PM confronts China’s premier after arrest of parliament ‘spy’

Published

2 years ago

September 10, 2023

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Rishi Sunak has confronted China’s premier about Chinese interference in the UK’s parliamentary democracy.

It comes after two men were arrested under the Official Secrets Act amid reports a parliamentary researcher spied for China.

The researcher, who is in his 20s, is understood to have had links to security minister Tom Tugendhat, foreign affairs committee chairwoman Alicia Kearns and other senior Tory MPs.

Mr Sunak met Chinese premier Li Qiang, who is attending the G20 in place of president Xi Jinping, on the fringes of the summit’s final session on Sunday morning.

Speaking after the meeting, Mr Sunak said he raised his “very strong concern” about interference with parliamentary democracy, which he said was “obviously unacceptable”.

It was the “right approach” to talk face-to-face with China’s premier, he said.

“Where there are areas of disagreement … I’d rather be in the room directly expressing my concerns, and that’s what I did today.”

The arrests were made in March and first revealed by The Sunday Times.

Mr Sunak has been clear China is an “epoch-defining” challenge, Justice Secretary Alex Chalk told Sky News’ Trevor Phillips on Sunday.

He defended security in parliament, saying a “rigorous approach is taken” in terms of who is given a parliamentary pass.

Asked if there are weaknesses in the security system that need addressing, he said: “I don’t think you should rule anything out”.

Officers from the Metropolitan Police’s Counter Terrorism Command, which oversees espionage-related offences, are investigating.

Mr Chalk said the investigation must “play through” and police and security services are taking this “seriously”.

“Whatever lessons need to be learned by the parliamentary authorities I’m sure will be learned,” he said.

Asked about the view of some in parliament that China is a threat to the UK, Mr Chalk said “you can’t wish China away”, noting it is second largest global economy and key to tackling the challenge of climate change.

“We have to engage, but we do so with our eyes open,” he said.

Former cabinet minister and diplomat Rory Stewart told Trevor Phillips the UK needs to be “much, much more serious” about protecting itself against Chinese and Russian spies.

“It’s in the interests of authoritarian states to weaken countries like the United Kingdom, so we should be very, very cautious,” he said.

Both the allocation of parliamentary passes and the funding of MPs needed reviewing, he said.

“People with strong links to the Chinese Communist Party have been giving money to Labour MPs and employing former Conservative MPs,” he said.

One of the men, in his 30s, was arrested in Oxfordshire on 13 March, while the other, in his 20s, was arrested in Edinburgh, Scotland Yard said.

“Searches were also carried out at both the residential properties, as well as at a third address in east London,” a statement from the force said.

The MPs he is linked to are privy to classified or highly sensitive information.

Both men were held at a south London police station until being bailed until early October.

Mr Tugendhat is said not to have had any contact with the researcher since before he became security minister in September last year.

Ms Kearns declined to comment, adding: “While I recognise the public interest, we all have a duty to ensure any work of the authorities is not jeopardised.”

The Inter-Parliamentary Alliance on China pressure group said it was “appalled at reports of the infiltration of the UK Parliament by someone allegedly acting on behalf of the People’s Republic of China”.

Politics

Nigel Farage’s ‘fantasy’ policies will lead to Liz Truss-style economic meltdown, Sir Keir Starmer to warn

Published

18 mins ago

May 29, 2025

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Nigel Farage's 'fantasy' policies will lead to Liz Truss-style economic meltdown, Sir Keir Starmer to warn

Nigel Farage’s “fantasy” policies will lead to a Liz Truss-style economic meltdown, the prime minister will warn today.

Sir Keir Starmer is set to argue that Reform UK’s pledges would cause mortgages, bills and rent payments across the country to surge.

On Tuesday, Mr Farage vowed to reverse cuts to winter fuel payments and scrap the two-child benefit cap, with an ambition to slash income tax.

But new analysis from the Institute of Fiscal Studies suggest that his party’s aim of hiking the personal allowance to £20,000 a year could cost between £50bn to £80bn a year.

Visiting manufacturing workers in the North West, Sir Keir will describe Reform’s economic agenda as a “mad experiment”.

He is expected to say: “In opposition we said Liz Truss would crash the economy and leave you to pick up the bill. We were right – and we were elected to fix that mess.

“Now in government, we are once again fighting the same fantasy.”

Labour is criticising Mr Farage for betting “that you can spend tens of billions on tax cuts without a proper way of paying for it”.

The prime minister will add: “Just like Truss, he is using your family finances, your mortgage, your bills as a gambling chip. The result will be the same. Liz Truss bet the house and lost.”

Sir Keir is referring to the former prime minister’s mini-budget in 2022, which had proposed abolishing the top 45% rate of income tax.

But this policy, among others, spooked financial markets and led to economic turmoil in the UK – with a dramatic spike in the cost of government borrowing feeding through into interest rates.

Mr Farage has argued that his measures can be paid for by scrapping net zero commitments and ending the use of hotel accommodation for asylum seekers.

Recent polls have put Labour second behind Reform UK, while the local election results earlier this month saw Mr Farage’s party win a parliamentary by-election, control of 10 councils and two mayoralties, while Labour lost almost 200 seats.

Sir Keir has been under pressure from his backbenchers to regain the initiative, leading to the party’s U-turn on winter fuel payments last week.

Plans to scrap the two-child benefit cap have also not been ruled out by ministers, in what would be a second reversal of current Labour policy.

Dominic Cummings, the former top aide to Boris Johnson, exclusively told Sky News he believes Mr Farage could “definitely” become the next prime minister, with the right strategy.

Politics

Elon Musk leaves DOGE as job was ‘uphill battle’

Published

60 mins ago

May 29, 2025

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Elon Musk leaves DOGE as job was ‘uphill battle’

Elon Musk confirmed that he’s quitting as the White House’s government cost-cutting czar after admitting it was an “uphill battle” trying to slash federal jobs and programs.

Musk’s status as a Special Government Employee leading the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) meant that by law, he could only serve for a maximum of 130 days, which was set to finish on May 30.

Musk confirmed his exit in a May 29 X post, thanking President Donald Trump “for the opportunity to reduce wasteful spending.” Reuters reported that a White House official said his “off-boarding will begin tonight.”

Musk told The Washington Post for a May 27 report that the “federal bureaucracy situation is much worse” than he expected, and it was “an uphill battle trying to improve things in DC, to say the least.”

In separate comments to CBS, Musk criticized the multi-trillion-dollar tax break package that House Republicans approved on May 22, claiming it would increase the budget deficit and undermine the work that DOGE is doing.

DOGE, which is named after the cryptocurrency, claims to have saved taxpayers $175 billion since Trump’s Jan. 20 return to the White House, a figure heavily disputed by multiple news outlets, which report the figures are overstated, have multiple errors and are inaccurate.

The project’s claimed savings are only 8.5% of Musk’s initial ambition to cut $2 trillion from the federal budget, which he later revised down to $150 billion.

According to the Reuters report, DOGE has cut almost 12%, or 260,000, of the 2.3 million federal workforce through layoffs, buyouts and early retirement offers.

Despite the criticisms, Musk said on X that DOGE’s mission will “only strengthen over time as it becomes a way of life throughout the government.”

It comes as a federal judge allowed a lawsuit to proceed that accuses Musk and DOGE of illegally exerting power over government operations.

The lawsuit, filed by 14 states, alleged that Musk and DOGE violated the Constitution by illegally accessing government data systems, terminating federal employees and canceling contracts at federal agencies.

Musk admits he spent too much time in politics

In a May 28 interview with Ars Technica, Musk, the CEO of EV maker Tesla, admitted that he spent “a bit too much time” in politics, which some critics claim has impacted Tesla’s performance.

“I think I probably did spend a bit too much time on politics,” Musk said. However, he added that the time he spent on DOGE wasn’t as significant as many believed, and he blamed media coverage for overrepresenting his involvement.

“It’s not like I left the companies. It was just relative time allocation that probably was a little too high on the government side, and I’ve reduced that significantly in recent weeks.”

When Musk announced in Tesla’s first quarter report that his time spent on DOGE would drop significantly in May, Tesla (TSLA) shares rose over 5% in after-hours trading, despite the company reporting an 80% drop in net income.

As of March 31, Tesla still held 11,509 Bitcoin (BTC), currently valued at about $1.24 billion.

Tesla shares are still down 5.9% year to date, in part due to Musk diverting his attention away from the company and Tesla’s sales falling considerably in the first quarter.

However, the fall is in line with other Big Tech firms, including Apple (AAPL), Nvidia (NVDA), Amazon (AMZN) and Google (GOOG), which are also in the red in 2025.

Magazine: Crypto wanted to overthrow banks, now it’s becoming them in stablecoin fight

Politics

Crypto vulnerable if CFTC not given authority, says ex-chair Behnam

Published

2 hours ago

May 29, 2025

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Crypto vulnerable if CFTC not given authority, says ex-chair Behnam

Former Commodity Futures Trading Commission Chair Rostin Behnam has said the crypto market will remain unregulated unless the agency he led is given greater authority.

In a May 28 Bloomberg TV interview, Behnam sided with the crypto industry on its long-standing argument that cryptocurrencies are commodities.

“If you look at existing law, the few largest tokens are commodities, which means the SEC does not have jurisdiction over those tokens, which include Bitcoin and Ether,” he said.

He added that the Securities and Exchange Commission currently cannot properly regulate crypto because its law doesn’t allow it to regulate commodities, and the CFTC cannot regulate because it is a derivatives regulator.

Without new authority for the CFTC to regulate “cash markets in digital assets, non-securities,” this will remain an unregulated space, he claimed.

Behnam comments amid increasing scrutiny of the Trump family’s crypto ventures, which include the crypto platform World Liberty Financial, memecoins and a stablecoin.

On May 28, American political strategist and political commentator Sanders Townsend said Donald Trump is boosting his family’s investments in cryptocurrency and “is using the presidency to do it.”

The administration’s involvement in the regulatory process and legislative effort is “raising red flags” among some members of Congress, and there are “well-baked rules” for any elected or appointed government official that need to be complied with, he said.

“Ultimately, until we do something, the [crypto] market will remain unregulated. Customers, investors, retail and institutional, will be more vulnerable to harm, fraud, manipulation and conflicts of interest, until the market is regulated.”