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?
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.
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.
Are you gonna cry because you were called out for being a campist? Because it sounds a lot like it.
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.
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
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.
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.
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.
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
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!
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.
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!!
Gosh, now if we’d only get that kind of honesty here in the United States.
Way too many Tone Police, so-called “independents”, Murc’s Law Media, and of course wingnuts, will jump on you if you mention it here.
Of fucking course they did. And they did in the US and they are doing so in Canada. If you wanted to destabilize your enemies and all you really had to do was get a bunch of bots and people (paid, or coerced) to play on pre-existing dissent and fear, why the fuck wouldn’t you? Sure a lot easier and less traceable than shooting them. Best part is once you feed it enough, it turns into a self sustaining organism, and you can relax in your wing chair by the fire, vodka in hand, and watch any set of outcomes (all of which benefit you) play out.
Then, when your enemy is weakened, you gobble up the bite sized pieces you can.
It’s how they used Gaza to get trump elected in the states. The kids there cry genocide at one another and voilà! Millions of protest votes and non-voting helped elect Putin favorite puppet.
Keep in mind that none of these kids could have pointed to Gaza on a map prior to their willful sacrifice of the democracy of an entire country over it.
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.
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.
Then show us the iron-clad evidence and cancel the results of the referendum.
Reap what you sow
What did Britain sow in Russia? Are you still mad about them supporting the Whites in the civil war?
Western European countries disrupting Democratic institutions globally for centuries. From propaganda and misinformation to outright assassinating elected leaders. The fact it’s happening to western countries is karma.
Wait you mean
checks notes
Exactly what Putin did to get in power and stay in power?
So two wrongs cancel out?
First time?
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.
Russia interfered AND NOBODY ELSE DID!!!
Which stage are you?
