Starmer under fire over China trip amid phone-hacking revelations
Keir Starmer is under fire over his a trade-focused trip to China this week as further reports of espionage emerged.
Chinese officials are believed to have hacked the phones of key government officials, according to The Telegraph.
Hackers targeted top aides to UK prime ministers including Boris Johnson, Liz Truss and Rishi Sunak, intelligence sources told the newspaper, as part of the state-sponsored operation known as Salt Typhoon.
Alicia Kearns, who was one of the targets during a Chinese spy operation in parliament, accused Starmer of “simpering” to President Xi Jinping.
Luke de Pulford, executive director of the Inter-Parliamentary Alliance on China, called on the government to “deal with China like a country which hacks your phone”.
Fresh reports come as warnings on Chinese espionage and security breaches have increased over the last few months.
The Labour government’s hopes of striking closer ties with China was brought under intense scrutiny over Whitehall’s “shambolic” handling of the collapsed spy case involving Christopher Cash and Christopher Berry, who both deny all allegations.
Former No 10 adviser Dominic Cummings said that Chinese hackers had gained access to sensitive files while security experts warned that the approval of a new Chinese embassy on the historic Royal Mint Court site would pose risks to cables connecting Canada to Canary Wharf.
The embassy was formally approved by the government last week after clearance from intelligence bosses, who said not all risks could be eliminated.
Starmer to be joined by business chiefs
Fresh reports on phone-hacking have come on the eve of the Prime Minister’s visit to China in his bid to boost economic ties with Beijing.
Several business executives from UK-listed giants including GSK and Astrazeneca are expected to join him on the visit.
But Starmer faces having to walk a tightrope on relations with China, with President Trump threatening Canada with huge tariffs over its new trade deal struck with the world’s second largest economy.
In an interview with Bloomberg before the trip, Starmer said he could still maintain relations with the US and ensure UK national security is protected while trade ties with China are boosted.
“I’m often invited to simply choose between countries. I don’t do that,” he said.
“I remember when I was doing the US trade deal, and everybody put to me that I’d have to make a choice between the US and Europe, and I said, ‘I’m not making that choice’.”
“We’ve got very close relations with the US – of course, we want to – and we will maintain that business, alongside security and defence.”
Prior to the visit, analysts at a left-leaning think tank, the Institute for Public Policy Research (IPPR), warned that there were “trade-offs” to boosting growth through building ties with China.
“The government’s approach of ‘cooperate where we can, compete where we need to, and challenge where we must’ sounds compelling, but in practice those boundaries are blurred,” Laura Chappell, associate director for international policy at IPPR, said:.
“This rebalancing risks drawing the lines in the wrong places as well as alienating other partners – not least the US.”