Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Prince

There’s a mole, right at the top of the Palace. He’s been there for years. In Westminster MPs were in a tizzy at the news that Chinese intelligence had infiltrated the inner circle of Prince Andrew, a man so famously choosy about his friends that they previously included America’s most notorious sex offender.

The scandal will have ripples that go far and wide. Already Netflix and Amazon are planning rival dramas about whoever gets to interview the prince this time. 

But who was the mysterious “H6”, banned from the UK last year by Suella Braverman? Was he a master of disguise, able to slip between identities as easily as you change your shirt? Was it true that he had friends in every town and village from here to Devon, spoke a dozen languages, knew every local custom, and could blend in and disappear so that we’d never see him again? Or was he a hapless PR executive who had been trying to keep his masters in Beijing happy with extravagant claims of his influence?

It’s not as if we need to import empty vessels from the other side of the world. On Monday Richard Tice, the Reform MP whose catalogue model looks make him a nailed-on choice to play the lead in any am-dram production of Diamonds Are Forever, had been promising that if the courts didn’t lift the order preventing us from identifying H6, he would use parliamentary privilege to do so.

In the end Tice was denied the opportunity as the alleged spy himself asked for the order to be lifted so that he could issue a statement insisting that he was “an independent self-made entrepreneur”. His name was Yang Tengbo, and he seems to pop up everywhere in royal videos. And not just the prince. There he was with Theresa May and David Cameron, although both of them managed to undermine British interests without any help from China.

In the seats where civil servants sit waiting upon their ministers, one man’s ears turned a deep shade of red

All day we turned over the central question: was this man simply a desperate chancer who sought opportunities to meet famous people in order to cultivate an image of success that would help him to fund a luxury lifestyle, or a genuine threat to British interests? And when we’d finished talking about Prince Andrew, we began discussing Yang.

Travelling the world on someone else’s dollar, cosying up to wealthy people with dubious morals, possessed of an obsessive desire to repay ancient insults, he seemed obsessed with being photographed with the powerful. Actually, that’s still Prince Andrew.

Where were we? Ah yes. In the House of Commons, Iain Duncan Smith had secured an urgent question on Chinese operations in the UK. It was going to be answered by the Security Minister, Dan Jarvis. Before he could even begin, the Speaker warned the chamber that it would be out of order “to criticise a member of the royal family”. Heaven forfend that MPs should be able to repeat the kind of language heard around every water cooler in the land.

Jarvis’s big advantage was that government policy towards the Chinese state has remained the same through the change of government: faced with a huge economic power whose manufacturing capability we rely upon but many of whose intentions are clearly malign, the Tories hadn’t the first idea what to do, and neither does Labour. 

He didn’t put it quite like that. “We will challenge where we must in order to keep our country safe, compete where we need to, and cooperate where we can,” Jarvis said, which made confusion sound like strategy. He said that the long-promised Foreign Influence Registration Scheme, intended to crack down on agents of influence, would now be introduced in summer 2025. The legislation for it was passed in 2023, but again both Conservative and Labour governments struggled with the problem it creates: when it comes in, ministers will have to decide whether to put China in the higher “enhanced” tier. If they do, it will be taken as an insult and probably provoke retaliation. If they don’t, they’ll look ridiculous.

Duncan Smith challenged Jarvis on why FIRS hadn’t been introduced already. It wasn’t ready, Jarvis said. At this his Conservative predecessor Tom Tugendhat’s eyebrows did a complicated dance.

Next up was Chris Philp, who is shadow Home Secretary for reasons most likely to involve Kemi Badenoch losing a bet. He accused Keir Starmer of having taken a “rather sycophantic tone” when he met China’s President Xi recently. It was a brilliant, biting attack, one that would only backfire if it turned out that the Conservatives had been in government for the last 14 years of Chinese economic hegemony. “At least he didn’t take him to the pub,” Jarvis replied.

Braverman rose to complain that FIRS hadn’t yet been implemented. The Conservatives had had “a significant period of time” to implement it, but hadn’t, Jarvis replied. Tugendhat rose. “I was assured by the same officials who sit in the box advising him that it was ready to go by the end of the year.” He said. “Clearly, the advice has changed.” 

Intelligence matters are subtle, but at this moment, in the seats in the chamber where civil servants sit waiting upon their ministers, one man’s ears turned a deep shade of red. “We are working at pace,” Jarvis replied. What on earth could delay the implementation of a measure that would almost certainly lead the Chinese government to seek some way to embarrass the British government in response? It’s impossible to know, but perhaps Rachel Reeves will be able to tell us when she gets back from her long-planned trip to China next month.