Don't Blame Russia for Brexit. Britain Made That Mess All by Itself.
Andy Burnham may be right to warn about Russian interference, but blaming Moscow for Britain's greatest political act of self-harm risks letting the real culprits off the hook. And that would be a shame, because elsewhere the Prime Minister is beginning to demonstrate what political leadership should look like.
There is something almost comforting about the suggestion that Vladimir Putin was somehow responsible for Brexit. After all, if Russia can be blamed for Britain's departure from the European Union, perhaps we can avoid confronting the rather more embarrassing truth: we did this to ourselves.
I voted against Brexit. I thought it was a dreadful idea in 2016, and the intervening decade has done precious little to change my mind. But the suggestion that Russian interference explains the referendum result strikes me as a convenient rewriting of history.
According to The Independent, Prime Minister Andy Burnham has revealed that, upon entering Downing Street, he asked whether Russia had interfered in the 2016 referendum. The answer, apparently, was an unequivocal yes.
Well, perhaps it did. In fact, it would be rather surprising if Moscow hadn't attempted to exploit such an extraordinary opportunity to sow division in one of Europe's most influential democracies.
But there is an enormous difference between attempting to influence an election and actually determining its outcome.
And that distinction matters.
A Russian plot? Or a very British disaster?
Brexit did not require a Russian mastermind. It required David Cameron, an increasingly divided Conservative Party, a populist campaign built around simplistic promises, and millions of voters persuaded that life outside the European Union would somehow be better.
The ingredients were already there. Moscow didn't need to invent them.
Cameron gambled the country's future on a referendum he believed he could win. He trusted his political instincts, his oratory and, perhaps most disastrously, his assumption that the British public would ultimately choose the status quo.
He was wrong.
The Leave campaign offered a seductive vision of national renewal: sovereignty restored, borders controlled, money redirected to public services and Britain once again free to determine its own destiny.
For many voters, the grass really did appear greener on the other side of the Channel — or perhaps in England's own green and pleasant land.
Never mind the complexities of international trade, the realities of economic interdependence or the extraordinary advantages of belonging to the world's largest single market.
Those were details. And details rarely win referendums.
The result was 52 per cent to 48 per cent. A narrow victory, certainly, but one delivered by British voters, not Russian soldiers marching into polling stations.
Could Russian-backed social media accounts have amplified anti-EU messages? Of course. Could disinformation have contributed to the atmosphere of suspicion surrounding the campaign? Quite possibly.
But can anyone demonstrate that Russian activity persuaded enough voters to change their minds and reverse the result?
That is an entirely different question.
Britain had been arguing about Europe for decades. Euroscepticism was hardly an imported Russian invention. Nor were concerns about immigration, sovereignty, democratic accountability or the perceived arrogance of Brussels.
And misinformation, regrettably, knows no borders.
We should investigate foreign interference without allowing it to become an excuse for domestic political failure.
Otherwise, the architects of Brexit escape responsibility while the Kremlin receives credit for an outcome that British politicians worked tirelessly to deliver.
That would be absurd.
Give Burnham credit where it's due
And yet, despite my disagreement with Burnham over the significance of Russian interference, I find myself increasingly impressed by Britain's new Prime Minister.
Not because he has all the answers. He doesn't. And not because every announcement from Downing Street deserves unquestioning applause.
But because he appears to understand something that has been conspicuously absent from British politics for far too long: government should be about making ordinary people's lives better.
Consider his response to homelessness.
On World Homeless Day, Burnham made a commitment that was refreshingly unambiguous:
"Not manage it. Not reduce it. End it."
He has pledged more than £400 million towards a national effort to get people off the streets by Christmas, while donating part of his own prime ministerial salary to The Passage, a charity supporting homeless people.
Now, £400 million will not magically solve homelessness. Nor will a Christmas deadline eliminate the structural problems that leave people without a roof over their heads.
But the ambition matters.
In one of the world's wealthiest countries, the spectacle of people sleeping in doorways, under bridges and outside railway stations should be a national disgrace.
Burnham seems determined to treat it as precisely that.
And, crucially, he is communicating his intentions in language that ordinary people can understand.
No endless qualifications. No managerial jargon. No elaborate attempts to explain why nothing can be done.
Just a clear objective, a financial commitment and an expectation that government should deliver.
Something stinks — and it isn't just the sewage
Then there is the scandal of Britain's water companies.
For years, the public has watched an increasingly grotesque spectacle: polluted rivers, sewage discharged into coastal waters, rising bills and executives apparently insulated from the consequences of corporate failure.
Burnham's diagnosis is devastatingly simple:
"A system where shareholders never lose, and the public never win."
He is proposing to repeal restrictions associated with Thatcher-era water privatisation, strengthen public control, give mayors greater accountability powers and close loopholes that allow excessive executive bonuses.
It is a welcome challenge to the idea that essential public services must operate primarily as vehicles for private financial reward.
Water is not a luxury product. It is a basic necessity of life.
The suggestion that companies should be able to reward executives handsomely while failing to protect the environment or provide an acceptable service is morally indefensible.
Of course, public ownership is no automatic guarantee of efficiency. Governments can mismanage services just as spectacularly as private corporations.
But Burnham is at least asking the right question: whom should these services exist to benefit?
The answer ought to be obvious.
Dignity for those who need it most
Equally encouraging is Burnham's attention to dementia sufferers and their families.
This is an issue that rarely generates the political excitement associated with immigration, taxation or constitutional reform. Yet for hundreds of thousands of families, dementia is not an abstract policy problem. It is a daily reality.
It means watching someone you love gradually lose their independence, their confidence and sometimes their ability to recognise the people closest to them.
It means exhausted relatives, complicated care arrangements, financial pressures and a social care system that too often leaves families struggling to navigate an already heartbreaking situation.
Any serious attempt to improve dementia care and support for carers deserves attention.
The important test, naturally, will be whether Burnham's plans translate into better access to services, meaningful support for families and greater dignity for those living with the condition.
But it is encouraging to hear a Prime Minister talking about these issues as central responsibilities of government rather than peripheral concerns.
This is what his promise of making the basics work for families should mean in practice.
Britain needs solutions, not another scapegoat
Perhaps that is why I find Burnham's comments about Russia so frustrating.
Here is a politician who seems genuinely interested in addressing some of Britain's most persistent problems. He is willing to confront the failures of privatisation, challenge the acceptance of rough sleeping and acknowledge the human cost of inadequate care.
He has also reopened a serious discussion about Britain's relationship with Europe, acknowledging that Brexit has done more harm than good.
All of that is encouraging.
So why risk muddying the waters by placing such emphasis on Russian involvement in the referendum?
To be fair, Burnham has not explicitly claimed that Moscow caused Brexit. His argument is that foreign interference occurred and that democratic societies need to understand the threat.
That is a legitimate concern.
Indeed, Parliament's Intelligence and Security Committee criticised the failure to investigate Russian activity properly in its 2020 report. It also acknowledged how difficult assessing the impact of such interference would be.
But if we want to understand why Britain voted to leave the European Union, we must begin much closer to home.
With Cameron's reckless gamble.
With politicians who promised benefits they could not guarantee.
With a campaign that reduced an extraordinarily complex economic and political relationship to slogans.
And with the failure of the Remain campaign to persuade enough people that European integration was worth preserving.
Brexit was a British decision, made in a British referendum, following decades of British political argument.
Russia may have attempted to exploit those divisions, but there is no publicly established evidence that its activities changed the outcome.
And until such evidence emerges, we should resist the temptation to outsource responsibility for our own mistakes.
The verdict
Ten years after the referendum, Britain should be mature enough to acknowledge that Brexit was a mistake without pretending that the electorate was somehow hypnotised by Vladimir Putin.
People voted Leave for many reasons. Some were misled. Some were angry. Some had legitimate grievances. Others genuinely believed that national sovereignty mattered more than the economic advantages of EU membership.
Those voters deserve to have their decisions examined seriously, not dismissed as the product of Russian manipulation.
I remain firmly anti-Brexit. I would welcome Britain's eventual return to the European Union.
But we will never repair the damage by refusing to understand how it happened.
As for Andy Burnham, I am increasingly inclined to give him the benefit of the doubt.
His willingness to speak plainly about homelessness, water companies, dementia and the everyday pressures facing British families suggests a politician who understands that leadership requires more than identifying enemies and assigning blame.
It requires making a difference.
And if Burnham can turn his promises into meaningful improvements in people's lives, he may yet prove to be exactly the sort of Prime Minister Britain has been missing.
Just leave Vladimir Putin out of the Brexit post-mortem unless there is evidence that he actually changed the result.
Cameron and his fellow British politicians made quite enough of a mess without any help from Moscow.
I
