Keir Starmer and his entourage have returned from Beijing—and many of the virulent opponents of his China visit have, for the time being, turned their attention elsewhere. But arguments about the contentious proposal for a large Chinese embassy in London on the site of the former Royal Mint—approved just days before Starmer’s China visit—have not gone away. The decision will now be subject to judicial review; the Royal Mint Court Residents’ Association, which represents the approximately 200 people who live on the site, is challenging the decision on the grounds that the planning process was flawed, possibly “pre-determined”, and that it failed to address concerns about security and local amenity.
Opponents of the embassy, Kemi Badenoch among them, have been loud in their criticism of the Labour government for what they claim is a surrender to a wicked Chinese plan to create a giant espionage and torture site in the heart of London. This would be alarming, if it were true, But these colourful accusations rest on a number of claims that do not stand up to scrutiny: that the size of the embassy increases the likelihood of espionage; that Chinese embassies are used as torture sites; that the security risk from China is increased by the fact of the new embassy; and that China has been plotting this all along.
China, as the UK security services have agreed, represents a security risk and has long conducted both active espionage and influence operations in the UK. But as recent cases show, espionage and transnational repression can be—and are—carried out on many different sites and usually by deniable assets rather than registered diplomats. British security services have testified that the risks of this new embassy can be managed, and the cables that skirt one side of the site and carry important financial data—posing, critics say, a national security risk—can be secured, moved, or have the data rerouted. As for the claim that there was a Chinese plot to purchase the site for nefarious purposes? It does not tally with the fact that the sale began and ended with Boris Johnson.
As mayor of London, Johnson promoted several substantial Chinese investments in London property. As foreign secretary, he appointed a long-term associate, Edward Lister (then a Sir, now a Lord), to the post of non-executive director of the Foreign Office, and in 2016 asked him to lead the discussions with the Chinese embassy on the possible purchase of Royal Mint Court.
Lister was singularly well-placed to do so: he was employed as a paid consultant by CBRE, a global commercial real estate group that was acting as agent for the Chinese in their search for new premises, from October 2016 to December 2017; in 2016 he was also a paid adviser to the owners of the site, a British property development company called Delancey.
Delancey, which had donated generously to the Conservative party, had paid £51m for the Royal Mint site in 2010, with plans to develop it itself. In 2018, however, it sold the site to the Chinese government instead, for £255m, five times as much. The Chinese ambassador to London at the time, Liu Xiaoming, thanked Lister effusively for his assistance. Johnson, still foreign secretary, approved China’s super-embassy proposal, writing to his Chinese counterpart Wang Yi to welcome the fact it would be “China’s largest overseas diplomatic investment” in the world.
The UK was also keen to develop its small and out-of-date embassy in Beijing. Johnson added that he was “committed, as I am convinced you are, to ensuring that our projects develop alongside each other”. They were, he said, “bold expressions of the strength of UK-China bilateral relations”.
Kemi Badenoch now appears to have a severe case of political amnesia, attacking today’s Labour government for a decision taken by a previous Tory one. Likewise, Tory MP Sir Iain Duncan Smith, who now condemns Starmer for the decision, was close to Boris Johnson at the time of Johnson’s enthusiastic consent for the embassy, and later volunteered to lead Johnson’s campaign to become party leader and therefore prime minister.
And what of Edward Lister? He became a senior adviser to Prime Minister Johnson, while continuing in his post with Delancey. Johnson rewarded him with a seat in the House of Lords in his resignation honours list in 2020. In 2021 Lister issued a public apology for failing to disclose a conflict of interest over a £187m loan of public money in 2019 to the same Delancey. “I apologise for not taking sufficient steps to prevent any perception of a conflict,” he told the Sunday Times. He had, shortly before, abruptly resigned as Johnson’s special envoy to the Gulf after nine weeks in the post.
In recent months he has spoken several times in the Lords on the Tobacco and Vapes Bill. There is no record of any contributions on the Chinese embassy, and he did not contribute to the Lords debate on the embassy on 26th January.
The Chinese, meanwhile, still hope to have a new embassy, one day.
