More Accusations Of Foreign Interference in Brexit Vote

There have long been suspicions that foreign interference played a far larger role in the Brexit vote that anyone has imagined. Yesterday, a Labour MP, Ben Bradshaw, continued his battle to get a serious investigation launched by the Electoral Commission in order to get to the bottom of that question.

Bradshaw’s latest questions were prompted by a report from Open Democracy about the source of around $12 million dollars to support Brexit and Nigel Farage’s Leave.EU given by insurance magnate Aaron Banks. Mr. Banks, who is one of Farage’s close friends and a political ally, is, in Trumpian fashion, apparently worth far less than the over $300 million he claims, raising the question of how he managed to get access to $12 million for the Brexit campaign, with the implication that some of it may have been provided by the Russians. Mr. Banks has actually fueled that speculation by bragging about his close connections with the Russians and specifically a luncheon with the Russian Ambassador to the UK where he was supposedly served some vodka reportedly made for Stalin.

Of course, this is not the first time that Leave.EU and the supporters of Brexit have been rumored to have received illegal funding and help from foreign sources. Earlier this year, I wrote about the evidence that American billionaire Robert Mercer’s Cambridge Analytica was used to illegally coordinate activities between Leave.EU and VoteLeave. In addition, Cambridge Analytica provided its services to UKIP and Leave.EU for free, helping them evade the UK laws limiting campaign spending. VoteLeave was also illegally funding BeLeave and Veterans For Britain, which both also used Cambridge Analytica’s services. The Guardian has the complete story for those interested in the deep dive into this issue.

So far, the Electoral Commission seems to have made a minimal effort to look into any of these allegations. As far as I know, the only real investigation so far concerned the Public Administration and Community Affairs Committee review of the reason for a denial of service attack on the site where citizens could register to vote. And even that investigation came to no real conclusion other than being “concerned”.

Obviously, the present government has no interest in going back and reviewing what happened in the Brexit vote, especially in light of the disastrous ongoing negotiations. But, someday in the future, some of these issues will really be investigated and the results could be very interesting.