The inconclusive ending of David Baddiel’s article (‘Why don’t Jews play Jews?’ – David Baddiel on the row over Helen Mirren as Golda Meir, 12 January) is unavoidable, because the only way to achieve consistency is to revert to the assumption that actors can act. Take the case of the late Richard Griffiths’s posh gay Uncle Monty in Withnail and I. He came from an underprivileged background and was married to a woman. To have disqualified him on the basis of the latter but not the former seems risibly arbitrary.Peter…
Tag: UK security and counter-terrorism
MI5 accuses lawyer of trying to influence politicians on behalf of China
A security warning from MI5 has been circulated to MPs and peers accusing the lawyer Christine Lee of seeking to improperly influence parliamentarians on behalf of China’s ruling Communist party. The “interference alert” from the security service names and pictures Christine Ching Kui Lee as an individual who has allegedly “knowingly engaged in political interference activities on behalf of the United Front Work Department of the Chinese Communist party”. The notice added that the UFWD “is seeking to covertly interfere in UK politics through establishing links with established and aspiring…
MI6 chief thanks China for ‘free publicity’ after James Bond spoof
The head of MI6 has thanked China’s state news agency for “free publicity” after it posted a James Bond spoof video in response to a statement he made last year that Beijing was the spy agency’s “single greatest priority”. Richard Moore, codenamed C, intervened after Xinhua released an extraordinary four-minute English-language video featuring a pair of supposed British spies, James Pond and an apparent Marvel universe recruit, Black Window. Xinhua said the video, entitled No Time to Die Laughing, was leaked footage of a secret meeting between the British spies…
UK spy chief suggests Beijing risks ‘miscalculation’ over west’s resolve
China is at risk of “miscalculating through over-confidence” over Taiwan, said the MI6 head, Richard Moore, in a statement clearly intended to warn Beijing to back off any attempt to seize control of the island. Giving a rare speech, Britain’s foreign intelligence chief said in London that China was at risk of “believing its own propaganda” and that the country had become “the single greatest priority” for MI6 for the first time in its history. Moore did not mention Taiwan explicitly, but the status of the country, whose independence is…