Transcript: Chinese spying claims in the UK — and beyond

This is an audio transcript of the Political Fix podcast episode: ‘Chinese spying claims in the UK — and beyond’

[MUSIC PLAYING]

Lucy Fisher
A new cold war, and this time it’s China versus the west. Welcome to Political Fix, your essential insider guide to Westminster from the Financial Times with me, Lucy Fisher. On the menu today: Chinese espionage in the UK and beyond, PM Rishi Sunak’s defence plans and Labour’s pledge to renationalise rail services. To discuss it all, I’m joined in the studio by my FT colleagues George Parker. Hi, George.

George Parker
Hi, Lucy.

Lucy Fisher
And Jim Pickard. Hi, Jim.

Jim Pickard
Hello.

[MUSIC PLAYING]

Lucy Fisher
So before we get on to the claims this week of Chinese spying in the UK, let’s kick off talking about Rishi Sunak’s big move on defence. And Jim, you’ve been travelling with him to Warsaw, to Berlin. Tell us a bit about the trip and what he announced exactly.

Jim Pickard
So we flew out from Stansted on Monday morning. We went straight to Warsaw, where the prime minister stood next to the Nato secretary-general Stoltenberg and he announced kind of out of the blue that he had a new plan, which was that defence spending in the future, instead of being on its current trajectory of 2.3 per cent of GDP, he would be able to hit 2.5 per cent. But the devil in the detail, of course, is this doesn’t happen until 2030/2031. So Rishi Sunak has to win two general elections (Lucy laughs) in order to achieve this goal. But it’s obviously a big political story in terms of party management. He had loads of Conservative MPs breathing down his neck, wanting him to hit the 2.5 per cent target. The other element at the announcement was that aid or military aid to Ukraine for the current financial year was lifted from £2.5bn to £3bn, and a second story, which was a little bit lost in the mix, was that £3bn they now see as the baseline for future military aid to Ukraine going forward for as long as to the end of the decade, if the war with Russia continues.

Lucy Fisher
Great. So let’s be fair. This is a significant uptick in defence spending. At present, the Nato goal for defence expenditure is 2 per cent of GDP. Only 11 of the alliance’s 32 nations actually meet that level. So the UK is going far and beyond, although it will take us six years to get there. George, there’s been a lot of wrangling about Sunak’s claim that this is equivalent to £75bn extra. That’s not quite the usual way of calculating these things, is it?

George Parker
No. I mean, there’s not a lot of jiggery-pokery. This is one where you have to add a cumulative total year on year and you assume flat growth in cash terms of the defence budget to come to an extremely large number. And I think a lot of people poured cold water on that being £75bn. The other thing of course we should say is this is money which the Conservatives might spend if they’re to win a general election. It’s a kind of promise that’s easier to make when you’re not expecting to win the general election, to put it quite bluntly. But the political symbolism I think is extremely important. This was an effort by Rishi Sunak to put Britain at the forefront of efforts to increase military spending, increase military support for Ukraine and put Britain at the forefront of that debate.

Jim Pickard
Yeah, and he very clearly said he wanted attention to be switched back towards Ukraine. Obviously, attention has been on the Middle East for quite a long time, for obvious reasons. I mean, I wanna go back to the £75bn figure because as George says there’s some quite strange assumptions around that. I mean, it’s basically baloney. It’s basically imagining a world where the British government kept defence spending at £64bn a year, which is the current figure, and didn’t increase it even in nominal terms for six years.

Lucy Fisher
Yes. So Jim, economists are saying the real figure’s more like £20bn. The government has said this is a fully funded plan. It’s funded at least up to 2028, ‘29, isn’t it, from getting rid of 70,000-odd civil servants and, they say, from apportioning a larger part of the government’s research and development budget towards the Ministry of Defence. However, economists are also saying that frankly, in order to meet this pledge, certainly by 2030, there’s gonna have to be cuts elsewhere. And they’re looking at unprotected departments, aren’t they?

Jim Pickard
Yeah, exactly. So in his meeting with Olaf Scholz, the German chancellor, this week, which was the day after the Poland trip, Rishi Sunak tried to maintain that all these things were possible tax cuts — the national insurance, increase in defence spending and also that he could keep putting more money into public services. But he defines public services very specifically as education and health, which are of course the ringfenced ones and the ones that we all know are not ringfenced, there’s quite a lot of them, including justice, transport, local government, which is on its knees. He likes to kind of gloss over that particular part.

George Parker
This whole idea though of funding this increase in defence spending by cutting the civil service, this is the kind of thing you resort to when you run out of all other options. Talking about (inaudible), it falls into the category of wishful thinking. It’s a bit like Labour saying it’s gonna fill the hole created by the Tories nicking their non-dom policy by increasing the rate of tax collection. One of those things that would be nice to do, but much harder to achieve in practice.

Jim Pickard
But I had a debate with Labour about this and they were saying this is nonsense. You can’t cut the civil service by that much. And I said, well, look, if you look at what David Cameron did in 2010, he came in. He did cut civil service numbers by I think it’s something like 50,000. Please don’t come back to me if it turns out to be slightly different. But, you know, around 50,000. The problem was that then unexpected circumstances happened and we needed far more civil servants to deal with Brexit and to deal with the pandemic, so the number returned magically back to where it was in 2010. So Labour kind of thinks that proves that point that you can pretend that you can cut the civil service, but who knows how many civil servants you need.

Lucy Fisher
Yeah. George, how do you think this is gonna land with the public? We think this could lead to more cuts to prisons, courts, councils, areas that are already struggling. Do you think people are going to recognise that the world is a more dangerous, polarised place and that this is a much needed announcement? Or do you think there could be a sense in which voters think, well, hang on, we’d prefer extra funding for the health service, schools and other public services?

George Parker
Well, if you look at where the public rate defence among their list of priorities at the moment, it’s quite a long way down, far below the economy, the NHS, other public services, migration, which of course is one of the reasons why Rishi Sunak was at pains to say we can do this without impacting on frontline public services. But plainly it’s part of a gamble by Rishi Sunak that he can . . . I mean, he will say this is in the national interest to be talking about this. Fair enough. But there’s an election coming up. His hope is obviously to raise up the list of voter salience, as the pollsters like to call it, the idea of defence. And some of the language he was using was part of that conditioning of public opinion to make people think we are living in a much more dangerous world. He talked about putting the defence industries on a war footing. It was striking, really quite striking language. So he’s trying to raise up the issue. And in doing so, he wants to remind people that this is a dangerous world. And he, a tried and trusted prime minister, is someone the public can turn to in difficult times. And of course, they’re looking further down the track. There’s a possibility that the British election — it’s a possibility — happens after the US presidential elections. There’s a possibility that Donald Trump’s the president; all kinds of political instability possibly flowing from that in terms of Nato, Ukraine and so forth. So by creating this idea that he is strong and solid on defence and in brackets, the Labour party haven’t so far matched this commitment to increase defence spending. He’s hoping to draw up a dividing line and to raise up the issue of voter importance at the election.

Lucy Fisher
Yes, Jim, to me, this does seem like good politics because it’s put Labour in a tough spot. They’ve got two choices, right? They can either match the ambition and given that the polls suggest they are the ones heading into Downing Street and that will be the next government, that would box them in to have to actually find this cash and fund this pledge, or they can stick to their current holding line, which is that they don’t wanna put a date on reaching 2.5 per cent yet. They’ve welcomed the ambition to get there, but they want to hold a review if they win the election and see what the state of the armed forces are, what the national security threats are and what the required resources would be. Then, as George says, that allows the Tories to create a dividing line on defence — potentially a big step back for Keir Starmer, who’s done a lot to rebuild Labour’s reputation on defence after, frankly, it was trashed during the Jeremy Corbyn era.

Jim Pickard
Yeah, exactly. An awful lot of what Keir Starmer does on issues of defence and international affairs is all about basically trying to leave the memory of Jeremy Corbyn behind because, you know, it’s a little unfair when the Tories say that Corbyn’s Labour wants to pull out of Trident and abandon Nato and have a Peace Corps and all the rest of it. But we know that Jeremy Corbyn personally loved all that stuff. He was just kind of constrained by the party. But who knows what would’ve happened if he’d become prime minister? I think the defence Labour has against the charge that there’s a massive difference between them on this 2.5 policy is that they can point to Boris Johnson making the same policy with Rishi Sunak in 2022. Boris Johnson as prime minister promise to get 2.5 per cent in a few years time. So I think that we will have an awful lot of that from Labour to try and head off those attacks.

George Parker
And I can say that the one thing that the defence issue plays straight into the red wall seats, where the idea of being strong and defending your country, being proud of your country, standing up to your enemies, that’s a big visceral thing for the kind of voters that both parties are fighting for, particularly in red wall seats. And, you know, although Jim’s right that Labour so far haven’t matched the 2.5 per cent spending commitment, just go around the country — you see Labour posters up with Union Jacks on the side. You saw this week Keir Starmer visiting the England football training ground at St George’s Park, posing in front of St George’s flags. Patriotism, defence. We’re gonna hear a lot more about that in this election than we did certainly back in 2019.

Lucy Fisher
Jim.

Jim Pickard
But the only slight counterargument is that, yes, he’s completely right that your typical swing voter is a patriot who wants to hear strong things about defence and patriotism. Do they want more pounds to go towards defence than to potholes or hospitals or schools? It’s a whole different question.

Lucy Fisher
George, let’s just finish on this topic by talking about the timing of Sunak taking this trip this week, ahead of the local elections next week. You mentioned how well this plays in the red wall, and Jim and I heard on the podcast a few weeks ago from Luke Tryl, who says that is the key criticism of Sunak in the red wall, that he’s seen as weak. So, you know, appearing very strong on the world stage with this kind of, you know, Europe-leading pledge. What’s that done to quell some of the anguish in the party?

George Parker
Well, a bit, and obviously, this is an extremely sensitive time for Rishi Sunak. We’ve got local elections, mayoral elections coming up on May the 2nd, the possibility that some Tory MPs will start putting in letters of no confidence in the prime minister, the potential putsch against him. Who are the people who are going be doing that? They are almost exclusively on the right of the Conservative party. So it’s extremely useful for Rishi Sunak to for example, have got royal assent for his Rwanda bill this week and to go on the trip that Jim went on to to Warsaw and Berlin talking about defence. Those are two things which will help to try and calm the nerves of people in his party, including people in his party who think that defence spending should go up to 3 per cent of GDP — by the way, more than what Sunak was talking about. Whether it’s enough, we don’t know. Nobody really knows. The moment of truth next week on May the 2nd, you know, if the Conservative party lose 500 council seats, if they lose their flagship mayoralties in the West Midlands and Tees Valley, then all bets could be off.

[MUSIC PLAYING]

Lucy Fisher
Labour have also been out and about this week to unveil a big policy. Jim, you’ve been writing about this as well. Labour’s pledging full nationalisation of the passenger rail network within five years of coming to power. Give us the details.

Jim Pickard
So this is a policy that we’ve known a little about for quite a long time. But finally light is coming at the end of the tunnel. And we have . . . Please forgive me for that one.

George Parker
No.

Lucy Fisher
No, you’re not forgiven. Get out!

Jim Pickard
We finally have the details of how it’s gonna work. And the renationalisation of the railways is gonna be a little bit faster than we thought. We thought that a Labour government would wait for the existing franchises to reach their end term and then come into state control. They’ve been quite clear that actually there’s a couple of other ones which were due to keep rolling beyond a first Labour term. And actually, because they’re extensions of actual franchises, Labour’s making quite clear that they would they would bring them in-house as well.

It’s a really interesting one because of course, under Corbyn, the predecessor, the more leftwing predecessor, you know, half a dozen industries were gonna be nationalised. This is the only one of those policies that has survived. It’s very clear to me that this was the most obvious one to go for if you were Keir Starmer and you wanted to be a little bit leftwing, but basically a Blairite at the moment. Who knows where you’ll be in three years’ time. But at the moment, he’s a Blairite he’s doing this as a sop to the left. And it’s pretty easy to do because two things have happened over the last half decade. The first one was that 40 per cent of the railway fell under state control just because loads of franchises went wrong. All sorts of franchises went wrong from TransPennine Express. The LNER was the first one in 2018, Arriva, Caledonian. All these franchises went into Conservative government nationalisation. They don’t like to boast about it, but the Tories have been nationalising like crazy.

And then, of course, the pandemic happened and what we had was a system where the industry needed bailing out because none of us were allowed to go anywhere and the industry took over £20bn of subsidy. And they emerged with passenger levels much lower than they were. A figure here which is amazing to me that at the end of last year, we still only had 82 per cent of the previous passenger levels from pre-pandemic even though the pandemic’s years ago. And therefore at the point where they were giving away all this money, they basically re-engineered the system so that these companies run their railway lines on a contract basis like a sort of, you know, you basically, there’s no performance fee whether you do well or whether you do badly. You just get given a sort of set fee. And in fact, the ONS already classifies it to all intents and purposes as nationalised.

Lucy Fisher
George, are there some difficulties here? Labour said its plan includes exercising brake clauses to end early a handful of rail contracts that would otherwise continue into the 2030s. Are they going to have to pay colossal compensation for using these brake clauses?

George Parker
I’m not sure how colossal the compensation will be. I mean, obviously, as Jim was saying, the reason they’ve gone after the nationalisation of the railways is it’s the cheapest thing to do. And most popular things still mean nationalising other parts of the water companies, for example. That would be a total disaster from a Labour government’s point of view. I’m tragically old enough to remember the days of British Rail, and there is a sort of certain part of the railway fraternity who hark back to the golden days of InterCity 125s and anyone who can remember it will know that the British Rail experience was not a particularly happy one. The food was rubbish, the toilets were disgusting, the trains were often cancelled. So anyone who thinks that nationalising the railways will be a panacea I think could be in for a rude awakening.

It is true that some of the franchises are being taken back into public ownership, like the LNER route have been run in a very effective way, so I’m not saying it’s impossible. But I think just changing the ownership structure in itself isn’t going to be enough. And I think the danger is you’ve got a nationalised railway sector with a very strong railway set of railway unions as well, who as we know from recent experience, are very prone to strike. There is a danger for a Labour government that taking on potentially a whole world of pain, which at the moment they’re able to pass off back to the franchise owners.

Jim Pickard
Yeah, exactly. At the moment you can blame the private companies, but they’re gonna be the only ones who are responsible. I mean, one obvious benefit you could get is that instead of having this fragmented system where you’re dealing with different companies or the tickets are different, at least if it’s one monolithic organisation, that bit might be a bit easier to understand for consumers.

Lucy Fisher
George, the Conservatives agree that something needs to change, don’t they, because they’ve also pledged to introduce rail reforms if they win the next election. They’ve said they’ll introduce a new state body to oversee the sector and give private train companies operating underneath it greater commercial freedoms. Is this at all credible? Why haven’t they done it before now?

George Parker
So they’ve been talking about this for some time and it hasn’t got all that far. I mean, I think it would still be good. I don’t think anyone really would welcome the return of a monolithic, single national rail operator in the way we had in the past. I think under Labour’s plans, they will still allow a few smaller companies to operate. Things are called the open access model, Jim, that you’re allowed in. There’s some great sort of little micro rail services which operate on the railways which I think people really enjoy using. And I think having innovation still in the system somewhere is a good thing.

Lucy Fisher
And Jim, is there any sense of how much this will actually cost? Can a Labour government afford it?

Jim Pickard
So the interesting thing about this is that as the franchises come up for to reach their end, they literally just no longer have a franchise and the government takes over. So in theory, it shouldn’t really cost much more. The best thing that the rail industry has come up with is, you know, shorn of all competition, you know, operated, you know, people be more lazy, like making it sort of sound a bit like a Soviet railway system. But even in terms of the accounting on this, the assets and liabilities are already on the government books because of those reforms I was talking about during the pandemic. So the Tories will try and claim that everything will cost a fortune, but it’s not obvious that it will actually, which as George was saying was one reason they chose it.

Lucy Fisher
And George, just finally, is there any sense that this could be the stepping stone to Labour looking at least at nationalising other industries? You’ve both mentioned how the Corbyn era there were pledges to renationalise water, energy, even the broadband network.

George Parker
No I think is the answer to that. I think the Labour government have got enough on their plate without renationalising, you know, and paying huge amounts of compensation out to shareholders to bring companies back into the state sector. I mean, I think the truth is that when you go back to the Thatcherite privatisations and the railways that John Major privatised, there were some good ones and some bad ones. And the bad ones I think we can all agree included the railways and it’s becoming absolutely, painfully obvious, the water sector. On the other hand, that means other ones, like for example, privatising British Airways, British Telecom, British Gas, which have been a bit more successful, I’d venture, certainly in terms of consumer satisfaction. And those are sectors which have been exposed to a certain amount of competition. I think the problem is where you privatise essentially essential monopolies and then regulate them badly. That’s the problem. But I don’t think the Labour government or a future Labour government has any appetite for renationalising whole swaths of the private sector.

Jim Pickard
I mean one thing we know about Jeremy Corbyn is that he was so doctrinaire that nationalism for him was a kind of totemic thing that he wants to pursue. He would have quite happily nationalised your jacket or the company that made the coffee next to you, George, whereas one thing we’ve learned about Starmer is that he’s very, very pragmatic. 

[MUSIC PLAYING]

Lucy Fisher
Earlier, we discussed Rishi Sunak’s trip to Warsaw and Berlin this week, where he also mentioned the threat from China. That takes us nicely on to our next subject, which is Chinese espionage.

Two men in the UK, including a former parliamentary aide, have been charged this week with spying for Beijing. The FT’s China editor, James Kynge, is here to tell us more. Hi, James.

James Kynge
Hello.

Lucy Fisher
Remind us the details of this latest case.

James Kynge
We don’t know that many details, but Christopher Cash, who is a former parliamentary aide, and Christopher Berry will be charged with “providing prejudicial information to a foreign state.” And that foreign state obviously is China. They’re due to appear at the Westminster Magistrates Court on Friday. We don’t know in any detail what they’re alleged to have done. But the head of the counterterrorism command at the Metropolitan Police said this has been an extremely complex investigation into what are very serious allegations. Christopher Cash was a former company director at the China Research Group, which is an organisation set up by Conservative parliamentarians. So that sits within parliament and therefore he had access, contacts with many of the senior politicians that occupy parliament. I should say that in the past, he has said that he’s innocent.

Lucy Fisher
And this accusation in the UK comes on the back of other stories elsewhere in the EU, particularly in Germany, alleging Chinese spying. Why are we seeing so many of these stories now, do you think?

James Kynge
Yes. I mean, it really has been quite a week. In Germany, what we’ve seen is a husband and wife couple, Ina and Herwig F, they’ve just been identified as that by German authorities, and they have been arrested on having conspired to smuggle sensitive military technology, including a sophisticated laser, out of Europe, on orders from Chinese intelligence.

The other case involves a staffer who worked for a German far-right member of the European Parliament. And this staffer, his name is Jian Guo. He has been arrested, and he’s accused by Germany’s federal prosecutor of being covertly employed by China’s Ministry of State Security. That’s obviously China’s big espionage body.

So there really has been a lot going on. As I said, there’s no evidence to link any of these cases. And given the fact that often these espionage cases take many months or years to kind of, you know, build up a case and come to fruition, it may be that they have very separate antecedents. But taken together, all of this, I mean, to me, it’s got more than a whiff of the old cold war returning to Europe, obviously, in this case, with not the former Soviet Union being the country in focus, but China. And I think that represents a step change for the last 40 years, most of the last 40 years, anyway. Europe’s relationship with China has been preoccupied with commerce, with trade, with European companies investing in China, etc. But now I think national security is really moving to the forefront. And this is going to create and already is creating a world of pain for European companies.

Part of the problem is not just the focus on espionage, but also the way in which products these days have changed. So in the past, let’s say go back 20, 30 years or maybe to the previous cold war, most products were fairly dumb. But now they all collect your data. Whether it’s your electric vehicle or your smartphone or some kind of telecom equipment or an AI application, everything is collecting your data, and therefore a lot of things have a spying or information component to them. And I think that creates huge complications for every national government in Europe.

Lucy Fisher
Because also this week we’ve seen this dawn raid in Brussels on Nuctech, the Chinese company that provides security equipment, X-ray scanners, human scanners across a lot of the European Union. And it’s the first time that Brussels is using these anti-foreign subsidy laws, but there’s some suggestion that it’s partially motivated by concerns about the use of the data by this Chinese company. So it seems maybe a crossover of the elements you’re talking about.

James Kynge
Yes, absolutely. We don’t really know whether it’s the subsidy issue that’s motivating Brussels or whether it’s a national security issue. Seems both of these things seem to be in play. But it’s amazing to me that this Chinese company, which used to be headed by the son of China’s leader Hu Jintao and is known in Beijing to be a company with military links. It’s a company that’s been flagged up by US intelligence as having military links. And yet, in 25 European countries, the products of Nuctech are being deployed in airports and ports in order to X-ray your baggage or scan your belongings. And therefore, this company, Nuctech, obviously would have access to an amazing array of very sensitive personal information across Europe. It’s absolutely amazing to me that the European Union has allowed this to go on without a peep, even while the US has been raising the alarm.

Lucy Fisher
And James, I mean, you were in China just a couple of weeks ago. You are more knowledgeable about the nation than certainly anyone else I’ve ever come across. How do you consider your personal approach to technology, devices, data? Do you avoid Chinese manufacturers when it comes to your household goods, your phone applications you use on your mobile?

James Kynge
I was just in China earlier on this month. I just follow the normal protocol of people who care about such things and go into China. I am very careful about Chinese social media apps. One app in particular in China is called WeChat. Everybody uses it for communicating with all sorts of people and for paying for products while you’re in China. I just follow the protocol of buying a burner phone and putting my WeChat on the burner phone so that I’m not at risk of having my actual phone tapped or the information on it tapped by forces unknown to me. I would say that is really standard procedure these days. I would say I’m not particularly skittish about such things, but if you work for a foreign accountancy or a consultancy or a foreign government now and you’re going into China, I would bet that 99 per cent of them follow that protocol.

Lucy Fisher
Well, I certainly know someone who didn’t. And on their regular mobile while in China using WeChat, sent a picture of Winnie the Pooh, who of course is banned in China because of the likeness with Xi Jinping. And this person’s WeChat account was just terminated. They didn’t have any easy ability to pay for goods for the rest of their trip, which sounded very inconvenient, to say the least. James, back to the serious matter of the geopolitics here. Where has all of this headed? It feels like tensions are growing between the UK and China, between the EU and China. And what about the US and China? Will it make any difference in America’s policy depending on whether it’s Biden or Trump who wins the White House election?

James Kynge
Yeah, it’s a good question about the US. I mean, we need to recognise that it was the US that started all of this. In other words, this hyper-vigilant attitude towards China, Chinese spying, China’s access to data, all kinds of issues with regard to Chinese companies investing in the US and doing business in the US. And I think really that spread from the US over to Europe over the last few years. I don’t really think whether it’s Biden in the White House or Trump in the White House will make much difference. This type of security alert with regard to China is absolutely embedded in the Republican party and the Democrats as well.

I think it’s now dyed in the wool that the US and China will have an adversarial relationship, particularly in these national security areas and red lines in terms of what can be traded with China, what type of investment can go ahead will become clearer and clearer, more and more entrenched over the next I would say five, 10 years, so that, you know, this cold war analogy is not such an idle analogy. Obviously, there are huge differences. There was hardly any trade between the former Soviet Union and Europe and the US. And now, China is one of the biggest trade partners of the entire European Union and also with the US, so there are great differences. But I think the motivating forces are very similar.

In other words, the suspicion that the US has and Europe has and is building towards China is very deeply rooted. To my way of thinking, this will simply spread over the next five, 10 years. It’s very difficult to see either side patching things up.

Lucy Fisher
And just a word about relations with China this side of the Atlantic — will the UK and EU fall in behind the US? I mean, we know that there’s growing consternation from western nations about China’s assistance to Russia in its war against Ukraine.

James Kynge
I think all of the European countries want to maintain a profitable commercial relationship with China, but they want to do that in such a way that doesn’t impinge upon their national security. That will become more and more difficult a balancing act for all kinds of reasons. One of the reasons is that the US is stepping up the national security alert with regard to China. So I think every country in Europe will try to balance this. It will really not be easy. And we just have to see which way it goes.

George Parker
James, can I ask very quickly. What would be the first flashpoints, do you think, for an incoming new British government, let’s say it’s a Labour government, for argument’s sake. What could it be? What would be the sort of immediate challenges it might face? Might it be TikTok, might it be electric vehicles? Could it be British participation in the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank? Where do you think the first flashpoints could be?

James Kynge
It’s hard to know which would be the first flashpoints, but I think all of those. So TikTok — obviously we’ve seen that the US Congress has just voted to strip TikTok out of the US under certain conditions. That may well come to Europe.

Electric vehicles — I was driving a BYD car in Germany earlier on this month. There’s no doubt that these Chinese electric vehicles are collecting people’s data all over the European continent. Does that matter? For me personally, not really, because I have nothing to hide. It’s not of any interest that I drove from Bremen to Bremen Port to anybody. But for some people in Europe, that really does matter. And if you’re doing this on a mass scale and you’ve got hundreds of thousands of Chinese electric vehicles all over Europe, then that could give security services some very useful and sensitive pieces of information.

So I think anything to do with a Chinese product and data becomes very serious. I also think this wedge between the UK and China, which is being driven mainly, I think, by the fact that the UK feels it has to cleave closely to US policy. And US policy towards China has been getting more adversarial for several years now.

[MUSIC PLAYING]

Lucy Fisher
Well, that just leaves time for the Political Fix stock picks. George, who are you buying or selling this week?

George Parker
Well, I think in the past I’ve sold James Cleverly, the Home secretary, but I say I’m gonna buy him this week. Not just because he came and stepped into the breach of the . . . We have a monthly press gallery lunch where we invite senior politicians. Of course, Lucy, you’re the chair of the press gallery at the moment. We had a bit of a flurry, didn’t we, I think it’s fair to say this week, when we had . . . 

Lucy Fisher
Polite way of saying.

George Parker
We had Jeremy Hunt, the chancellor, scheduled to come and speak this week and, unfortunately, he was in Ukraine. But we didn’t find out until quite late on in the day, I think it’s quite fair to say. And James Cleverly stepped into the breach and made a very amusing and interesting speech.

I’ll just say one joke, which was extremely good. He said that when he was removed from the Foreign Office, sent to the Home Office, it was done on the basis of diversity in the cabinet and the lack of old Etonians, and that’s why David Cameron came in. He said when the news was delivered to him that Rishi Sunak looked him in the eye but he had to stand on his wallet to do so.

So it was great. And, you know, good jokes always go down well with journalists, I think. But also, of course, the Rwanda bill got royal assent this week. So for the time being, at least, at least until the Rwanda policy is operationalised and we discover it doesn’t work at all, I’m buying James Cleverly.

Lucy Fisher
Yeah. I wonder if that joke has piqued people in Downing Street, but not like Sunak would be in much of a position to do anything about it. Jim.

Jim Pickard
So I’m gonna buy Ben Houchen, the mayor of Tees Valley, and the basis of me buying Mr Houchen is that it’s not impossible that in a year’s time he is the most senior Conservative politician with any kind of power over any budget in the entire country.

Lucy Fisher
Well, so you think he’s going to win the Tees Valley mayoral election next Thursday?

Jim Pickard
I have family and friends around that area, and he’s still pretty popular in that region. He’s campaigning very heavily. He’s not a Conservative. You know, all his election material doesn’t really remind people of which party he belongs to. And Andy Street, you know, we think he could just about survive in the West Midlands. But if Andy Street doesn’t and if the Conservative government falls, which is what most people expect, Houchen could be last one standing.

Lucy Fisher
James.

James Kynge
I think I’m probably gonna sell the German chancellor, Scholz. He went to Beijing earlier on this month, and by all accounts, it was a bit of a disappointment. He didn’t mention some of the previous policies that have been mentioned by prominent European politicians. He didn’t talk about de-risking between China and Germany or China and the EU. He focused mainly on German business interests, which is kind of understandable, but as a non-German, I guess I’d prefer to see, well, a more European approach.

George Parker
Lucy, are you buying or selling?

Lucy Fisher
I’m selling Humza Yousaf, whose stock is plummeting. It’s been a difficult month for him. He saw Peter Murrell, the former chief executive of the party and of course, husband of Nicola Sturgeon, rearrested and charged about embezzling party funds. And then his coalition administration fell apart when the Scottish Greens withdrew. And at the time of recording, the Greens, his former partners, are teaming up with the Scottish Tories to host a no-confidence motion in him. So it’s all looking pretty precarious for him as First Minister.

Well, thank you very much to my guests this week: George Parker, Jim Pickard and James Kynge.

George Parker
Thanks, Lucy.

James Kynge
Thank you.

[MUSIC PLAYING]

Lucy Fisher
And that’s it for this episode of the FT’s Political Fix. Before we go, a reminder that you can join me and colleagues for an FT subscriber webinar on Wednesday, May the 8th. We’ll be discussing what the local election results tell us about who’ll win the UK general election. Get your pass now at ft.com/ukwebinar. I’ve put a link in the show notes along with free FT links to subjects discussed in this episode. There’s also a link there to Stephen’s award-winning Inside Politics newsletter. You’ll get 30 days free. And don’t forget to subscribe to the show. Plus, do leave us a review or a star rating if you have time. It really helps us spread the word.

Political Fix was presented by me, Lucy Fisher. Manuela Saragosa is the executive producer, with production help from Leah Quinn. Original music and sound engineering by Breen Turner. Cheryl Brumley is the FT’s global head of audio. We’ll meet again here next week. 

[MUSIC PLAYING]