Russian territorial aggression against Ukraine didn’t feature much in the Brexit referendum campaign.
asserted
aggression → feature → campaign
It made headlines briefly when Boris Johnson blamed Moscow’s 2014 annexation of Crimea on the European Union.
asserted
Johnson → make → Union
According to the Vote Leave frontman, Vladimir Putin’s land grab was a consequence of Brussels making foreign policy “on the hoof” and having “pretensions to running a defence policy”.
uncertain
Brussels → accord → policy
The logic of that position was that Kyiv had no right to choose its own allies and that European democracies should never have supported Ukrainian aspirations to escape submission to Moscow.
asserted
democracies → have → Moscow
It is the appeasement fallacy: if only the west acquiesced to Putin’s conviction that Kyiv is a Russian city and that Ukraine is not a proper country, he would not want to suffocate his neighbour’s independence.
asserted
he → acquiesce → independence
That notion is refuted by all the evidence of campaigns to coerce countries deemed by the Kremlin to be errant possessions since the collapse of the Soviet Union.
asserted
notion → refute → Union
When Nigel Farage repeated the EU-provocation theory of the Ukraine war during the 2024 general election campaign, one prominent defender of Ukrainian sovereignty described the Reform UK leader’s assertions as “ahistorical drivel” and “Kremlin propaganda”.
asserted
defender → repeat → drivel
There is nothing unusual about Johnson contradicting himself.
asserted
Johnson → be → himself
His talent as a political communicator came from the ability to hold whichever view was expedient to him in the moment and, for the duration of that moment, appear to hold it sincerely.
asserted
view → come → it
In a more generous reading, he rose to the occasion of Putin’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022, understanding events in their proper geopolitical perspective (and with access to classified intelligence reports), which afforded a different reading of Putin’s motives.
asserted
which → rise → motives
The goal of maximising Eurosceptic votes meant reaching for any argument that presented Brussels in a negative light.
asserted
that → maximise → light
If that involved narrating the cause of a conflict on the other side of the continent in warped terms that matched the Kremlin story, so be it.
asserted
it → involve → story
Putin despised the EU for his reasons; the leave campaign despised it for theirs.
asserted
campaign → despise → theirs
Johnson was not minded to interrogate whether that alignment of enmities discredited his cause.
asserted
alignment → interrogate → cause
This is the context in which Andy Burnham’s recent assertion that Russia meddled in the referendum needs to be understood.
asserted
Russia → meddle → referendum
The prime minister said it was inconceivable, given all the evidence of Kremlin interference in elections around the world, that the toolkit of subversion would not have been deployed in support of Brexit.
asserted
toolkit → say → Brexit
That is not a controversial claim to anyone with a glancing awareness of Russian foreign policy and the means by which it is pursued – the swarms of bot accounts flooding social media with falsehoods; dirty money channelled to extremists; industrial dissemination of conspiracy theories and stoking of intercommunal tensions to undermine social coherence, deplete trust in democracy and make it less functional.
uncertain
it → glance → democracy
No candidate who was knowingly complicit in that process will admit as much.
asserted
who → admit → much
But even those who were unaware that their cause was boosted by Kremlin troll farms have incentives to deny it.
asserted
cause → boost → it
No one wants their heroic victory recast as useful idiocy in service of a hostile power.
asserted
victory → want → power
Conservatives have called Burnham’s intervention “dangerous and divisive”, which could be interpreted as a denial that interference happened or just as a preference that it not be mentioned to protect delicate pro-Brexit sensibilities.
uncertain
it → call → sensibilities
Farage’s feelings were certainly hurt.
asserted
feelings → hurt → ?
He called the prime minister a liar and described the whole thing as a “Russia hoax” – the formula Donald Trump applied to well-substantiated allegations that his 2016 presidential campaign got a helping hand from Moscow.
asserted
campaign → call → Moscow
His party’s former leader in Wales is serving a jail term for taking bribes from Russian spies.
asserted
leader → serve → spies
The backlash forced Downing Street to clarify that the prime minister didn’t mean to cast aspersions on the legitimacy of the referendum result.
asserted
minister → force → result
That is the right position when there is no way of knowing what impact, if any, foreign meddling might have had.
uncertain
meddling → be → impact
The views that interference happened and also that the leave campaign would have prevailed anyway are compatible.
asserted
campaign → happen → ?
Some remainers might seek comfort in the idea that Britain’s democracy was hijacked and diverted through clouds of Russian-induced false consciousness to the wrong destination.
uncertain
democracy → seek → destination
The banal truth is that the Eurosceptic side won enough arguments and voters made their choice freely.
asserted
voters → win → choice
Brexiters didn’t need any outside help to turn latent anti-immigration sentiment into active hostility to free movement across European borders.
asserted
Brexiters → need → borders
The Russia dimension is more relevant when it comes to a geopolitical argument that the pro-European side failed to land.
asserted
side → come → that
In June 2016 it was hard to make the peril of strategic isolation for Britain, self-exiled from the club of European democracies, no longer confident in the transatlantic relationship, seem vivid or imminent.
asserted
peril → make → relationship
His propensity to behave like a private client of the Putin regime can still shock, even if it no longer surprises, as with the sanctions-busting deal he struck last week to import billions of dollars of Russian diesel.
asserted
he → behave → diesel
The hope, entirely vain, is to depress pump prices and assuage voter frustration ahead of midterm elections in November.
asserted
hope → depress → November
On top of the cash infusion for the Kremlin’s war effort, Trump added a bonus of rhetorical venom for Volodymyr Zelenskyy, calling for regime change in Kyiv.
asserted
Trump → add → Kyiv
He blames Ukrainian targeting of Russian refining capacity for rising global energy costs because his narcissistic ego resists the truth – that his war in Iran has been a disaster for the US and a boon for its enemies.
asserted
war → blame → enemies
The fact that Russia is an Iranian ally, providing Tehran with intelligence support to resist US military pressure, is no impediment to Trump’s commercial collaborations with the Kremlin.
asserted
Russia → provide → Kremlin
The exact character and motive involved in that relationship may never be elucidated.
uncertain
character → involve → relationship
But there is no need to seek out hidden levers of influence that may not even exist when publicly available data paints a full enough picture.
uncertain
data → be → picture
Trump and Putin are two greedy despots who recognise no boundary between national interest and self-enrichment.
asserted
who → recognise → interest
…and 13 more, not listed.
The Aporia
