When Theresa May was yesterday quizzed about the Huawei leak by defence select committee chair (and noted hawk) Julian Lewis, we should have known something was up. The PM had already been on combative form, taking swipes at Brexiteers and other critics, but her answer to Lewis was supremely self-confident.
Smiling indulgently as if Lewis was a particularly difficult child, the PM patiently but forcefully suggested he was talking nonsense about government policy on the Chinese telecom firm. In a nutshell, she made plain our spooks were more than aware of any risk posed, and cited a recent Huawei Cyber Security Evaluation Centre Oversight Board report that ‘found no evidence of interference’ in the UK’s network.
While Lewis ended with a flourish, darkly urging May to read the redacted parts of a 2003 Intelligence and Security Committee report into Huawei, she simply had the look of a teacher dealing with the class’s slow learner. May’s face showed she was fully familiar with that report from 16 years ago, as were all our intelligence agencies. Yet what we didn’t know as she spoke was that immediately prior to the Liaison Committee, May had been handed the report into the National Security Council (NSC) leak - with ‘compelling evidence’ Gavin Williamson was the leaker.
I’ve written the story-behind-the-story of Williamson’s sacking HERE, and what appears to have been decisive is the 11-minute phone call last Tuesday between him and the Telegraph’s scoopmeister Steve Swinford. The defence secretary infuriated security officials by suggesting the following day that somehow the NSC’s secretariat had been to blame for the leak. Yet he swiftly admitted to colleagues that he himself had indeed talked to Swinford. His defence, during a long and gruelling session with investigators, was that they’d chatted about politics like Brexit and the Tory leadership, not the NSC’s highly confidential report on Huawei.
Of course, it’s a very dangerous game for anyone to assume they know the source of a story. Swinford may indeed have talked to other players in this drama (one theory behind the vehemence of Williamson’s defiance is that maybe another Cabinet minister, not present in the NSC room, had gossiped about the meeting’s contents with colleagues). But given just how close May was to her protege (having given him two rapid promotions as Chief Whip and at the MoD), it is obvious that she and the investigators felt no other culprit was responsible.
Many in Whitehall are aghast at Williamson’s suggestion that the inquiry was rushed or botched. His letter to May states that a more ‘thorough and formal’ investigation would have cleared him. Is he really saying this is another ‘dodgy dossier’ cobbled together by the spooks and civil service? The NSC itself was first created in 2010 precisely to learn the lessons of Iraq, and the presence of the heads of the intelligence agencies is real reason this leak is of a different order to your common-or-garden Cabinet chit-chat. Williamson’s former media adviser didn’t do him any favours on LBC this morning by suggesting it was plausible his old boss could indeed have been the leaker.
Still, some of Williamson’s friends think he’s the victim of a pincer movement by Cabinet secretary Sir Mark Sedwill and the Treasury. He clashed with Sedwill over his national security review, and repeatedly with Philip Hammond over funding. Hammond has made no secret of his own view that value-for-money should be a factor in assessing whether to grant Huawei a limited role in the UK’s 5G network. The fact that he was in Beijing last week pushing for commercial contracts for British firms has not endeared him to MPs with military backgrounds, many of whom think he’s a beancounter who puts cash before defence needs.
For many ministers, the attack on Sedwill or any motive he may have is laughable. But as I’ve written before, there are those who are not Williamson fans who are still concerned by the concentration of power that the Cabinet secretary now holds. It is seen as ‘unconstitutional’, with possible conflicts of interests, for one man to both be in charge of the civil service and to be simultaneously National Security Adviser to the PM. Last autumn, No.10 was worried enough about this to hint a new NSA would be appointed but nothing happened.
The real story may be a simple one about the way May operates as a politician. Unsure of her own judgement or political vision, her career has been marked by a dependency on a small number of advisers. Nick Timothy was once her favourite, then it was Gavin Williamson (relied on during the 2016 leadership race that never was, as chief whip and then as key DUP fixer). Now it seems Sedwill is the man she relies on most of all.
Meanwhile, Williamson is fighting a strong rearguard action, effectively daring May to publish her ‘compelling evidence’ against him, to check whether it is circumstantial or concrete. It’s possible some of that evidence was provided by the spooks and is thus inadmissible in a court of law. But with Labour, the Lib Dems and SNP all demanding a criminal inquiry, the PM knows that’s the next challenge in this saga.
It may be that Williamson would welcome a police probe. Will he today step things up and ask them to investigate too? He has sworn ‘on my children’s lives’ that he is innocent, so presumably he’d swear on oath on a Bible too. Yet if he is so outraged by No.10’s claims against him, one option is for him to sue for libel. If he can get a well-funded backer (Andrew Mitchell found out the hard way in his ‘Plebgate’ case that these things are expensive risks), why not take legal action against the PM? It would be unprecedented and possibly mad, but hey those are the adjectives that define 2019.
It was clear from the speed with which May conducted her reshuffle last night that she had thought for a few days her former favourite was for the chop. Penny Mordaunt becomes the first ever female defence secretary (she may need to retain some of Williamson’s team given their military background and expertise), but she is also a Brexiteer. And away from the Huawei row, it is Brexit that is where some serious behind-the-scenes action is taking place.
Theresa May made plain at Liaison Committee that she was indeed looking closely at a compromise plan with Labour on the vexed issue of customs. “The whole question about customs arrangements for the future…various terms are used in relation to customs. Sometimes people use different terms to mean the same thing”.
After PMQs, Corbyn’s spokesman was even more revealing. He said that the party had now seen “clear evidence that the government is prepared to explore shifts in its position” on the issue. “There’s more than one way to skin a cat in terms of the shifts in their position on a customs union,” he said. Just what form of words is devised is a tight secret, but there are some who stress that it will be far, far from easy.
Most important of all, there is a large majority of Labour MPs who won’t agree to a compromise without a referendum as an insurance policy. Will Corbyn really risk splitting his party as much as May would hers, by agreeing to a joint plan? As for a public vote on any deal, Tom Watson told the Today programme that ‘sometimes you can win the war but lose the argument’. There’s a lot of work to do on this one folks.
Watch again the epic ‘Battle of the Partridges’ as Richard Madeley cuts off Gavin Williamson after he refuses to explain why he told the Russians to ‘shut up and go away’.
Brits should take fewer flights and give up red meat if the UK is ever going to abolish greenhouse gas emissions, the Committee on Climate Change has recommended in a landmark new report today. The CCC has some good news for all those who packed Parliament Square last night to hear Jeremy Corbyn declare a climate change ‘emergency’: dramatic drops in renewable energy prices mean the UK can hit net zero carbon emissions much earlier than previously thought. And guess what? The cost to the public purse of various changes needed is not that expensive, at roughly 1 to 2% GDP by 2050. That’s a lot cheaper than even the ‘bumpy’ hit to the economy caused by Brexit.
What a day to have local elections. Yes the polls have opened across the country and we will find out in the early hours and through tomorrow just how much of a ‘Tory meltdown’ the voters have inflicted. What the PM must be mightily relieved about is that Farage’s Brexit Party is not contesting any seats and preferring to save its firepower for the Euro elections. But the recall by-election in Peterborough, now to be held on June 6 (a week after the Euros), could see Farage’s party install its first MP. Then again, it’s possible the Brexit Party could split the Tory vote, and let Labour sneak a victory. Stranger things have happened in 2019.
If you’re reading this on the web, sign-up HERE to get the WaughZone delivered to your inbox.
Got something you want to share? Please send any stories/tips/quotes/pix/plugs/gossip to Paul Waugh(paul.waugh@huffingtonpost.com), Ned Simons (ned.simons@huffingtonpost.com), Rachel Wearmouth (rachel.wearmouth@huffpost.com) and Jasmin Gray (jasmin.gray@huffpost.com) and Arj Singh (arj.singh@huffpost.com)