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.
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.
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.
Our best efforts have been pretty shit to be honest.
I’ve tried nothing and I’m all out of ideas.
I mean we elected an entire other administration between his first term and this one and still nothing was done about him.
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.
Right. It was the Russians who went out and voted, then?
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.
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
deleted by creator
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.
“Burnham did not provide further details about the type or extent of Moscow’s activity during the Brexit referendum.”
is the government/corpo complicit media equivalent of ‘trust me bro’
Then show us the iron-clad evidence and cancel the results of the referendum.
First time?
Getting us stoked up for a war with Russia be like.
Don’t believe their lies.
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.
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.
Oh cool so you can use this in your big move that should go something like…
“We’re really sorry can we come back to the EU if we dump our fascists pleaaaase it was all a Russian plot.” Lol
Same guy that says that those guys out on bail for stealing fuel were for sure Iranian terrorists.
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.
That’s a straw man, nobody is claiming that.
OP blames one party for brexit without mentioning any other influence.
So no, it’s not a strawman. I’m constantly shocked by the low quality and complete failure to understand basic logic by most lemmy posters. Or maybe you’re being deliberately obtuse.
Which stage are you?
The Labour Friends of Israel member found signs of foreign interference? Shocked I am. Shocked.
