25 April 2019
May and Huawei
Has she gone mad?
By Lynda Goetz
I don’t think I can be the only one to be asking the question, ‘Has Theresa May finally lost it?’ Given the difficulties of the task she is facing and the stress of the last few years it is not difficult to understand the reasons. Nevertheless, reading recent headlines it does seem hard to believe that the poor lady hasn’t suffered some sort of mental breakdown, some delusion of righteousness. How else to explain the seemingly total inability to listen to any sort of advice or heed any opinions other than her own or those she has elevated to her right hand? Being dogged, diligent and determined is one thing (although as noted before, in her case it does seem to preclude any vision or imagination), but being stubborn to the point of stupidity is another.
On Wednesday, most newspapers carried the story that Theresa May had ignored concerns from her Cabinet, as well as from the US, on the question of allowing Chinese firm Huawei to build sections of the new 5G network. The Telegraph headline ran ‘May Defies Ministers and US over Huawei’; The Guardian, ‘Senior Tories alarmed over Huawei’s new role within UK’s network’; The Times, ‘PM set to anger US with ‘limited access’ for Huawei’. The question mark over Huawei has existed for some time. In a speech in December last year to an audience of St Andrew University students, Alex Younger, head of MI6, expressed concerns that the advent of 5G would make it harder to monitor Huawei kit. The kit, embedded in our country’s telecoms network, is currently tested by a special laboratory overseen by the National Cyber Security Centre (NCSC) part of GCHQ. According to Tom Tugnendhat, the chair of the foreign affairs select committee, speaking on R4’s Today programme, the speed and capability of the 5G programme means it is difficult to make a distinction between ‘core’ and ‘non-core’ activities. Thus, even allowing Huawei to make only the antennae becomes a security risk, given that Huawei is bound by Chinese law which obliges them to cooperate with the security apparatus of the Chinese state and that China, as Tugendhat tactfully puts it, is ‘not always friendly’.
Mr Tugendhat, along with others, including Home Secretary Sajid Javid, Foreign Secretary Jeremy Hunt, Defence Secretary Gavin Williamson, International Trade Secretary Liam Fox and International Development Secretary Penny Mordaunt were all said to have raised concerns during the meeting of the National Security council which took place on Tuesday afternoon. In spite of apparently pretty much overwhelming opposition, however, the PM gave Huwei her blessing. Iain Duncan Smith, the former leader of the conservatives, is reported as saying that he considers the PM’s judgement on this to be ‘very poor’.
Apart from the US, which has very clearly stated that it does not intend to ‘use technologies that pose a threat’, Australia and New Zealand have both blocked Huawei from supplying equipment for their 5G mobile networks. Interestingly, Wednesday marked the opening of the annual CyberUK conference, hosted by the NCSC at the SEC centre in Glasgow and attended by representatives from each member of the Five Eyes (UK, US, Canada, Australia and New Zealand) intelligence alliance. ‘Cybersecurity is an international team sport’, said NCSC CEO Ciaran Martin in his opening speech. That may well be the case, but as Theresa May has shown very clearly, she is not a team player.
Further evidence of this emerged in a different context as well yesterday, when it was reported that the PM had been urged by Cabinet Ministers to end talks with Labour and get on with overhauling her Brexit deal and attempting to win round the DUP. Did the PM listen? No, of course not. Apparently she defended the continuing talks, saying that although many in Cabinet disagreed with the ongoing discussions, ‘we have to govern in the national interest’ and added that ‘this course of action is what the country expects of us’. Would that be the royal ‘we’, then? I would respectfully suggest that the main thing the country expected of her was what she promised on innumerable occasions to deliver by 29th March, namely Brexit. How she achieved it was up to her and her Government to decide. She has failed for a variety of reasons, but in refusing to admit defeat she does seem to be displaying some kind of rather unhinged behaviour, whether or not it has a clinical name.
One of the major problems appears to be that Mrs May is incapable of trusting anyone else to do anything which she considers she can do better. Unable therefore to use to full advantage the skills, talents and expertise of her ministers she is reduced (as so many of the cartoons in recent months have vividly illustrated) to struggling on alone, battered, martyred, but still determined. Determined on what exactly, though? Determined to appease the EU with her acquiescence to their choice of timetable and financial demands; determined to get that Withdrawal agreement drawn up by M. Barnier through Parliament; determined not to let her country ‘crash out’ of the EU because she and Chancellor Hammond had not allowed full preparation for such an eventuality; determined to prove she is up to the job or just determined to hang on to it?
As Theresa May’s backbenchers and party members attempt to work out how on earth they can get rid of her at the earliest possible opportunity, one cannot help wondering whether our embattled and isolated PM might be in serious need of those mental health services into which she pledged, in January, to put £2.3bn of extra funding.
