The real reason for Boris Johnson's 5G U-turn is down to his increasingly weak 80-seat majority
Ministers claim the “game-changer” behind their U-turn on Huawei was America’s sanctions on the Chinese company. Privately, some admit there was another game-changer. Despite his huge majority of 80, Boris Johnson would have lost Commons vote if he had stuck to his decision to January to allow Huawei to provide up to 35 per cent of the UK’s 5G network.
Inevitably, a jubilant Donald Trump is claiming the credit for personally talking Johnson into banning Huawei. But Trump’s trade war with China provided cover for a party political judgment the prime minister would have made anyway.
Johnson could have avoided his handbrake turn if he had listened to William Hague, who urged him last year to side with the US and Australia in banning Huawei from vital infrastructure. Hague knew what he was talking about. As foreign secretary, he was highly sceptical about his boss David Cameron’s new “golden era” of relations with China because of its human rights record. Events have proved Hague right.
The 60-strong China-sceptic China Research Group of Tory MPs is modelled on the European Research Group (ERG) of Eurosceptics who made Theresa May’s life so miserable. Many of the new awkward squad were in the old one; 25 of the 36 Tories who voted against the government on Huawei in March were Eurosceptics who voted against May’s Brexit deal.
Johnson, a rebel then, is now poacher turned gamekeeper. He is realising that winning the biggest Commons majority since Tony Blair in 2001 is an illusion, as it doesn’t insulate him from a rebellion by his restless backbenchers.
Revolts over Hauwei, free school meals and quarantine on arriving in the UK have already forced Johnson into embarrassing U-turns. Long-serving Tories detect a sea change: today’s MPs are much more independent-minded than their predecessors, and less susceptible to the sticks and carrots of government whips.
The new Tory MPs in the “blue wall” of former Labour seats in the North and Midlands see themselves as local champions, not party hacks. They are not bothered about becoming junior minister for paper clips. Threats don’t work on disenchanted former ministers who expected a comeback under Johnson (he would have needed to double the size of the cabinet to fit them all in).
Johnson allies admit they need to work harder to keep his backbenchers onside. It’s not just about relations with China, the latest rallying point for rebels never without a cause. Brexit has not gone away. Nor has the ERG. It suspects Johnson is planning a sell-out by bouncing them into a last-minute trade deal with the EU with closer links than they want. Johnson even had to pop up on a WhatsApp group to reassure them there is no truth to such rumours.
The China and Brexit causes are not unrelated: pro-Washington Brexiteers are desperate for a UK-US trade deal, which would have been much harder to strike if Johnson had not buckled to Trump’s pressure on Hauwei.
The Tory grumpy squad are unhappy about the Huawei decision; they believed the Chinese giant’s kit would be removed by 2024, not 2027 as announced. But Oliver Dowden, the culture secretary, argued for a long lead time to limit the cost, the risk of mobile phone blackouts and (say it softly in case Trump hears) a desire to sugar the pill for China. Tory hardliners like Iain Duncan Smith are threatening to beef up the telecoms legislation in the autumn to ensure a 2024 deadline. But Johnson’s U-turn should detach enough soft rebels to win the& crunch votes.
The rebels will have more success in their demand for a wider review of the UK’s relationship with China. The mood in London has changed in the wake of the coronavirus pandemic, the new Hong Kong security law and human rights abuses like China’s the treatment of the Uighur Muslims. Ministers say one lesson of the pandemic is that they must make the UK much less dependent on Chinese supply chains (personal protective equipment is a top priority). They will also pass a law making it harder for the Chinese to take over UK firms.
But Johnson will tell Beijing he is a “Sinophile” who still wants Chinese investment in the UK. “We need their money,” one minister whispered. So Tory rebels demanding a rethink over China’s role in the UK’s nuclear plants might be disappointed. But what if Trump subjects Johnson to another telephone tirade, as he did on Hauwei?
Trump has imposed a forced choice on the UK. It is ludicrous to claim the Huawei ban is a “technical decision,” the line to take for ministers today. It was geopolitical and party political. From now on, we are on America’s side in the new cold war, and Johnson faces an impossible balancing act.
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