Oh dear. Andy Burnham’s attempt to smear Brexit as the product of a sinister Russian disinformation campaign has already been exposed as nothing more than… disinformation. During a car-crash set of interviews this morning, Foreign Office minister Stephen Doughty admitted that no Kremlin attempt to interfere with Brexit had succeeded. Not that Doughty didn’t try his damnedest to avoid stating the obvious.

Asked about Burnham’s ludicrous claims, made – where else? – on Alastair Campbell and Rory Stewart’s The Rest Is Politics podcast, the Labour minister initially refused to engage with the question. Instead, he embarked on a rambling detour through Reform’s former Welsh leader and the Salisbury poisonings. Eventually, however, he was forced to concede what anyone with half a brain cell already knew: the Prime Minister was talking rubbish. Doughty said:

Well, the security minister has spoken about this before, and he’s been very clear that they’ve attempted to [but] they haven’t succeeded. They do attempt to interfere in our processes, have attempted to interfere in a whole number of them. And of course, it’s not just Russia, it’s other countries, too. but this is a whole society effort.

Given the Labour government’s plans to establish a new National Centre for Information Defence, may Mr S suggest its first subject for investigation? The man already sitting in No. 10.

UPDATE: Burnham now insists he never actually implied the Brexit referendum result was illegitimate because of Russian interference. In a desperate row back, the Prime Minister told the Commons: ‘I implied no such thing in my comments on the Rest is Politics podcast. I think (Kemi Badenoch) should go back and look again. It is a matter of record, that Russian actors sought to interfere in the 2029 general election, and we think it is inconceivable that this was the first time.’ Talk about spinning like a top…