Why did we not ban Huawei earlier?

‘Just rejoice’, as Mrs Thatcher once said about something else. The government’s decision to debug our national security by getting rid of Huawei is the right one (although seven years is much too long). The puzzle is why it did not happen earlier. At the end of January, I interviewed the US Secretary of State, Mike Pompeo, when he came over here. We knew by then everything we needed to know about the Chinese government’s control of Huawei and the lack of trust this must engender. The British government also heard clearly from Mr Pompeo — and from Australia — that its preference for Huawei 5G threatened the deep trust of the Five Eyes intelligence partnership. Yet it sent him away empty-handed. I was struck at the time by how calm Mr Pompeo seemed about this, and I guessed he had received private assurances of change. I now think I was wrong: it was simply that he had picked up the growing political pressure against Huawei on both sides of British politics, and understood the wider movement of events even before Covid-19 took hold. Why, despite the well-aimed shafts of Tom Tugendhat’s China Research Group, did our government not? There was a sort of corruption here. I do not mean anything like direct bribes: more the sense that the Cameron/Osborne Golden Era of relations with China was, rather like the EU, a happy, easy, money-spinning thing for those running British policy and the relevant big British businesses, such as BT. With his experience as London mayor during the Olympics, it probably seemed a happy, easy thing for Boris Johnson himself. Unfortunately, happiness and ease are never available from a totalitarian superpower.

‘Huawei’s 5G path is blocked. In a few months’ time, Huawei may no longer see the point of paying six-figure sums to Lord B and his attendant knights,’ I wrote in this space on 20 June.