There are other ways control has been lost: there were two Leave Campaigns which hid total spending, there is a lot of money being put into online campaigns, designed to look like individuals raising concerns but actually being orchestrated anonymously or even generated by bots. The point of this is the we are now in a world of supercharged sharp practice, if not downright cheating.
Rather than try and deal with the problem it seems that many on all sides are just wading in, anything goes, this is reality, politics is a rough trade, we have to live with it. This is playing fast and loose with the political system and undermines legitimacy. The 1832 reform act was passed in response to massively corrupt election practices, we do not yet seem to be able to grasp the scale of these new abuses, nor understand their corrosive effect.
Part 2 - Assess - Timeline - Past - Current Politics