China sees the UK as NATO’s weak underbelly, says Sir Iain Duncan Smith

The news on Sunday that the authorities had arrested a spy who had been working in Parliament got here as fairly a shock. After all, it was solely a few yr in the past that Barry Gardiner, had been utilizing the providers of a researcher who was a son of a lady named Christine Lee.

Lee, who labored with the United Front Work Department (UFWD) of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), cultivated relationships with influential figures in Parliament to cease different MP’s inflicting hassle for the Chinese regime.

We have been assured then that safety and vetting techniques can be improved, significantly as I and others have been sanctioned by the Chinese authorities and face on-line assaults. That’s why I used to be gravely involved that, one more spy had slipped by way of. How many extra are plying their commerce in Westminster? We ask.

It seems that this wasn’t just a few younger man, already employed in Parliament who occurred to do that as a result of he was persuaded, no this particular person was already recruited by the CCP and who was despatched to spy and divide those that marketing campaign in opposition to the brutal regime of China.

There are two questions that want answering: first, when did the Foreign Secretary know and was that earlier than his go to to China?

The Government now says they’re an ‘Epoch defining Challenge’ and that we are going to cope with that by way of ‘robust pragmatism.’ That’s a press release that would have been taken straight out of, ‘Yes Minister’ the comedy programme, making no sense in any respect.

The authorities goes on to say that we should have interaction. Yet nobody is saying we shouldn’t have interaction however slightly have interaction by way of power. For instance, when China tore up the Sino-British settlement on Hong Kong, guaranteeing the human rights of these residing there, The USA sanctioned 10 of essentially the most senior officers in Hong Kong. We haven’t sanctioned anybody.