With recent news of espionage in the heart of Her Majesty’s Most Loyal Opposition, we have a responsibility to bring the public to further attention of communist malfeasance in politics. Barry Gardiner’s willingness to accept Beijing bucks and take the Chinese Communist Party’s line from Hong Kong to climate change, should bring goosebumps to anyone proud of the West’s liberal institutions, respect for democracy, and protection of human rights. 

The Chinese spy, Mrs Christine Lee, used charm, intelligence, and finances to leverage influence with a self-avowed “democratic socialist” until she was eventually outed as an agent of the United Front Work Department. This wing of the Chinese Party, and therefore of the Chinese State, operates a complex network of financially-backed agents to actively undermine Western institutions. Without a firm and aware stance from liberal institutions, our superior system of governance will soon be shunted aside - all due to fifth column manipulation from within.

Communist spying and manipulation is not just confined to today’s Labour Party. Giles Udy’s Labour And The Gulag: Russia and the Seduction of the British Left examines how the British Labour Party responded to the endemic genocide and terror regime of the USSR; frighteningly, he discovered that figures within the British left actively defended this horrifying system in the face of the more peaceable liberal democracies which sheltered them. Sound familiar? 

Liberal internationalism is having a reckoning against the many-armed octopus of Beijing. In Australia, the Labor Home Affairs spokeswoman, Senator Kristina Keneally, proudly boasted of meetings with anti-Taiwanese agents of the United Front. Meanwhile, universities across the US, UK, and EU are awash with Chinese money through Confucius Institutes; academic free speech is curtailed and research bends from autonomy to instruction. During the early pandemic, United Front agents based in embassies around the world mobilised to deprive their host countries of PPE and Covid-supplies by exporting them to China, before Beijing leaked the news of an embryonic but devastatingly growing pandemic. 

How can liberalism stand its ground against this malevolent force? Liz Truss’ leadership of the Foreign Office is an encouraging development. Truss has argued that the West, not just Britain, needs to stand firmly against Beijing. Aware of Communist espionage and threats in Europe, she has agreed security partnerships with a specifically anti-China bulwark across the world, including the Five Eyes security network.

Our own institutions require greater strengthening against bullying and espionage. Universities should take a more robust stance in response to pressure from Chinese authorities; the LSE received abuse from the Chinese state (and students on campus) after unveiling a work of art that displayed Taiwan as an independent country. Anti-Beijing students have also been harassed on campus by Workers Front agents across the Western World, which should prompt universities to further stand with democratic values against the dictatorial communist threat which is increasingly present in universities. 

The Chinese espionage state should be actively confronted and curtailed across our institutions. Gone are the days of a Golden Age between liberal democracies and Chinese authoritarianism; a Muscular Liberalism is required, confronting anti-democratic and anti-Western values wherever they are present in our world.

Barry Gardiner’s disappointing receipt of Chinese manipulation will not be the end of the effrontery by Communist state action against the free world. Our liberal institutions must provide support to one another in order for the successful liberal world-order to survive a new era of skullduggery and cloak-and-dagger international affairs. Without such strength against a genocidal, imperialistic, and belligerent power, liberals can begin to write the epitaphs of our most successful civilisation yet.