“BREAKING: Our fake Chinese AI investor bought access into heart [sic] of Labour government” proclaimed the headline. A joint investigation by three journalists under the marque “Democracy for Sale” and “Led by Donkeys” (best known for their anti-Brexit billboards) announced an exposé of access-for-sale in Westminster. An undercover journalist posing as the emissary of a Hong Kong business had, we were told, employed a consultant to buy access to the levers of power.
Chamber UK, a political consultancy run by Ben Howlett, a former MP, had been engaged for “insights on the political landscape in the UK, in particular related to businesses looking to invest in the UK.” And Howlett certainly delivered! “The level of access we got was extraordinary. Our undercover reporter even travelled to Liverpool for a Chamber event on economic growth, which doubled up as a fundraiser for Labour North West.” You don’t get much closer to the heart of government than that. Bilderberg. Davos. Le Cercle. A fundraiser for Labour North West.
That was just the start. Chamber UK also set up eight video calls with MPs, mostly by telling them that the fake company was considering investing in their constituency. This was the highlight of the ITV News coverage of the story. Viewers were treated to webcam footage of a perplexed-looking Tony Vaughan MP, who seems to have given nothing away other than to chastise the prospective investor about “red lines” on national security and human rights.
Nonetheless, the voiceover crowed that Vaughan was “convinced to give 26 minutes of his time”. Nearly half an hour! Howlett seems to have represented the investment as constituency-specific in order to secure the calls, but this is still not quite the Profumo Affair.
No wonder the reception has been slightly muted. Labour and Howlett both defended their conduct. Correctly so: meeting with businesses is part of an MP’s work. There is nothing illegitimate about companies paying for political guidance. Even in the ITV segment Global Security Editor Rohit Kachroo acknowledged they were: “seen as routine discussions about investment, and certainly they do seem that way”. Compared with genuinely questionable deals happening in plain sight — the purchase of Imagination Technologies, the takeover of Plessey, and so on — a Hong Kong business looking to invest in healthcare would barely register. The only person especially excited was “Atomic Tom” Tugendhat, whose approach to foreign relations puts one in mind of a furious chihuahua, perpetually straining at the leash towards the global dobermanns.
British “undercover journalism” has a poor record
By far the more interesting part of the story are the claims about Politics UK. A Twitter account with 386,100 followers, it is surprisingly influential in boosting individual stories from social media and news reports. Howlett asserts that he had bought a 50 per cent stake in the account for £100, and allegedly billed the fake firm £2,400 for two pro-China posts. Amusingly, when asked for comment by the authors, Politics UK decided to tweet out the story before it was published. It was this framing that produced hysterical reactions from the slopulist right at Labour MPs doing their jobs.
British “undercover journalism” has a poor record. Ghana’s Anas Aremeyaw Anas caught three dozen judges taking bribes on camera. Nigeria’s Fisayo Soyombo spent two weeks in custody to expose corruption in the prison system. We are left with Mazher Mahmood fitting up Tulisa. In recent years, as ever more cases of corruption trickle out through the courts, secret filming has instead poked further and further into the personal lives of nobodies. Hope Not Hate’s Harry Shukman spent a year spying to reveal that there are racists on the far-right. The BBC sent in an informer to record what police officers say in the pub. Infiltration and secret filming is a monstrous invasion of the subject’s privacy, for barely any real revelation. This is less investigative journalism than the modern Barsad and Cly.
