Iain Duncan Smith: RedBird’s connections to China should rule out their buying the Daily Telegraph

Rt Hon Sir Iain Duncan Smith MP is a former leader of the Conservative Party, former Secretary of State for Work and Pensions and is the MP for Chingford and Woodford Green.

There are few institutions more essential to a free and democratic society than a truly independent press.

For generations, The Daily Telegraph has played a defining role in our political and cultural life. It has been a champion of conservative ideas, a voice for Britain’s national interest, and a platform for honest, often fearless journalism. It is for precisely these reasons that the Telegraph is exposed to foreign influence.

Let me be frank: the proposed acquisition of The Telegraph by RedBird Capital is not just another media deal.

It is first about foreign influence in our media and the question whether that could damage the freedom of one of our most important national media outlets. I believe the Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport should intervene under the powers granted by the National Security Act 2023. Otherwise, one of our great national papers could become vulnerable to the influence of foreign powers who do not share our values.

My concern is that RedBird’s structure is complex by design.

On paper, the bid is a consortium led by US investment firm RedBird Capital Partners worth about £500 million. But closer inspection reveals a lack of transparency about which inclusions are supporting the bid. That is because the limited visibility we do have reveals a series of relationships and entanglements that raise far more questions than answers. Most troubling of all is the role of John Thornton, RedBird Capital’s chairman, whose extensive and sustained engagement with the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) should ring alarm bells across Whitehall.

Mr Thornton’s connections to the Chinese state are not incidental or historical. They are ongoing and it appears ideological. He sits on the advisory council of China’s sovereign wealth fund (CIC), has chaired institutions aligned with the Belt and Road Initiative, and has openly praised Xi Jinping, even in the wake of the atrocities committed in Xinjiang. In 2021, as Uyghur survivors were giving harrowing testimony of forced sterilisation and systematic rape, Mr Thornton was touring Xinjiang as a guest of the CCP, reportedly dismissing Western concern as “overreaction.”

This is surely not the behaviour of a dispassionate businessman. He is on record in 2023 encouraging Chinese officials to “get into” Western media channels to tell the Chinese story “well”. This was after COVID, after Xinjiang, and after China’s trashing of the Sino-British agreement in Hong Kong. Judge for yourself and watch this video at 26 minutes in, where he says:

“I said to them [Chinese Officials) listen, one thing, one topic you missed which is the English language dominates  the world’s communication channels and you recognize that you literally don’t participate in them at all so the Chinese story as it were is told by people who are not Chinese and guess what they don’t know the story as well they don’t tell it as well and so it’s entirely absent and until you start to  get into those channels you’re going to be a big  big disadvantage….”

Under Section 70A of the National Security Act 2023, the Government is empowered to intervene where a foreign power may, through indirect means, exercise control or influence over a UK entity. Condition 4 of that section is especially relevant here: it allows for intervention where there is any “ability to direct, control or influence” an organisation’s policies or activities, even if no formal ownership or voting rights are held.

In my view, that bar has been met.

There is cause to believe that Chinese state interests could exert influence and there are issues about RedBird’s co-investments with companies like Tencent, designated by the US government as a Chinese military company.

The presence of a Hong Kong-based RedBird fundraising office, now under full CCP legal jurisdiction, further exposes the company to Chinese state pressure. And with sovereign wealth funds from other foreign governments, including Abu Dhabi, already embedded in RedBird’s operations, the question is not if foreign influence will manifest, it is when and how.

Some will argue that raising these concerns amounts to xenophobia or protectionism, but this is not so. The UK is and must remain open to foreign investment, but not at the cost of our democracy, not at the cost of our national security, and certainly not at the cost of our free press.

The Competition and Markets Authority should examine this takeover under the rubric of media plurality.

However, it is the Culture Secretary’s powers under the National Security Act that are most urgent now. We are not talking about a widget factory or a retail chain. We are talking about a paper that informs voters, influences elections, and helps set the national agenda. To allow such an asset to fall under foreign influence, especially from regimes with a record of censorship and coercion, is nothing short of reckless.

I urge the Secretary of State to launch a full investigation into the sources of funds behind RedBird’s bid, including all indirect ties to foreign states and sovereign wealth funds, and to assess the scope for influence. There must also be an assessment John Thornton’s suitability to own or influence any UK media outlet, given his well-documented affiliations with the Chinese state. Any breaches of national security thresholds set out in law should result in the blocking of this bid.

I am well aware that many are straying away from this issue.

There’s almost a kind of omertá in the media about it.

People are fearful of taking on proprietors, and politicians don’t want to make an enemy of newspaper owners. I understand these concerns, but some things are bigger than ambition. We must be clear-eyed about the stakes. This deal risks assisting our adversaries in a well-established information war. China’s model of state capitalism is not confined to its borders. It exports influence, suppresses criticism, and seeks to rewrite the global narrative in its favour. We should not hand them the ability to shape British political thought from afar.

The free press is the bedrock of a free society. Once compromised, it cannot easily be reclaimed.

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