My feng shui is a little rusty but China’s proposed mega-embassy created some notably adverse-harmony vibes in the Commons.
Not a single backbencher supported the planned London spy base – sorry, I do apologise, I mean embassy. Even some of Labour’s most assiduous greasers criticised the proposal.
Sir Keir Starmer’s impis are revolting.
Beijing is hot, hot, hot for this embassy. Such ravening ardour from a capital normally so reserved has created suspicions that the Chinese intend to turn their mega-embassy into a hotbed of espionage and suppression.
The site is near the Tower of London, next to a pipeline of communication cables on which the City of London and its billions of pounds of foreign earnings are said to depend.
Newly disclosed architectural plans show peculiar new rooms near that pipeline. Alicia Kearns (Con, Rutland) alleged that the proximity of those cables ‘would give the Chinese Communist part a launchpad for economic warfare against our nation’.
Ms Kearns, who is shadow security minister, is a wonderful blunderbuss. One of life’s roarers. Beijing would not need sophisticated eavesdropping devices for her. Alicia’s baritone honkings are generally audible from the Cromwell Road.
Concept plans for the embassy which will be located on the former Royal Mint site
Sir Keir Starmer’s impis are revolting as not a single backbench MP backed the new embassy
With Sir Keir soon to visit China, the Government did not want some Foreign or Home Office bod to answer Ms Kearns’ urgent question. Any minister with inside knowledge might drop a diplomatic brick. Downing Street therefore arranged for the urgent question to be answered by Matthew Pennycook, the conveniently under-briefed minister for planning.
Beanpole Pennycook has a moony face shaped like a shoebox. He is obedient and likeable enough. The only thing that really niggles him, it is said, is when people mistakenly call him Pennycock.
To the despatch box he ambled to say that, er, he could not say anything. As minister for planning he was in a ‘quasi-judicial’ position on the embassy planning application.
‘No decision has been made,’ he claimed. Likely story! And it would be ‘entirely inappropriate’ for him, as a planning minister, to discuss security matters.
Speaker Hoyle was unchuffed by this. If young Pennycock was unable to say anything, why had he been chosen to answer the urgent question?
As the session played forth, Labour MP after Labour MP rose to say what a stinky idea the embassy was. They included not only the experienced Sarah Champion (Rotherham) and Alex Sobel (Leeds C), but also newbies such as Uma Kumaran (Stratford & Bow) and Lillian Jones (Kilmarnock). Even Mark Sewards (Leeds SW & Morley) had a tilt. For little Sewards to criticise the Government was like Piglet turning into a Millwall fan.
‘I’m not going to comment on the security services,’ intoned Mr Pennycrock repeatedly. Another of his refrains was, ‘all material considerations will be taken into account’. I counted that 23 times. There was also a lot of ‘we will not provide a running commentary’.
MPs snorted with derision. What made the thing all the madder was that the man who could have given an informed view, Security Minister Dan Jarvis, was sitting just next to Mr Pennyclock on the front bench, but was unable to say anything.
Former soldier Jarvis looked miserable. He may be hating the Starmer Government’s diplomatic wetness and regretting that he ever accepted his job from a regime that has Tony Blair’s sometime bag-carrier Jonathan Powell as its in-all-but-name foreign secretary.
To complete the sense of absurdity, a Lib Dem leviathan, North Devon’s Ian Roome, said he had some advice for the Government. ‘It is one word: common sense.’
While MPs fell about laughing, Mr Roome blinked uncomprehending, maths clearly not his forte. Mr Pennyworth replied: ‘All material considerations will be taken into account when reaching a decision on this case.’
As for Mr Pennysock, his performance was so woodenly obstinate, so palpably ridiculous, such a disavowal of the core ideal of parliamentary accountability, that he must surely be in line for the Beijing regime’s Friendship Medal. The citation could read: ‘To esteemed Comrade Poppycock, for services to heroic misinformation.’
