Alberta's Russo-american Brexit Fraud

10 years ago next month, Britain committed a spectacular act of national masochism through their Brexit referendum, and to celebrate the anniversary, Alberta’s premier wants her province to face the same fate.

In both cases, such an act does not serve the interests of the people. The primary beneficiaries are political adversaries.

In the ten years since the Brexit vote, there have been widespread allegations and evidence of foreign interference in the Brexit referendum and across British politics more generally, generally attributed to Russia.

From a timing point of view, Russia’s invasion of Ukraine started two years earlier in 2014, with the annexation of Crimea. The west reacted with angry words and financial sanctions which hurt the Russian economy while the country claimed that its invasion was legal, justifying it with a sham referendum after the fact that was rejected by the United Nations general assembly.

In the aftermath of that invasion and its international reaction, western powers started seeing widespread social media-driven disinformation campaigns guiding public opinion away from hardliners against Russian expansionism as we started becoming aware of Russian bot-farms.

By 2016, a stale western establishment vulnerable to plausible disinformation about why the middle class is disappearing started getting defeated by an electorate who had reached the wrong conclusions.

That summer saw the Brexit referendum pass when the Conservative Prime Minister ran the referendum to end the question. That fall, Trump beat Hillary Clinton to take the White House with all the grace of the Crimean invasion. Both of those events had significant Russian assistance, and both relieved pressure on Russia.

Nigel Farage, a leading figure in the Brexit movement, was quoted in 2014 as saying that Vladimir Putin was the world leader he admired the most. Farage, who today is running for Prime Minister of England and has a good chance of winning, is embroiled in controversy for accepting a cash gift of five million pounds from a crypto magnate who, he claims, wants nothing in return. Crypto is a favourite of those looking to mask the origins of money, convenient for those whose political interests diverge from those of their country.

Donald Trump, another heavy investor in crypto, for his part spent his first term trying to get the G7 to readmit Russia, which had been expelled as a result of the Crimean invasion, something he has continued to do in his second term. With Trump’s Russian connections and influence well-established, it is time to connect the dots back to today.

New Enemies — Foreign and Domestic

It needs to be plainly stated that Russia and the United States are now allies, and America’s historical alliances are of no further value, existing only to the extent that geography forces them. As with Russia’s annexation of Crimea and subsequent invasion of the rest of Ukraine, the United States under its new autocracy has openly called for the inclusion of Canada into their union, and is actively politically undermining Alberta to prepare it for a sham referendum.

Comprehensive voter information about every Alberta voter was recently leaked to the province’s separatists. The group that got the data has been linked to American Ambassador Pete Hoekstra.

Premier Danielle Smith is taking the half-pregnant David Cameron Brexit approach to the prospect of a referendum on the province’s independence, hoping to hold it to wash her hands of the issue while also working with those who want it to succeed.

None of this is a coincidence and it is not going to end well for Alberta, regardless of the outcome should the October 19th, 2026 referendum go forward, in spite of court rulings against it.

Russia wants a fractured west. The United States wants Canada’s resources and land. Their interests intersect somewhere between Fort McMurray and Calgary, and they have found the people they need to pursue them.