Labour’s kowtowing to China will cost Britain

When the security services accessed the mobile phone of Yang Tengbo, the alleged Chinese spy who became a confidant and business partner of the Duke of York, they found a document in which Yang said of the duke, ‘He is in a desperate situation and will grab onto anything’. We can only assume there are memos circulating in the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) this week describing the visit by Rachel Reeves in similar terms.

The hapless duke’s entanglement with Yang, whose exclusion from Britain was confirmed shortly before Christmas, was held up as an example of ‘elite capture’, the process by which the CCP targets and coopts influential figures in Western business, politics or academia – aided and abetted by greed, gullibility and a wilful lack of curiosity on the part of the target. In return, the ‘captive’ is expected to promote Beijing’s interests, or at the very least keep quiet about the CCP’s appalling human rights record.