Andy Burnham has sought to qualify his claim that Russia interfered in the 2016 Brexit referendum, after ministers and opposition figures challenged the suggestion and previous governments said there was no evidence of successful foreign interference.
The Prime Minister made the original remark in an interview released on Sunday, telling Alastair Campbell and Rory Stewart: “I asked the question coming to Downing Street, was there interference in the 2016 referendum from Russia? And I’ve had the clear answer that yes, there was.”
By Monday morning, Foreign Office minister Stephen Doughty appeared to distance the Government from the claim. Speaking to LBC, he said: “We know what the result was… I don’t think they’ve succeeded in their efforts to undermine our elections.”
Mr Doughty added that the security minister had been clear Russia had attempted to interfere but had not succeeded, saying: “The fact is that they are attempting to interfere, and we all need to be alert.”
At 11.30am, Nigel Farage accused Mr Burnham of lying. Shortly afterwards, the Prime Minister’s spokesman said Russia had not influenced UK elections, despite repeated attempts to do so.
Kemi Badenoch then raised the issue in the Commons, asking: “Where has this come from?”
Mr Burnham told MPs that he had “implied no such thing”. He said: “It is a matter of record, Mr Speaker, that Russian actors sought to interfere in the 2019 general election, and we think it is inconceivable that this was the first time.”
Previous findings on Brexit interference
The Government said in April 2018 that there had been “no evidence of successful interference”, responding to a petition calling for the referendum result to be declared “null and void due to foreign interference”.
The head of MI5 said the following month that he was not aware of outside influence determining the outcome of the 2016 referendum.
A report by Parliament’s Intelligence and Security Committee in July 2020 found no evidence that Russian interference had affected the referendum. The Government repeated in September that year that it had “seen no evidence of successful interference”.
More recently, Labour minister Steve Reed said in December 2025: “There is no evidence that the outcome of any previous election or referendum was affected by any attempted foreign interference.”
In January 2026, Dan Jarvis said successive governments had not seen “any evidence of successful foreign interference in the EU referendum”.
Last month, Labour minister Florence Eshalomi said: “There is no evidence of any foreign interference attempts having been ‘successful’ in materially impacting the outcome of a recent UK election or referendum.”
