If the allegations are true, the Brexit vote would be utterly invalidated.
It is becoming ever clearer that the process by which the country voted to leave the EU was far from democratic. We must take back control from those who distorted the result of the EU referendum
To many who support Brexit, the European referendum was the greatest exercise in democracy in the whole history of the United Kingdom.
On just one day, a decision to leave the EU was taken by over 17 million people; a decision David Davis trumpeted as ‘the biggest mandate that’s ever been given to a government by the British people.’
But now the legitimacy of the referendum result is beginning to crumble.
There were of course the bundle of deceitful promises for which people voted, of which the most flagrant and often quoted was the £350m for the NHS.
But in recent weeks a far more sinister question mark hangs over the result: that of interference by the Kremlin in the referendum campaign.
It has become clear that Russian attempts to subvert democracy did not originate with the US presidential election but that the techniques used successfully then were honed during the Brexit referendum campaign.
In the US there is a full-scale FBI investigation into Kremlin meddling but in the UK almost nothing has taken place. We appear to be leaving the back door to our democratic processes open and Russian intelligence has walked right in.
Although Carole Cadwalladr and other online journalists have been publishing evidence for some time, the story really only broke when the Prime Minister warned of Russia ‘weaponising’ information and planting ‘fake stories and photoshopped images’ in a recent speech at Mansion House.
What Theresa May and other commentators appear to have deliberately omitted was any connection with the Brexit campaign.
But that connection is becoming ever harder to avoid. There is mounting evidence of links between British politicians and the Russian government.
We now know there were over 156,000 Russian-based Twitter accounts engaged in a concerted campaign to support the Leave side.
The Electoral Commission has also launched an investigation into whether donations and loans from Brexit campaigner Arron Banks and one of his companies broke campaign finance rules in the run-up to the EU referendum.
Given the alleged links between senior Conservatives, Conservative friends of Russia, and the very highest levels of the Tory government – and of course the powerful influence of Russian oligarchs in London – it comes as no surprise that there has been little appetite by the government to investigate further.
But it is truly shocking that the subversion of our democracy by a foreign power should have been treated so lightly.
The European Union has been more active against Russian propaganda, setting up an East StratCom taskforce, whose work has been largely focused on documenting what disinformation looks like and debunking myths spread to confuse citizens. It is also supporting genuine journalism in the former Soviet bloc.
Because the EU referendum and the decision to leave the EU has been one of the most divisive and destructive our nation has ever experienced, it is right that any and every effort possible be taken to investigate allegations of corruption and interference.
For my part I have asked the StratCom taskforce to commence investigations into Kremlin involvement in the EU referendum campaign and asked our own House of Commons Library to clarify who is our equivalent to the FBI and why they have not acted.
I have also initiated a cross-Party group of MEPs to raise concerns with the European Commission about Russian influence in the referendum campaign (our letter to the EU Commission is here).
Green, Labour, Lib Dem and Conservative MEPs have jointly signed a letter to the Commission in which we have asked how much they know, and about the techniques used; whether they consider such interference an attempt by the Kremlin to attack and destabilise the EU; and whether they will use EU Agencies to investigate the allegations.
Russian influence casts a long shadow over the Brexit result. It is therefore more essential than ever that the British public are provided another opportunity to vote to accept the deal negotiated by the government or choose to remain in the EU.
The idea of a ‘ratification referendum’ on the final deal agreed between the EU and the UK has long been Green Party policy.
However, last weekend, support for such a referendum was also agreed by the European Green Party at their conference in Sweden.
We simply cannot let arguments about ‘largest ever mandate’ and the ‘will of the people’ steamroller our democracy. It is time to take back control from a corrupt gang of Brexiteers.
Molly Scott Cato is MEP for the South West and Green Party speaker on Brexit. She tweets here.
12 Responses to “Why isn’t Russian interference in the Brexit referendum being investigated?”
Dee Dee Ramone's Guitar Pick
This rant is nothing more than unsubtantiated anti-Russian propaganda. You have NO CONCRETE EVIDENCE whatsoever. None.
Although I abstained from the referendum vote (conflicted feelings) nothing annoys me more than people on the soft left persistently failing to address the true reasons for the Brexit/Trump phenomena. This turmoil is the end result of 25 years of unchecked globalisation followed by a financial crash and punishing austerity all of which has bolstered the power of elites to unprecedented levels.
Until the Hilary Clinton’s and Molly Scott Cato’s of this world understand that the cause of all this is their own failed policies we are likely to see many more demagogues like Trump in the future. This current anti-Russian propaganda is nothing more than an attempt at distraction from the issues, naked fear of the powerful in danger of losing their power.
I may not necessarily agree with all 17 million Brexiters but I really doubt that all of them are so stupid that they would respond to something as lightweight as a tweet when they can see grinding poverty increasing all around them.
Postscript: Did you know that our top politicians not only come from the same schools but also did the same degree course? Blair, Cameron, May, Osbourne etc all studied Politics, Philosophy and Economics at Oxford. This is how entrenched power is in our society today – you need to have access to a single university course to become a decision-maker. Can you guess what degree Molly Scott Cato did? This is the true driver of this article
Will
It would be naive to expect the large number off fanatical Leave voters to accept that the Referendum was invalid, no matter how convincing the evidence of malpractice, whether organised abroad or in the UK.
Just imagine how former UKIP voters would react to the news that they had been duped!
Jonathan Bagley
How exactly did Russia alter the voting intentions of 500,000 people. As we are constantly remoanded, most leave voters are too old, too out-of-touch and too thick to use a computer – let alone sign on to face book.
William
In a perfect world we would be facing another election sometime in January.
One ballot paper with two votes, one for a general election and another as another referendum on the membership of the EU.
The main thing that is missing in this country at the moment is honesty. We are being dictated to by the biggest bunch of liars in history and it is de-stabilising the whole of Europe.
With this crew in government as an example, what is the next generation going to be like knowing that the best way to get on in life is to lie and scheme and shit all over the people who are the most vulnerable.
Jon Eccles
Will: we don’t need to reach the fanatics. We only need to reach the floating voters. The only thing keeping many of them in the Leave camp after the steady drip drip drip of bad news is the belief that having voted for it once we’re now stuck with it. If the first vote can be shown to be contaminated by electoral fraud and the involvement of foreign intelligence agencies, the case for a second one becomes overwhelming.