LONDON — British Prime Minister Andy Burnham said the UK government has concluded that Russia interfered in the 2016 Brexit referendum, while his office stressed that there is no evidence the effort changed the result.

Burnham said in an interview released Sunday that he asked after entering Downing Street whether Russia had interfered and received a clear answer that it had. He did not describe the evidence or explain what form the interference took.

Government distinguishes interference from the outcome

Junior foreign office minister Stephen Doughty said Monday there was no evidence Russia had successfully interfered in the vote. A spokesperson for Burnham separately said the government considers the referendum result legitimate.

Britain voted 52 per cent to 48 per cent to leave the European Union. Burnham is the first serving British prime minister to say publicly that the government has evidence of Russian interference in that referendum, Reuters reported.

Russia has previously denied meddling in the Brexit vote. Its embassy in London did not respond to Reuters’ request for comment on Burnham’s latest statement.

2020 report found the question had not been resolved

A 2020 report by Parliament’s Intelligence and Security Committee found that the British government had not established whether Russia interfered in the referendum. The committee criticized the lack of a retrospective assessment and said the government had actively avoided looking for evidence of successful interference.

Burnham’s statement goes further than that public record but was not accompanied by newly released intelligence. His government’s distinction between an interference attempt and a successful change to the outcome is therefore central to the claim.

Burnham made the comments while warning voters in France and Germany about foreign-backed efforts to disrupt democratic politics. The allegation also carries wider relevance for Canada and other allied democracies confronting foreign-interference risks.

Sources: Reuters, updated October 12 at 8:28 a.m. EDT; UK government response to the Intelligence and Security Committee’s Russia report; Intelligence and Security Committee Russia report, July 21, 2020.

Lead image: official 2026 portrait of Andy Burnham by the House of Commons, via Wikimedia Commons, cropped, CC BY 3.0; file photograph, not an image of the interview.