Britain’s spy chief has concluded that Russian agencies acted “pretty strongly” to try to influence the UK referendum on the European Union a decade ago, but he warned against concluding that this meant they had a big impact on the outcome.
MI5 director-general Ken McCallum revealed his view after delivering an annual speech on the threats facing the nation, one day after Prime Minister Andy Burnham sparked intense debate by revealing that security agencies told him of the Russian interference in the Brexit vote.
“It is openly on the record that Russia Today and Sputnik and other Russian media organisations came in pretty strongly around the referendum,” said McCallum, who has led MI5 since 2020 and has been at the agency for about 25 years. “And it is also a matter of open-source record that there was a certain amount of interference attempted through trolls and bots and so forth.”
McCallum said this did not mean the interference was successful in swaying the result of the referendum, in which 52 per cent of voters chose to leave the EU. In remarks reported by the BBC, he said there was “comparative unimpressiveness” among Russian “trolls” on social media despite the attention they gained.
Burnham triggered criticism from Brexit advocates on Monday after the release of a podcast interview in which he said security agencies gave him a “clear answer” that Russia had interfered in the 2016 referendum. Reform UK leader Nigel Farage, a major advocate for Brexit, said this was a lie and there was no interference. Former prime minister Boris Johnson, another Brexit advocate, said there was no successful interference.
Amid the furious argument, Burnham’s office said the prime minister did not say the interference was effective and was not arguing the referendum outcome was not legitimate.