Britain is a democracy with heavy caveats. It allows its citizens an equal vote, but not an equal say. Those with wealth gain power and influence – through access to politicians, donations to political parties, lobbying, well-funded thinktanks and ownership of most of the press. “As inequality grows, so does the political influence of the rich,” is how that well-known bastion of socialism the Economist put it a couple of years ago. Yet we are denied a proper debate on how British democracy is subverted by vested interests because it would mean most newspapers – who play a major part in framing the national conversation – having to scrutinise their own role. This week, the long-delayed intelligence and security committee report into alleged Russian interference in British democracy had troubling findings: not least ministers turning an apparent blind eye. Vladimir Putin’s kleptocratic gangster regime should be opposed by anyone with progressive inclinations: for its murderous war in Chechnya, in which tens of thousands perished; its state-sanctioned bigotry against LGBTQ people; and for its ties with the European far right. That the Conservatives financially benefit from donations linked to Russian oligarchs is itself a concern, as is Britain’s status as a safe haven for dirty money worth about £100bn a year. But the spectre of Russian interference has become a crutch for many liberal centrists. Easier to claim the nefarious hand of Putin is responsible for political events we do not like – from Brexit to Donald Trump – than to ask searching questions about our own dysfunctional democracies. Calls to clamp down on states intervening in each other’s affairs need to be consistent, or risk being hypocritical and self-serving. The United States backed Boris Yeltsin’s presidential campaign in 1996: a Time front page in July 2016 hailed “The secret story of how American advisers helped Yeltsin win”, and the Bill Clinton administration lobbied the International Monetary Fund to provide Yeltsin with a loan to boost his re-election efforts. Richard Dearlove, the former MI6 chief, has publicly regretted that British security services helped Putin win power in 2000. On the eve of that presidential election, Tony Blair praised Putin as a moderniser who was “highly intelligent and with a focused view of what he wants to achieve in Russia”, even as Chechnya was being flattened. Postwar history is littered with examples of western-backed coups and meddling in foreign elections. But when figures such as the Labour peer Andrew Adonis claim Putin “helped swing the 2016 Brexit referendum”, other far more salient factors are obscured. Facebook advertising undoubtedly played a role – the Vote Leave campaign would not have spent more than £2.7m on it otherwise – but in 2016, just 7% of the most pro-leave demographic, the over-65s, used Facebook for news, compared with 49% of the most pro-remain age group, the under-25s, according to Ofcom. Of far more relevance was the role of the two largest newspapers in Britain, the Sun – owned by an Australian-born American mogul, if we’re talking of foreign intervention – and the Daily Mail, which forcefully campaigned for Brexit. Not only do they have millions of readers, their front pages play a key role in shaping broadcast news coverage too. And given that immigration played a key role in the referendum, years of inaccurate and inflammatory press reporting on migrants surely had a dramatic impact on the result. As a 2018 academic study found, while the media are not all-powerful, there is “ample evidence that the media can impact on attitude formation, especially (but not exclusively) where the public are dependent on coverage, have weak partisan predispositions, or where reporting is uniform or near-uniform across a range of sources”. Polls routinely find that the public believe benefit fraud and teenage pregnancy is far higher than is the case, and that there are more migrants: undoubtedly this has much to do with exaggerated and misleading reporting. According to Will Straw, formerly of Britain Stronger in Europe, when the official remain campaign conducted a poll in the summer of 2015, it found that 52% supported continued membership of the EU, with 48% for leaving. This was based on two-thirds of Labour supporters and 50% of Tory voters opting for remain. While Labour remain support held up all the way to referendum day, Tory support slumped to 40%, ensuring a Brexit triumph: it would be delusional to ignore the role of rightwing newspapers disproportionately read by Tory voters. The obsessive focus with Putin robs us of the chance to discuss these issues. After the 2016 defeat, the rational approach by the remain movement would have been to focus on winning over leave voters. Instead, social media helped radicalise some remainers into believing the referendum was illegitimate – and hence that it was a legal rather than a political problem. The menace of Russian intervention helped cement this attitude. That doesn’t mean ignoring possible foreign meddling in democratic processes, here or abroad, and measures must be taken to safeguard elections. But while much time and energy has been expended on debating the role of Russia, there is all too little scrutiny about the far greater crisis of how the wealthy, and their vested interests, interfere in and distort democracy. Until we challenge that the question marks over our own democracy will remain. • Owen Jones is a Guardian columnist