Whatever their motives, Tory rebels are right – Huawei is a threat to our national security

The Chinese telecoms giant should not be trusted with critical bits of our communications infrastructure, writes John Rentoul

Tuesday 10 March 2020 22:04 GMT
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Data dust-up: another rebellion by MPs is on the cards
Data dust-up: another rebellion by MPs is on the cards

It was like Snickers being – briefly – renamed Marathon last year. The House of Commons returned to the old pre-Brexit politics: a government, with a majority, threatened by a rebellion of its own MPs on a subject that was nothing to do with Europe.

All the old themes were reworked. The rumblings of rebellion, from a range of semi-extinct volcanoes – former cabinet ministers emitting clouds of smoke and steam, warning about the threat to national security from letting Huawei, the Chinese company, help build the 5G network.

A bit of opportunistic positioning by the official opposition: a supposedly left-wing Labour Party making common cause with right-wing Tory rebels. It helps Labour that its spokesperson, Chi Onwurah, speaks with the authority of having been a telecoms engineer. She demanded to know why the government was taking such a risk with national security.

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