Boris - an attempted rescue?
Look! A squirrel!Suddenly today MI5 are concerned about Chinese influence on British politics, specifically, but not only, involving a Labour MP, Barry Gardiner.Thing is, apparently this has long been known about, so what are the MI5 cavalry up to re-releasing it now? Some sort of distraction? I wonder why?2017From The Times, February 4th 2017:- "Barry Gardiner’s association with Christine Lee stretches back at least a decade to a campaign against plans to bulldoze London’s “real Chinatown” just outside Mr Gardiner’s Brent North constituency.Ms Lee was already one of the country’s more prominent Anglo-Chinese lawyers and he was a minister in the Department of the Environment under Tony Blair." https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/money-influence-and-the-beijing-connection-h9vjtsk9f2020The Daily Mail from 10th July 2020:-"Prominent Britons of Chinese heritage are very important in promoting China’s interests in the West. Christine Lee is a solicitor whose firm has offices in Beijing, Hong Kong and Guangzhou, as well as London.Her links to the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) go deep. She has been chief legal adviser to the Chinese embassy in London and a legal adviser to the Overseas Chinese Affairs Office, an agency of the Communist Party’s vast network of influence overseen by its United Front Work Department.These positions are unmistakable signs of her importance to the Party. Yet she is also the secretary of the Inter-Party China Group of the British parliament."https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-8511759/Chinas-Communist-Party-Tiger-women-influencing-heart-Establishment.html2021And the Daily Mail today treats it as somehow new news:-"Christine Lee, a London-based lawyer, has been monitored by the security services for some time. However she has not been arrested and is not being expelled from the UK as it stands".As David Osland tweets:-"I don't know what the Chinese Communist Party got in return for the £676,000 it allegedly gave Barry Gardiner, but I can't imagine it was worth it."I wondered how the rescue would be done.
David Ainsworth ● 1248d0 Comments