Last night’s 1922 committee meeting with backbenchers and Lord Cameron didn’t appease the China hawks the way it intended. Much of the meeting was consumed by anger over the government still labelling China as a mere “challenge“. Not least Sir Iain Duncan Smith saying the position was like “an elephant giving birth to a mouse”…
It seems fury from the backbenches has hit home. This morning on Times Radio Education Secretary Gillian Keegan conceded that China was indeed a “security threat“. Perhaps because of latest revelations exposed by an unprecedented joint operation by Washington and London that there’s been a decade-long campaign of Chinese espionage…
Now it looks like Deputy Prime Minister Dowden will declare China as threat, telling MPs “we are currently in the process of collective Government agreement”. What will Lord Cameron say?
Justice minister Alex Davies-Jones told the Today Programme it wasn’t ‘appropriate’ to ask whether or not David Lammy was shopping prior to DPMQs instead of trying to sort out the released prisoner:
“He was preparing for Deputy Prime Minister’s Questions. He was preparing to stand in for the Prime Minister, the first ever black person to do so… He cracked a joke because his poppy had fallen off this suit, which he also addressed during the Deputy Prime Minister’s Questions… I don’t think it’s appropriate to get into the weeds of if he was shopping or not in the morning.”