British security services issued an alert earlier this year stating that a UK-based lawyer had been engaged in “political interference activities” for the Chinese state. MI5’s public naming of Christine Lee, and a recent unprecedented news conference with the FBI, mark a shift in the approach being taken against the security threat posed by China.
It is not normally good news when an MP is summoned to the office of parliament’s director of security. It is worse when officers from MI5 are waiting. That was Labour MP Barry Gardiner’s fate on the morning of 13 January.
