Yet this was nothing like the whole of it. I have unearthed evidence from the Chinese web that suggests Yang’s involvement with the UFWD goes significantly deeper — and spans the whole period that he was involved with the prince. What’s more, he repeatedly made speeches at UFWD events in China, during which he spoke of the need to “cultivate international talents”. He also gave interviews to the Chinese press in which he praised the CCP government and its “grand vision”.

Besides this, Yang became an honorary member of the 48 Group Club, a UK-China friendship organisation founded in 1949 that hosts events and publishes reports and blogs praising the Chinese leadership. Its website contains a star-studded list of fellows including Tony Blair and Peter Mandelson, who, the SIAC judgment says, “could be leveraged for political interference purposes by the Chinese State”. Also listed as a fellow on the website is Jonathan Powell, Blair’s former policy chief who is now Keir Starmer’s national security adviser. However, a Cabinet Office spokesperson denied this was true, telling me that “Jonathan is not and has never been a member of the 48 Group.”

The UFWD’s importance was highlighted in Hidden Hand: How the Chinese Communist Party is Reshaping the World,  a book published in 2020 by the China experts Clive Hamilton and Mareike Ohlberg. A sprawling bureaucracy with many departments and offshoots, it has, they wrote, been central to the Communist Party’s mission for decades, practising “behavioural control and manipulation” while appearing “benign, benevolent and helpful”.

The group has always relied heavily on people of Chinese origin living and working abroad who do not formally work for the state — such as Yang. According to the authors, one of its main instruments in this field is the Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conference (CPPCC), “a high-level advisory council that draws non-Party elements into the Chinese Communist Party’s orbit”.

Charlie Parton, who spent 22 years working in and on China for the Foreign Office and is now a senior adviser at the Council on Geostrategy, told me the key to understanding the UFWD is to see those who work with it as “agents of influence”. As such, besides shifting policy decisions, they act as “forward radars” for straightforward espionage, while helping to obscure the threat this poses.

In any event, Chinese media websites reveal that Yang was a delegate to the CPPCC in 2019. In March 2021, the Mandarin China Daily described him as “a representative of overseas Chinese” at the CPPCC and published an interview with him. In this, he hailed “the superiority of the Chinese system”, adding: “Over the past 100 years, the Chinese people have stood up, become rich, and become strong under the leadership of the Communist Party of China.”

A few months later, in November 2021, Yang was stopped and questioned by immigration officials when he tried to re-enter Britain, which had been his main home since 2002. It was then that some of the evidence of his involvement in the UFWD and his closeness to Prince Andrew were discovered on his mobile.

However, it did not deter him from taking part in further UFWD activity. One example was a speech he made at a CPPCC meeting in Beijing in November 2022. Billed as the chair of the Chinese Chamber of Commerce in the UK, he said: “China needs to cultivate world-class talents, and the international community needs to cultivate talents who know China.” Overseas Chinese like him, he said, had a special role in helping the country develop science and technology. The following March, then-Home Secretary Suella Braverman decided to exclude Yang from the UK permanently. This, SIAC ruled, was reasonable, fair and lawful.

The UFWD also figures prominently in the Investigatory Powers Tribunal judgment issued yesterday, which ruled that M15 acted lawfully when it named the Parliamentary lobbyist Christine Lee as a threat to national security. Lee’s son Daniel Wilkes worked for the former Labour MP Barry Gardiner, while she arranged donations of £420,000 to his office. Another beneficiary was Liberal Democrat leader Ed Davey, who received £5,000. According to a statement by MI5 made in 2022, Lee had “knowingly engaged in political interference and activities” on behalf of the UFWD, and the tribunal ruled that this “interference alert” did not infringe her human rights, although she has not been charged with espionage.

The timing of the two cases could not be more sensitive. Although in November Starmer became the first British prime minister to meet President Xi Jinping for six years, the Foreign Office is conducting a “China Audit” covering every aspect of Britain’s relationship with Beijing.

“We should give Prince Andrew a medal,” Charlie Parton told me. “He’s managed to achieve since this row began five days ago what some of us have been urging for more than five years — getting a government to put threats from China at the top of the political agenda.”

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David Rose is UnHerd‘s Investigations Editor.

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