The Daily Mail reports:
Andy Burnham says Russia 'clearly' interfered in 2016 Brexit referendum as he gives latest hint at bid to rejoin EU
The obvious reason for peddling this nonsense now is to continue to undermine the referendum result as a precursor to trying to re-enter the EU and join a failing political project in order to be back with a bunch of backslapping bros.
FNN bets Kaja Kallas or one of her cronies thought this one up. High five!
The Leave result was invalid because the Russians influenced it!
All those white van men who voted for BREXIT were being influenced by Russian trolls and paid-for ads on porn sites!
The British people don't have a mind of their own which is why they should never be offered referendums!
How much more of this nonsense do we have to put up with?
FNN suspects that Putin/Russia had zero influence on 99.9% of leave voters or even more, so this is all just another desperate remoaner tactic being embraced by the Mayor of Manchester to justify bending over again for a shafting by the EU.
Update 12/10/26:
https://spectator.com/article/burnhams-brexit-conspiracy-theory-hits-the-buffers
The Spectator reports:
Oh dear. Andy Burnham’s attempt to smear Brexit as the product of a sinister Russian disinformation campaign has already been exposed as nothing more than… disinformation. During a car-crash set of interviews this morning, Foreign Office minister Stephen Doughty admitted that no Kremlin attempt to interfere with Brexit had succeeded. Not that Doughty didn’t try his damnedest to avoid stating the obvious.
Hopefully he will be reporting himself to his own disinformation agency.
Update 13/10/26:
Thomas Fazi: The most absurd Russiagate yet?
https://www.thomasfazi.com/p/the-most-absurd-russiagate-yet
As expected the rowback of this nonsense has begun:
But Downing Street has since insisted the result of the vote on European Union membership was "legitimate".
Pushed multiple times on whether Burnham believes the result to leave the EU was legitimate, the prime minister's official spokesperson said:
"It's inconceivable that Russia did not seek to use the referendum to their benefit. But they did not succeed. So yes, we do believe that the results were legitimate. The prime minister is focused on the future, not the past."
But if the Mayor of Manchester is so focused on the future why does he keep digging up the past?
Even the head of MI5 is now playing this down.