the lies of the far right.
Burnham isn’t as left-wing as I would like. However, as mayor of Manchester he did some good work in bringing public transport under public control, and housing the homeless. He’s come in and started making the right noises about making change - reforming social care, ending the pension triple-lock, bringing the water supply back under public control. He seems committed to electoral reform; it’s long overdue in this country. He’s making moves towards rejoining the EU. He’s given Ukraine the schematics for building their own Storm Shadows; expensive tech, but hopefully they’ll be able to make good use of it.
On the other hand; he’s chickened out of reforming campaign donations, and using the G word to describe Israel’s genocide in Palestine. He has not corrected the dreadful decision of our high court from a few years ago giving free reign to discriminate against trans people - that’s set back LGBT rights in this country a decade or more, and is a disgrace. He also failed to tell Trump to go suck a dick in favour of ‘diplomacy’.
He’s been (mostly) using the right words so far, and he has previously shown he’s turned the right words into action. I’m hopeful - been a long time since I’ve been able to say that about our government. But we need more action.
That’s a good, balanced explanation. Thank you.
Time will tell, but he seems better than anything you guys have had in a long time. Certainly better than we’ve had in the US in a long time.
And it might be enough for Labour to establish a more stable position, opening the door for further-leftwing movements without risking a regression into right-wing populism. Based on the sentiments and worries I was hearing just a few months ago, even if he’s not perfect this is still much better than people were expecting to get.
We shall see where it goes!
It happened arround the same time as the whole Count Binface vs Nigel Farage thing, which I only know because that caused problems for reform trying to win the PM’s old office.
So even though Farage won his local election, it lampooned him enough to torch reform’s hopes of a governing majority?
I feel Labour’s decision to dump Starmer likely helped too.
I mean that too, but more specifically because the two elections were happening around the same time and Farage pulled canvassers from the other district where they did actually have a chance of winning to his own district instead, which should have been a safe win for him and would have been even safer if he hadn’t called the by-election himself.
He’s a good speaker who at least sounds far more sincere and honest than anything in the last 20 years. He’s going to take a big chunk of voters who were center/center-right and ‘had no choice’ but to vote reform. Labour now seems like the only sensible choice. Beforehand there was no sensible choice.
He’s going to take a big chunk of voters who were center/center-right and ‘had no choice’ but to vote reform.
No centrist and few on the centre-right would ever have voted Reform. There’s very little middle ground between Labour and the fascists that can be recaptured. There’s far more potential for Labour to win back people who have stopped voting, and some of the voters who have changed over to the Green Party. But to do that, Burnham will have to jettison the Reform-Light cabinet ministers such as Shabana Mahmood and Yvette Cooper. So far, he’s shown no inclination to do so.
Labour now seems like the only sensible choice. Beforehand there was no sensible choice.
That’s a good summary, makes total sense. Thank you!!
No mention of Cambridge Analytica? I mean, I’m sure the russians put in a coin or two because the breakup was very much in their interest, but I’ve yet to see clear public proof of it other than various politicians claiming ‘it’s clear’.
Meanwhile there’s actual proof CA influenced elections and are probably working with the christo-fascists whose open goal is to break up the EU, so to me, in retrospect, it looks like maga and the US are the bigger fish here.
Cambridge Analytica had a number of ties to Russia. And using some sort of intermediary is kind of common Russian practice, in terms of how they handle foreign influence ops.
Even if the company is western, it’s Russia to blame?
If they’ve sold out to Russia then yeah, obviously? Being “western” doesn’t make some incorruptible unwavering bastion of “the west” serving only “western” interests and using “western” thought
“IF”. Do you really think that west is not interfering all around the globe?
Being a campist is playing out pretty badly for you in this thread, eh?
How does this comment add anything to the conversation? Instead of showing proofs that Russia is behind CA interference in Brexit I hear only insults.
If there were no such thing as front companies, your comment might make sense.
Right, every such company is a front to Russia, eh. Even without evidence, but yes, it has to be Russia everywhere.
I had a recruiter from CA pushing hard to get me to interview. So glad i noped out of it.
The clear implication is that there is classified proof.
Cambridge Analytica provided data that allowed their clients to influence elections. If we’re pointing fingers we should start with the people pulling the strings, not the enablers. And in the case of Brexit, CA were apparently not that involved.
Russsin needs to be dealt with. This shit is out of hand. I don’t understand how they’re allowed to keep doing this shit with no consequences.
