Prime Minister Rishi Sunak has chastised China’s premier for “unacceptable” interference in British democracy.
U.K. spy services have sounded ever-louder warnings about Beijing’s covert activities. In November, the head of the MI5 domestic intelligence agency, Ken McCallum, said “the activities of the Chinese Communist Party pose the most game-changing strategic challenge to the U.K.” Foreign intelligence chief Richard Moore of MI6 said in July that China was his agency’s “single most important strategic focus.
An opposition Labour Party lawmaker, Barry Gardiner, received more than 500,000 pounds from Lee between 2015 and 2020, mostly for office costs, and her son worked in Gardiner’s office. Lee and the Chinese government both deny wrongdoing.