Report: ‘No one’ protected British democracy from Russia

LONDON — Russia has mounted a prolonged, sophisticated campaign to meddle in Britain’s democracy, according to a long-delayed report released Tuesday by a British parliamentary committee, but it is not clear whether its tactics swayed one of the most consequential votes in modern British history: to leave the European Union.

In saying they were unable to make that judgment, the report’s authors directed some of their harshest criticism not at Russia but at successive British governments, which they said had ignored years of warning signs about Russian malfeasance. Even after questions about the 2016 Brexit referendum, the report found, intelligence agencies failed to properly investigate whether Russia’s actions altered the outcome.

It raised a troubling question: Who is protecting British democracy?

“No one is,” was the answer given by the authors.

“The outrage isn’t if there is interference,” said Kevan Jones, a Labour Party member of Parliament who served on the intelligence committee that released the report. “The outrage is no one wanted to know if there was interference.”

The release of the report came more than seven months after Prime Minister Boris Johnson’s Conservative Party racked up an 80-seat majority in Parliament and almost 18 months after the end of the inquiry by the Intelligence and Security Committee, a parliamentary body that oversees the country’s spy agencies.