Dominic Raab unsettles Huawei opponents by being nice for once

Move along. Nothing to see here. Dominic Raab usually prepares for an afternoon statement in the Commons by pumping iron in the gym. Only once his neck veins are bulging and his anger levels are sufficiently raised is he ready to take on anyone. MPs who get in his way are treated merely as collateral damage. At best they can hope to get away with a non-disclosure agreement. At worst, they wind up encased in concrete pillars. Raab has left his mark on carparks all over the country.

But for the statement on the government’s heavily trailed decision to let Huawei build some of the UK’s 5G network, the foreign secretary had been put on a much milder regime by his personal trainer. Some gentle Zen stretches, a few meditational oms and a bucketful of anti-psychotics and tranquillizers. And it worked an absolute treat. Because Raab could not have been more charming if he tried. A sight that so unsettled most Labour MPs that they left the chamber before he had got going.

“Look,” said Raab. This was Nice Dom. Sweet Dom. Kind Dom. There was really nothing to worry about. He and Ant Middleton had put Huawei bosses through advanced SAS interrogation techniques and he was certain the UK had nothing to fear. The Chinese tech firm only wanted what was best for us and had promised to be on its best behaviour and not get involved in any naughty espionage. But he would be keeping Huawei under close surveillance – just in case – so all he really wanted was for everyone to enjoy endless repeats of ET on their phones without the screen buffering. What’s more, in a feat of majestic ministerial amnesia, he somehow managed to say all this without mentioning the word “China” once. Though he did manage to namedrop the Russians as potential enemies. Even though they had nothing to do with anything under discussion

Labour’s Nick Thomas-Symonds looked fairly depressed and downbeat in his reply. And understandably so. Because half of what he had to say made absolutely no sense whatsoever, as he began by mumbling this was a deal that had only been made to accommodate the Americans. Which was the exact opposite of what had just happened.

Quite what possessed Thomas-Symonds to talk such total bollocks was unclear. Normally he is one of the brighter members of the shadow cabinet, so one can only assume he had been told by someone in the leader’s office that he would be killed if he didn’t. Looking embarrassed, he went on to say there were some risks attached to this deal and it was a real shame that the UK had never bothered to invest in its own tech companies so we could have built the 5G infrastructure ourselves. At no point did he say Labour would oppose Huawei’s involvement.

And that was pretty much it. On the previous day, MPs from every party had queued up to give junior minister “Door” Matt Warman, who had been sent out as a human sacrifice to not answer an urgent question on precisely the same topic, a hard time. Now they weren’t quite so brave. Dom’s reputation precedes him and, in any case, no one really wanted to put their career on the line when Boris Johnson’s majority of 80 meant he could do pretty much as he pleased.

Theresa May opened with a melancholy, passive-aggressive note of approval. She is becoming an increasingly sad and isolated figure in the Commons. Never talking to anyone; seldom even making eye contact. This was basically the same decision, with the same recommendations and caveats, that she had put forward in April last year. But she had had no friends, no power to get it through. Tories who had been worried both about national security and putting the mockers on a trade deal with the US would never have dreamed of rolling over to die for her as they would now for Boris.

It was all a bit surreal. Tory MPs, who would have been spitting blood and bellowing “communist plot” if a Labour government was proposing to hive off 35% of the country’s 5G network to the Chinese state, now just nodded it through as one of those things. Not ideal, but it would do. And it would be at least 10 years before we knew if we had made the wrong call, by which time everyone would have moved on and there would be no one left to take the blame. The timid MP’s idea of a manageable risk.

There were a few rumbles of “regrettable” but that was about as strong as the criticism got. Apart from David Davis, who came straight out and said the SNP had got it right. The decision was a total shocker and we should never be trusting any part of our network – even the bits notionally deemed peripheral, though in 5G the distinction between core and periphery are increasingly blurred – to a hostile state with a track record of industrial and military espionage. Other Tory MPs didn’t even have the decency to look ashamed of their silence.

So Raab pretty much cruised the entire hour. All opposition just melted away as he offered insincere, mindless platitudes. He had no idea whether the Huawei deal was any good or not. And he didn’t much care. Yawn. The only time he looked vaguely perturbed was when Mark Hendrick, one of the few Labour MPs to be bothered to sit out the session, got up to speak.

This is literally the best deal ever, Hendrick said. The bestest best. There had never been a better deal in the whole history of best ever deals. Not even the most abjectly loyal Tories had been prepared to go that far. Raab was immediately suspicious. If someone as dim as Kendrick thought it was such a good idea, it must be really shit.

Still Raab had the bases covered. Let the Chinese try to hack our intelligence services’ 5G networks. Much good it would do them. Because GCHQ was still using 3G. Brilliant misdirection. It was that kind of attention to deal that would make Britain great again.