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'Door' Matt an inspired choice to take the Huawei hit

<span>Photograph: Jeffrey Schaeffer/AP</span>
Photograph: Jeffrey Schaeffer/AP

Alas poor Baroness Morgan of Cotes. Just imagine Lady Nicky’s distress at being prevented from answering an urgent question on Huawei by her elevation to the Lords. There again, if she hadn’t unexpectedly had greatness thrust upon her in return for an absence of conscience, it’s more than likely Common Nicky would have found a good reason not to turn up to parliament. Catching up with Homes Under the Hammer. Or checking she still existed on Google. Nothing trivial. After all, what cabinet minister in her right mind would want to face an awkward 45 minutes of interrogation by MPs from all sides of the house on the first really contentious decision of this parliament?

So it was left to Matt Warman, the most junior member of the ministerial team at the Department for Digital, Culture Media and Sport, to take the hit. A man who had been out of his depth writing previews of The Great British Bake Off while a journalist at the Daily Telegraph, but like so many other MPs has acquired the mysterious knack of failing upwards. A man who knows less about digital infrastructure than almost anyone else in government and yet has been delegated as minister for broadband. A dial-up minister for a 5G service.

Yet Warman proved an inspired choice. Because this was a situation that cried out for someone who was genuinely clueless. Only someone who actually knew nothing and – even more importantly – failed to understand the implications of his lack of knowledge could be guaranteed not to say anything significant. Everyone knew that Boris Johnson was about to hand over a large part of the UK’s digital future to the Chinese government, but what was required was a minister with the underrated skill of being able to say nothing of value or meaning to play out time.

The urgent question had been granted to Tory Tom Tugendhat, who used the occasion as an audition for his re-election as chair of the foreign affairs select committee. Was it really worth the risk of handing over part of our network to the Chinese military for the next 20 years? The US, the Germans and even the Vietnamese didn’t seem to think so. Far better to wait until the technology was available from countries that had historically been our allies, rather than just hooking up with Huawei on the grounds that it was cheap and readily available.

“The fox is in the henhouse,” he said. “The dragons are in the nest.” All sorts of other animals were also up to no good. Things looked exceptionally bad for the pigeons. Broadsword to Danny Boy. Broadsword to Danny Boy.

All of which was predictably wasted on Warman, who merely wittered on about the government doing nothing to compromise national security while making sure Boris could honour his election pledges for everyone to download movies on their phones a bit quicker. Besides, if Huawei was to be allowed to run riot on the UK’s 5G networks, then it would only be given access to “edge” rather than “core” activities.

This was “Door” Matt at his most dim. Because the whole point of 5G is there is no difference between edge and core activities. Everything will be connected to everything. Once a half-decent hacker is into your fridge, it’s only a matter of time before he’s into Jennifer Arcuri’s phone. And from there it’s a superhighway to MI6 and GCHQ. We might just as well hand over our secrets to the Chinese now, just to save time. Hell, it couldn’t be any worse than having to share intelligence with those untrustworthy bastards in the EU.

There were collective groans from MPs on all sides of the house the longer Warman was on his feet. Iain Duncan Smith expressed his dismay that the prime minister was on the verge of breaking a cast-iron guarantee he had given to him. It’s so sweet that, after all this time, there are still some MPs who are surprised that Johnson doesn’t keep his promises. Julian Lewis simply wondered why the intelligence security committee had not been consulted. Duh! Because it would have told the government not to go anywhere near Huawei, that’s why.

The only MP to speak up for Huawei was the Tory Crispin Blunt. The Americans were just jealous of the fact that we might get a digital head start on them. And, so what if the Chinese found out a few things we would have rather kept to ourselves? Data security was so 2019. What the hell was wrong with sharing stuff with a country with a dodgy record on human rights and democracy that would have the potential to shut down the UK’s entire national grid, if it made online shopping in rural areas a bit easier?

Warman survived more or less unscathed as MPs didn’t want to give him too hard a time. There was no point in shooting the messenger – especially one who didn’t even understand the message. The real battle would come on Tuesday, when the decision would be announced. Then there would be a significant number of Tories wondering why on earth a Tory government was selling itself out to the Chinese. It just remained to be seen if Boris would have the guts to tell the Commons in person. Because sadly Lady Nicky would yet again be unavoidably detained.