HARRY COLE: MPs and journalists asking claim to be victims of suspicious hacking 

MPs and journalists who’ve been asking embarrassing questions about China claim to be victims of suspicious hacking. Ambitious Tory MP Alicia Kearns mused: ‘Last week, I joined the China Research Group. This week, I suddenly find myself under daily phishing attacks… I wonder.’ 

Another MP who says he’s a victim of attempts to trick him into giving information over the internet is Foreign Affairs Committee chairman Tom Tugendhat, who has been very vocal about the Chinese Communist Party’s coronavirus failings. He says: ‘A pretty sophisticated hacker is seeking to impersonate me. 

Any ideas who it could be?’ But just how sophisticated? I received an email that was purportedly a copy of one from Mr Tugendhat to Benedict Rogers of the Tory party‘s Human Rights Commission. 

It had the Tory MP’s real signature and detailed a provocative plan to haul the Chinese ambassador before his committee for a grilling. The email boasted that Mr Tugendhat was working with the PM on the plan. 

But I smelt a rat. As any Westminster lurker knows, to put it delicately, Mr Tugendhat and Boris are not buddies. One phone call proved the whole thing was fake news. Surely fans of the Beijing regime are smarter than to try to peddle disinformation? 

Earlier this year, I predicted that the cancellation of the Commonwealth Heads of Government meeting in Rwanda in June would be used by controversial Commonwealth Secretary-General Baroness Scotland to try to grease her way into another four-year term in charge. As night follows day, letters have begun to arrive in Downing Street from Baroness Scotland’s allies calling for her to be ‘unilaterally endorsed’ to stay in the job, neatly sidestepping the fact that major Commonwealth countries were hoping to use the summit to oust her. A proposal from Barbados to grant West Indies-born Lady Scotland four more years will now be voted on by all 54 members by post. They don’t call her Baroness Brazen for nothing. 

Gavin’s treacherous icon

What is it about Sir Thomas More, the patron saint of ‘Statesmen and Politicians’, that attracts Gavin Williamson? The Education Secretary was spotted on a video-call from home in front of a portrait (circled below) of the one-time loyal Tudor adviser turned executed traitor. Though on the road to redemption after being sacked as Defence Secretary, I’m not sure Williamson has reached the martyr level yet… 

Childish squabbles in the upper chamber, with The Lord Speaker snubbing his deputies by asking Labour peer Admiral the Lord West to lay a wreath on his behalf on VE Day. Self-isolating on the Isle of Wight, Lord Fowler will miss the Westminster Hall celebrations on Friday, but as one ermine-clad source remarks: ‘No end to hostilities here.’ 

Ministers forget at their peril that the chauffeurs in the Government car pool are more gossipy than a gaggle of hairdressers. So it was unwise for one Cabinet-level Covidiot to flout lockdown rules by visiting his extended family and to use his taxpayerfunded limousine to do so. Watch this space for recriminations… 

The ‘Zoom Parliament’, as it will be forever known, has got off to a rocky start, with hundreds of MPs unable to say aye or nay in the first test of remote voting. But things are worse in the Lords where an ill-fated effort to use Microsoft’s Teams video-calling has been abandoned, with the peers expected to fall in line with the Commons and use rival Zoom. But it will cost them a pretty penny. I hear the public purse has already been raided for £71,288 to pay Zoom for licensing 650 MPs. With more than 800 peers, those bills are going to rack up