New Open Britain Report Calls for Public Inquiry into Foreign Interference in UK Politics

The report, Russian Interference in British Politics, argues that Britain has spent more than a decade avoiding questions that other democracies confronted years ago. While the United States, France, Germany, Canada and the European Union all established formal investigations into Russian political interference, the UK has never commissioned a comparable inquiry.

As a result, interference surrounding the 2016 EU referendum and subsequent UK elections was never fully examined. The report warns this has created a serious accountability gap, weakened public trust and left Britain more vulnerable to future hostile-state interference.

With the next general election expected to take place amid heightened geopolitical tensions and rapidly evolving online influence operations, our report warns the UK is now more exposed than ever.

The report highlights growing concerns around cryptocurrency and opaque digital funding channels, which could allow covert foreign money to enter British politics faster than regulators are able to detect or trace it. It also warns that Britain’s democratic safeguards remain fragmented and outdated, with no effective mechanism for intelligence agencies and electoral regulators to coordinate in real time against foreign interference threats.

Mark Kieran, Chief Executive of Open Britain, said:

“The UK did not just fail to investigate foreign interference in its democracy - it made a political choice not to.

“That decision has left Britain dangerously unprepared for the next election, at a time when hostile-state interference is becoming more sophisticated, better funded and harder to detect.

“In every comparable democracy, serious allegations of foreign interference triggered serious national investigations. In Britain, successive governments chose not to ask the question.

“The consequence is not only a national security failure. It is a democratic one. Public trust in elections depends on people believing that votes are decided by citizens - not shaped by covert foreign influence, opaque money or institutional silence.”

The report argues that going into another election without establishing what happened in the past risks further weakening confidence in the democratic system itself.

The Government-commissioned Rycroft Review identified weaknesses in Britain’s democratic defences but was never tasked with examining allegations surrounding the Brexit period or establishing a full account of past interference.

Open Britain is calling on the Government to:

• Commission a full statutory public inquiry into foreign interference in UK politics;

• Declassify the Intelligence and Security Committee’s 2020 Russia Report;

• Establish a formal intelligence-sharing framework between the security services and the Electoral Commission;

• Create a mechanism for credible allegations of foreign interference raised by citizens, journalists and political actors to be formally assessed and investigated;

• Implement the recommendations of the Rycroft Report in full.