I agree. If there were to be collusion with another nation then there would be cause for wailing and wringing of hands but this is just an outcome where some very silly people have put their heads together while watching Yes Minister and discussing how they can best emulate it. Can’t end well!

Things can have more than one cause. The result of the Brexit referendum was no small part in BoJo being appointed Lord of Misrule. This very close results was certainly influenced by dark money, likely Russian. The trolls of St Petersburg were certainly weighing on on the side of the Quitlings. Without these factors there's every change there'd have been no vacancy for Boris to fill. I'm not saying that Johnson himself colluded with Russian influences just that enemies of our country contributed to this outcome.

@MattHardy Evidence?

@CeliaVL good of you to ask. Before I risk patronising you, what do you already know of the investigation into the leave referendum? And which of the two issues I highlighted are you more interested in - the dark money behind the leave campaign or the activities of the St Petersburg troll farms?

@MattHardy I am well aware of the allegations about both issues. I think that if you examine the demographics, you will find that the majority of leave voters get their 'information' from the Daily Mail rather than Russian-sponsored Twitter feeds. If there were sufficient evidence to demonstrate that your so-called 'dark money' was behind the campaign I think Arron Banks, at least would have been successfully prosecuted by now. We don't need Russian interference - the British people are perfectly capable of shooting themselves in the foot on their own.

@CeliaVL I stopped short of claiming to know for certain where Banks' money came from. The point of calling it Dark Money is that the source is obscured. He was refereed to investigation by the National Crime Agency by the Electoral Commission who stated they had "reasonable grounds to suspect that: Mr Banks was not the true source of the £8m reported as loans." The fact that the NCA hasn't reported yet, does not necessarily bode well for him. They will need to report on what is beyond reasonable doubt. In the mean time we have the balance of probability. I would consider the existence of an active criminal investigation into the source of this unprecedented political donation, sufficient justification in calling it "Dark Money" I speculate as to the likely source and do so based upon the known activities of the Kremlin backed Internet Research Agency and Banks' widely observed associations.
Russia's attempt to interfere in the election via social media is known and widely reported. Largely as you allude to, reports have focused on twitter accounts that burst into activity just prior to the referendum and then disappeared afterwards. The more public nature of twitter lends itself better to investigation than some other platforms. Though that is not to say that we know the that this particular platform was the most actively targeted. That the output from accounts attributed to the Internet Research Agency was pro-brexit is also well established. The magnitude of the effect is certainly debatable. I agree with you that it likely wouldn't amount to much but as I pointed out the result was on a knife edge and so a small nudge is all that was needed. One analysis by the National Bureau of Economic Research in the USA pegged the effect at 1.76 percentage points towards the pro-leave vote share. Unfortunately I can't find much detail beyond that headline that's not behind a paywall.
I'm not sure if the daily mail demographic are what you'd call swing voters. More curious are the voters from the Labour heartlands such as the Welsh valleys, whose newspaper preferences did not tally with their referendum voting patterns. That's what set feature writer Carole Cadwalladr on her investigative path when she interviewed locals who told her that social media was where they were getting their pro-Brexit news.

Incredible, isn't it? I honestly can't believe how many people fall for a populist's empty promises.

@Jnei He is a clever guy behind all that buffoonery and he clearly does have a plan....looks like he is trying to win over the disaffected Labour voters in the north as well as those who voted for the Brexit party in the EU elections. Looks very like he’s on a General Election footing.

@webspider555 It’s always going to be about what is good for the Tory Party, the measures he’s announced this week are all designed to win back lost Tory votes and to appeal to disaffected others. He hasn’t said where any of the money is going to come from....it’s not going to be from higher earners because he’s going to cut their tax contribution.

So basically, business as usual but with the class clown driving the bus. Lovely. I do despair at how folk seem to think there's anything remotely decent or entertaining about that piece of human excrement.