STEPHEN GLOVER: First China, now Russia… we must be mad to grovel at their feet

Do we have a corrupt and rotten Establishment teeming with people who are happy to take money from countries that wish us ill, particularly Russia and China? 

It’s a depressing suggestion. But over the past few weeks we’ve seen more evidence that some of the great and good have – how shall I put it? – been drinking from the same water trough as some pretty unsavoury people. 

Take Russia first. There was a phrase in the 48-page report finally published by Parliament’s Intelligence and Security Committee on Tuesday which made my eyes bulge with astonishment. 

According to the document, there are lawyers, accountants, estate agents and PR professionals working for wealthy Russians who have, wittingly or not, become ‘de facto agents of the Russian state’. 

That’s a serious charge, since the Russian state most certainly doesn’t wish this country any good. Its military aircraft often approach British airspace, and they don’t do so to admire our beaches. 

In trying to bump off Sergei Skripal, a former Russian spy, with a nerve agent in Salisbury in 2018, the Russian state nearly killed a British policeman and caused the death of Dawn Sturgess, an innocent civilian. 

The Parliamentary report also alleges that London (nicknamed ‘Londongrad’) has become a ‘laundromat’ for dirty Russian money, and the indulgent host of elites linked to the Russian regime. These are able to act with ‘impunity’. 

Are some lawyers, accountants and other professionals guilty of treason? That’s impossible to say, since specific examples are not given, and certainly no names are mentioned. But it would seem these people are, at the very least, guilty of lying down with flea-ridden dogs. 

The report, although it shuns detailed accusations, does make some useful suggestions. One is that members of the House of Lords should have their business links ‘carefully scrutinised’ to ensure they are not being exploited by Vladimir Putin, Russia’s unappetising leader. 

We do know, in fact, thanks to the members’ register of interest, of several peers with links to Russian companies, all of whom are doubtless as pure as the driven snow. 

I wasn’t surprised that one of them is former Labour magnifico Peter Mandelson, who served on the board of Russian defence conglomerate Sistema, in which, according to his register of interests, he holds shares. 

Lord Mandelson has never felt any shame about burnishing his Russian links. Years ago, he formed a close relationship with the controversial Russian aluminium magnate Oleg Deripaska, and was sometimes to be found on his yacht. 

During his lordship’s term as EU trade commissioner, from 2004 until 2008, he twice acted to cut European aluminium import duties. Deripaska’s company Rusal, the world’s largest producer of aluminium, was one of the main beneficiaries. 

Any connection, I’m sure, was fortuitous. But back to the present. 

It is, of course, no crime to do business with Russia, however unpleasant its government. But we are entitled to expect more transparency on the part of politicians, and in particular peers, than exists at present. 

Nor can it be right that the Tory Party should have accepted more than £1.7million from Lubov Chernukhin, the wife of one of Putin’s former ministers. True, she is now a British citizen, and there is no question of wrong-doing on either side. Still, it does not smell quite right to me. 

Lest Labour get on its high horse, we mustn’t forget that Jeremy Corbyn was a supporter of propaganda channel Russia Today, and refused to condemn Moscow after the Salisbury poisoning. The cancer is deep and pervasive. 

Let’s move on to China, whose economy is roughly eight times the size of Russia’s. Remember how, in 2015, the then Prime Minister David Cameron and Chancellor George Osborne hosted a lavish state visit for President Xi Jinping? 

Mr Cameron looked forward to a ‘golden era’ of Sino-British relations. Where as the British Establishment has never openly embraced Putin, it covered President Xi in kisses, even though he presides over one of the world’s most repressive regimes. 

Deals galore were struck. The Chinese state nuclear company has taken a third share in the construction of a new nuclear power station at Hinkley Point in Somerset, and been lined up to play a major role in the construction of two reactors at a planned nuclear power station in Essex. 

Now, with China introducing harsh new security laws in Hong Kong, the relationship is breaking down, and Beijing delivers ugly threats. 

But actually it was always clear how disgracefully it can behave when it doesn’t get its own way. And yet, as a Mail investigation revealed last week, many of our top universities have formed close relationships with their counterparts in China. 

For almost a decade, the Chinese Communist Party has been allowed to embed itself in our most prestigious academic institutions. One chilling example of co-operation cited by this newspaper was that of Cambridge University. 

It has links with a Chinese military institution blacklisted by the U.S. government for posing a nuclear threat. Needless to say, our universities have grown fat on their connections. Some 120,000 Chinese students study here, filling the coffers of many universities – and in some cases, one assumes, telling their masters in Beijing the secrets they have learnt. 

Meanwhile, a new book by two China experts has highlighted the existence of the 48 Group Club, a little known UK-based organisation with 650 members which cultivates business links with China. 

According to Hidden Hand: Exposing How The Chinese Communist Party Is Shaping The World, serialised in this newspaper, the 48 Group Club is exploited by China as a networking hub ‘through which Beijing grooms Britain’s elites’. 

The organisation hotly contests this interpretation. Politicians associated with the group include former Tory Deputy Prime Minister Lord Heseltine, Tony Blair, and exForeign Secretary Jack Straw. And, of course – where would we be without him? – the ubiquitous Lord Mandelson. 

If only a quarter of the claims about the 48 Group Club are true, we should register deep disquiet. Who can doubt that, whether through our universities or other bodies, has penetrated large parts of the Establishment? Are we mad? 

We must obviously trade with the world’s second largest economy, just as we import oil and gas from Russia, though there are a­lternative sources. But with both countries we should have a hands-off relationship rather than an intimate one that isn’t transparent and may involve corruption. 

Britain has long been an open society. Dodgy rogues have been welcomed here with few questions asked so long as their pockets are deep. Anthony Trollope wrote about this in his 1875 novel The Way We Live Now. 

The mysterious, crooked foreign financier, Augustus Melmotte, is embraced by an avaricious Establishment. Is it reckless greed? In large measure, yes. 

But there is also an element of naivety. Rich foreigners bearing gifts, or at any rate juicy contracts, are believed to be less dangerous, and more accommodating, than they can possibly ever be. 

Yesterday’s newspapers reported that, as a result of the Intelligence and Security Committee report, we are going to have tougher laws aimed at Russian and other spies plotting against Britain. 

That’s all well and good. But we also need tougher laws requiring greater transparency on the part of rotten members of the Establishment whose furtive deals serve only to strengthen our enemies.