Senior U.K. Cabinet ministers are being hauled before a leak inquiry this weekend to determine who is responsible for the unprecedented reporting of highly secret discussions concerning national security.
There is another potentially culpable: former Conservative Prime Minister David Cameron. Through reforms that he institutionalized, Cameron has inadvertently brought the American political culture of leaking highly classified information into British politics.
With Brexit on hold and the sun shining, British politics this week returned to a good old-fashioned Whitehall scandal. The National Security Council (NSC) on Tuesday discussed the potential role of Chinese telecoms giant Huawei in Britain’s future 5G telecoms network and concluded that the Chinese company should be allowed to be involved, albeit in a limited way.
We know that because details of the discussions, including the views of individuals, were leaked to the Daily Telegraph, which wrote that Prime Minister Theresa May defied “warnings from the U.S. and some of her most senior ministers” in allowing Huawei’s involvement. Home Secretary Sajid Javid, Foreign Secretary Jeremy Hunt and Defense Secretary Gavin Williamson were among five ministers reported to have raised concerns about the approach.
Given that details of every one of May’s troubled Cabinet meetings are leaked almost in real time, the fact we know about Huawei may not seem important — especially since the decision would eventually have been made public.
In a post-Brexit world, the U.K. cannot afford to alienate China by adopting what look like arbitrary policies that exclude Chinese companies.
But this wasn’t a Cabinet meeting. It was a meeting of the highest-level security forum that considers the most sensitive matters. While leaks from Cabinet happen all the time, leaks from the NSC never happen.
Britain’s NSC is the “holy of holies.” Attended by a small core of politicians and the heads of the intelligence, security and military services, it is the ultimate decision-making forum in Britain’s national security architecture.
It’s also a little-remarked fact that, unlike many British arrangements, the NSC is a relatively recent innovation, for which Cameron is responsible. Cameron argued in 2010 that Britain needed to formalize its national security decision-making after the freewheeling “sofa government” of Labour’s Tony Blair.
By appointing a national security adviser and instituting the NSC, partially modeled on the U.S. equivalent, Cameron gave structure to what had previously been the province of informal groups largely composed of officials. By instituting a formal entity of which he was the chair, Cameron not only increased the power of the prime minister’s office in the process but brought senior Cabinet ministers into the heart of national security policymaking, giving them access to sensitive intelligence.
Former British Prime Minister David Cameron | Lillian Suwanrumpha/AFP via Getty Images
The Huawei question is a classic example of matters on which the NSC must decide. On the one hand, amid global alarm about the Chinese company, Britain risks alienating its key intelligence allies — the rest of the so-called Five Eyes of Australia, Canada, New Zealand and the U.S. — by cooperating with Huawei. On the other, in a post-Brexit world, the U.K. cannot afford to alienate China by adopting what look like arbitrary policies that exclude Chinese companies.
As the NSC weighs difficult decisions about counterterrorism, military action and cybersecurity, a leak is genuinely a big deal. Even if Huawei was one decision that had to be announced eventually, the validity of the entire process is called into question if ministers are likely to leak.
Former Cabinet Secretary Lord Gus O’Donnell called the Huawei reveals a “complete outrage.” The Labour Party leaped onto the bandwagon, tabling an urgent question in parliament and demanding a “full leak inquiry.” Current Cabinet Secretary Mark Sedwill, also the national security adviser, who is heading up the internal inquiry, wrote a “sharply worded letter” to Cabinet ministers giving them until 2 p.m. Thursday to confess or confirm their willingness to cooperate. All the likely suspects strongly denied their involvement and asserted their desire to see a full inquiry.
The Tory Party is well into a protracted leadership race with May certain to step down in 2019. The fact that potential future party leaders Hunt, Williamson and Javid all fought to keep Huawei out of Britain’s telecoms network will serve to burnish their credentials as serious defenders of the U.K.’s national security interests.
If one of them is found to have been the leaker, or to have inadvertently allowed the leak to occur, their leadership ambitions will be seriously damaged.
But politicians make those calculations, and they leak. Their careers are intimately bound up with public perception of their actions and their ability to manipulate the media to report those actions positively. A civil servant has nothing to gain from leaking, whereas a politician might transform his or her career by doing so.
Anyone who has studied U.S. politics will know that leaks of highly sensitive material are a regular occurrence, even in the face of draconian punishments. By modeling his system on America, Cameron has ensured the U.K. should expect more of the same.
Arthur Snell was a British diplomat between 1998 and 2014. He now works as a political risk consultant.