The revival of the “Putindunnit” Brexit narrative demonstrates how politicians continue to misunderstand and misrepresent the scale, impact but above all goals of Russian political interference.
The Russian trolls, bots and commentators can gleefully exploit this target-rich environment
Andy Burnham, perhaps as ever wanting to please his interlocutors of the moment, told Alastair Campbell and Rory Stewart on their The Rest is Politics podcast that when he looked into whether there had been Russian interference in the 2016 vote, “I’ve had the clear answer that, yes, there was.”
The Prime Minister added that: “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.”
Let’s set aside the fact that, far from being too coy, politicians of every shade have seen supposed Russian disinformation in all sorts of reverses. More to the point, was he suggesting that Brexit was not the will of the British people but of the Russian Kremlin? Certainly, that was what many assumed. Still, Foreign Office minister Stephen Doughty, when pushed for specifics by the BBC’s Justin Webb, had to admit that that while the Russians had “attempted to” influence the outcome, they had not succeeded.
To a degree this is political knock-about. A canny political operator like Burnham would surely have been aware of the furore his words would generate. Although he told the Commons that he “implied no such thing” as that Russia swung the vote, nor had he rushed to squash the idea. It can hardly be coincidental that this comes at a time when he is broaching the idea of a closer relationship between the UK and the EU.
More broadly, though, this incident highlights the continuing misunderstanding about foreign interference.
Of course, Russia carries out overt and covert political and information operations. Then again, in the modern, interconnected information space, who doesn’t? That’s not a crass whataboutist argument suggesting everyone is as bad as the other – they’re not – but instead demonstrates the need for nuance.
How big is the Russian campaign? Doughty claimed “they’re spending £1.5 billion this year alone on disinformation and propaganda.” That’s already up on Burnham’s recent claim, that “the Kremlin spends around £1.3 billion each year.” Even so, that was a very dubious figure, apparently based simply on the Russian federal budget line for media support. To be sure, this does include propaganda, but also everything from domestic soap operas to support for Russian film making. The sums we’ve seen spent on troll farms, online adverts and the like have often been miniscule in comparison.
More to the point, what do the Russians try to do? Of course, they were enthusiastic about Brexit, as it drove wedges into both European solidarity and British cohesion. However, they had learned the hard way that it is next to impossible to swing the results of elections and referenda. Indeed, their efforts in the 2017 French presidential elections may actually have harmed their favoured candidate, Marine Le Pen.
Instead, they shifted their aim towards amplifying existing discontents. The goal is not state capture, but paralysis, helping us become so lost in our own disputes that we cannot muster the unity and attention for anything greater.
Elections and referenda are perfect opportunities, times when the faultlines are gaping, not least as domestic politicians prise them open for their own ends. Then the Russian trolls, bots and commentators can gleefully exploit this target-rich environment. As an essentially post-ideological state, Russia can amplify voices from the left or the right, secessionists and nationalists, NRA (National Rifle Association) and BLM (Black Lives Matter), whoever has a disruptive message that can help turn us against each other, leave us mistrustful of our institutions, and unwilling to find common cause.
As a result, politicians and commentators need to tread a delicate balance. Yes, by all means draw attention to foreign meddling for whichever quarter this comes, which can just as easily be Barack Obama warning Britain that it would be at the back of the queue for a trade deal if it voted for Brexit, or Donald Trump’s people threatening the UK with tariffs for sanctioning Israel.
Yet this has to be kept in perspective. To put it bluntly, we can be so much more destructive of ourselves than our enemies.
After all, our own politicians could do wonders for information resilience and social cohesion not by setting up fact-checking bodies that can all too easily become engines of censorship, nor by implying that their opponents are the dupes of Moscow, or Beijing, or Tehran, or, indeed, Brussels or DC.
This just plays into the hands of our enemies, exaggerating their capabilities and poisoning public debate. As the philosopher and commentator Vlad Vexler noted on X, “The No.1 goal of Russian interference in our democracies is that it triggers a toxic fight about Russian interference in our democracies.”
Our own politicians would do well to rely less on spin – often a euphemism for outright deception – and character assassination. But that is, I appreciate, a dangerously radical and utopian idea.
Comments