What will the Russia report reveal about Moscow’s influence on the Brexit referendum?

Lapsing into cliche for a moment, like a Boris Bus in London, you wait all year for a news story about Russian hacking, and then all of a sudden three arrive at once – on vaccines, on the 2019 election and, soon, an investigation into the 2016 Brexit referendum.

Coincidence? It hardly seems likely. In fact, beyond the common factor that agents, formal or informal, of Vladimir Putin’s bandit regime are responsible for them, it is better to treat all three separately, with some contextualisation.

After a botched attempt by Downing Street to rig the chairmanship of the independent parliamentary Intelligence and Security Committee (ISC), its new chair (Julian Lewis) and its cross-party membership have unanimously agreed to publish the delayed report into Russian involvement in the Brexit referendum in 2016. Leading members of the present administration – Boris Johnson, Dominic Cummings and Michael Gove – were of course prominent decision-making figures in that controversial campaign.

Rapidly afterwards emerged two other stories about Russian hacking. The foreign secretary, Dominic Raab, has stated that Russian “actors” “amplified” leaked reports about the UK-US trade talks. In particular there was a deeply damaging suggestion that American business, and the US trade negotiators, were insisting on access to the vast market for drugs and medical treatments in the NHS. The leak appeared on Reddit and in due course the Labour Party made much of it.

The second story concerned Russian hackers Cozy Bear, and others, trying to find out about western efforts to develop a coronavirus vaccine, in effect to “steal the formula”.

Outrageous as all these activities may be, they both started only after the ISC had completed its report on the Russians and Britain’s referendum. The emergence of these stories now may be an attempt at distraction, to further muddy already murky waters, implying that the Russians are happy to assist either side in a given election campaign and hack into all kinds of western systems habitually – and by no means always to assist Boris Johnson and his friends. Thus the Brexit interference can be placed in a wider, more neutralising context, and any allegations of collusion further discredited.

We shall see for sure when it appears in the next few days. What is remarkable is that despite some feverish speculation, so little is known about the contents of the 50-page ISC report: it has not been leaked, an interesting fact in itself.

Indeed, in the light of the public statements by the former chair of the committee, Dominic Grieve, it is baffling that it has been suppressed for so long. It only fuels suspicions that what is there is considerably embarrassing to the prime minister and/or those close to him – otherwise why go to such lengths to hide things? Another possibility is that it might also shed more light on the relationship between the Leave campaign more widely and Russian interests: Arron Banks, for example, met the Russian ambassador before the referendum, which he disclosed in his book The Bad Boys of Brexit. Various police investigations of Mr Banks have been closed with no further action.

Mr Grieve, and other members of the committee have told parliament that the report is oven ready, to borrow a phrase, ever since 17 October when it was sent to Mr Johnson. It is possible that the prime minister in seeking further guidance from the agencies or the Cabinet Office sought to have the report revised or further redacted. If so, no one has told the former chair of the committee, Mr Grieve.

It has long been cleared for publication by all the secret service agencies. Its contents pose no risk to national security, we are told.

From what can be gleaned, much of the “interference” concerned the generation and propagation of “fake news” and animosities via social media by armies of trolls and bots, orchestrated or condoned by the Kremlin, with the aim of furthering the Russian policy aim of detaching the UK from the EU. One newspaper reported that the ISC verified this activity had taken place, but could only say it had an “unquantifiable” effect on the narrow outcome (52 to 48 per cent, famously).

Shortly before the election last December, the shadow foreign secretary, Emily Thornberry, had this to say, under parliamentary privilege: “There are questions about the relationship between the FSB-linked Sergey Nalobin and his ‘good friend’, the current prime minister. There are questions about the prime minister’s chief aide, Dominic Cummings, his relationship with the Oxford academic Norman Stone, the mysterious three years he spent in post-Communist Russia aged just 23, and the relationship he allegedly forged with individuals such as Vladislav Surkov, the key figure behind Vladimir Putin’s throne. And there are questions about the amount of money flowing into Conservative coffers from Russian emigres, about the sources of money that paid for the Brexit campaign, and about the dubious activities of Conservative Friends of Russia.”

In response, a foreign office minister, Christopher Pincher stated that “there is no evidence of any successful Russian involvement in the British electoral cycle”. A carefully worded formula, the key word being “successful”.

The speculation about the murky contents of the ISC Russia report is near endless, and it may set many more hares running.

Much of the coverage is enlivened by reports from America, also troubled by allegations about Russian links to the 2016 Trump campaign. For example, it was alleged that the Russians held kompromat on Donald Trump – could they have similar on Mr Johnson? Then again the Mueller report, having sifted through the dirt, could only conclude that there was insufficient evidence that the 2016 Trump campaign “coordinated or conspired with the Russian government in its election-interference activities”.

In the end the ISC report, like many of the other investigations on both sides of the Atlantic (both official and journalistic), has crossed a crucial threshold of credibility. It is one thing to discover Russian interference, successful or merely attempted, and that us bad enough. It is another to prove actual collusion. But it is yet another, higher, bar to demonstrate that it made a material and determining difference. In other words, would Leave have won anyway in 2016? And if not, what then? Rerun the vote? Cancel Brexit? By now, and with no suggestion of criminality, is it not all a little late?