But it’s silly season, when there’s no other sensible news around, and the only people taking any of it remotely seriously is a bunch of rentagob politicians, desperately trying to revive flagging public profiles, to keep themselves relevant.
In the end the news cycle moves on, because a man with a face like a giant peach is about to become president of the United States, and no-one lives happily ever after.
The peculiar case of Yang Tengbo, the suspected Chinese spy, and his supposed relationship with the Duke of York, is a cautionary tale of our time, that illustrates keenly the frenetic, looking glass nature of what has become of our national conversation.
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It demonstrates what happens when two or more honed narratives collide, in a world that has lost sight of the difference between causal and correlational effects.
When facts can no longer exist independently of one another, but only in a sinister, conspiratorial relationship, we end up with a story like this dominating the news agenda, fuelling our collective prejudices and common fears.
Let’s stop for a moment to investigate the individual elements of the story, and to consider how they relate to one another, if at all, in any meaningful way.
Yang Tengbo is a 50 year-old Chinese national who, in 2002, moved to the UK where he established Hampton Group International, a consultancy aimed at fostering UK-China relations.
The diminutive, bespectacled former civil servant appears to have spent much of the past 22 years rubbing shoulders with the great and the good, inveigling himself in the company of, among others, David Cameron and Theresa May, much as you would expect of the head of a consultancy aimed at fostering UK-China relations.
However, in 2023, following a visit to his homeland, Yang was banned from re-entering the UK, under the direction of the then Home Secretary, Suella Braverman. She claimed that he had links to the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) and that he had engaged in “covert and deceptive activity”.
Authorities suspect Yang of acting on behalf of the CCP and its United Front Work Department, an organisation critics accuse of influencing foreign entities. In a briefing to Braverman, officials claimed Yang was positioned to forge relationships between prominent UK figures and senior Chinese officials, for potential “political interference”.
At this stage, there was nothing about the case to stimulate the adrenal glands of excitable news editors. After all, anyone born in China has links to the CCP – it’s like saying anyone born here has links to Britain.
Those who have lived or worked abroad, and whom officials believe might have useful information to impart, are routinely interrogated when they return to China.
These include government officials, businesspeople, academics, artists, journalists and even students. Being Chinese and engaged in what the Home Office terms “covert and deceptive activity” doesn’t automatically make you a spy, it makes you Chinese.
If Yang is a spy – and he may well be – he should be taken aside and given some basic instruction in tradecraft, item one being that if you want to remain covert, don’t go around getting yourself photographed with former prime ministers.
The point at which his case became elevated above all of the other run-of-the mill suspected Chinese spies, was when his relationship with the prince became known.
The SIAC judges acknowledged Yang had established a life in the UK – which he considered his “second home” – and that he had settled status and extensive business interests in this country.
They described him as a “close confidant of the Duke”, presumably because he had money, or access to money which, as we all know, is one of the prince’s favourite things.
While the exact timeline of their relationship remains unclear, Andrew stated they met through “official channels”.
Not that the supposed spy went out of his way to hide or downplay their relationship, as you might expect of an aspiring Yang Bond.
Prince Andrew at a Pitch@Palace event in 2014. Yang Tengbo is a co-founder of a Chinese version (Image: PA)
He is publicly credited with being a co-founder of Pitch@Palace China, the Chinese iteration of the prince’s programme to support entrepreneurs.
However, the fact of their relationship alone was reason enough for some hotheads to go into fulminating overdrive.
George Foulkes (remember him?) was briefly revived from cryogenic suspension in the House of Lords to offer his tuppence worth about the potential threat to national security, while Iain Duncan Smith, the attention-seeking former Tory leader opined that Yang could be the “tip of the iceberg”, one of many Chinese spies operating “in plain view”.
Not to be outdone, Nigel Farage took time out from his busy caseload in his Clacton constituency, threatening to use parliamentary privilege to reveal the identity of Yang who, until Monday, was known publicly only as H6.
If indeed Yang is a spy hellbent on compromising the UK’s national security, he could not have picked a worse target than the hapless prince.
What priceless intelligence are we supposed to believe the businessman gleaned from Andrew that he breathlessly reported back to his paymasters in Beijing? That the prince bagged a brace of pheasants while out on the moors with Fruity Winkworth? That you can’t get a decent G&T at Sunningdale any more since Smithers moved on?
No disrespect to Yang’s spycraft, but a little bit of research beforehand would have told him he was unlikely to glean anything remotely useful from a man whom even close friends would concede is the buffoon’s buffoon.
The prince and the spy might sound like the basis for a great British scandal but little about it rings true. Stripped of its undertones of not-so unconscious bias, about the threat of the yellow peril, and our collective ongoing fun at the expense of the dunderhead duke, the reality is that it’s a non-story unlikely to outlast the panto season.
Carlos Alba is a journalist, author, and PR consultant at Carlos Alba Media. His latest novel, There’s a Problem with Dad, explores the issue of undiagnosed autism among older people.