Jimmy Lai

Clerical errors Sir: Glad though I am that The Spectator bucks the trend in its conviction that the C of E is alive and well (Easter Special, 4 April), I cannot help but be frustrated by the sense that too many of these articles speak of, for and to a secure metropolitan elite. Of course Gen Z flocks to the church of Four Weddings and a Funeral. But what is there for those of us who do not live in such places of power and plenty? My sister and I, aged 19 and 23, are two Gen Z folk intellectually serious about faith. When we return home to Mid Devon and attend our childhood church for high days and holidays, we find a congregation that numbers about five, including our parents. And that’s if there even is a service.

Sharp-eyed readers will notice that Peter Brookes’s fox, who normally tops this column, is absent. They can be reassured. He has gone to ground but will be (in hunting parlance) ‘bolted’ in time to return for future issues. I decided to remove the fox for Holy Week because the replacement drawing tells a story. It is by Jimmy Lai, the billionaire former boss of Apple Daily in Hong Kong. He drew it in solitary confinement in Stanley prison. He has now been incarcerated for nearly 2,000 days. This February, he was sentenced to a further 20 years for ‘conspiracy to collude with foreign forces’ and ‘to publish seditious materials’.

Home Morgan McSweeney, the helmsman of Labour, walked the plank by resigning as chief of staff to Sir Keir Starmer, the Prime Minister, whom he had advised in 2024 to appoint Lord Mandelson as ambassador to Washington. Mr McSweeney’s resignation statement began: ‘After careful reflection, I have decided to resign from the government,’ as though he had been a member of the government. In a speech meant to be about funding for local communities, Sir Keir said he was ‘sorry for having believed Mandelson’s lies and appointed him’. But he added: ‘I had no reason to believe he was telling anything other than the truth’, even though the Financial Times had in 2023 reported that Mandelson had stayed at Jeffrey Epstein’s house when the financier was in prison.

Forty years ago this Christmas I visited Hong Kong for the first time – a few days after the signing in Beijing of the Sino-British Joint Declaration that sealed the former colony’s transfer to mainland rule in 1997. It was a moment of apprehension, but at least the timetable had been set. And how lucky I was to have experienced that extraordinary outpost as it was then, in such contrast to what China’s masters have made it now. The Christmas Day service in St John’s Cathedral, overhead fans stirring the turbid air, was a poignant glimpse of Hong Kong’s past. Norman Foster’s Hongkong Bank building, the most expensive in the world at the time, was approaching completion as a symbol of commercial confidence in the future.

As I write, the Foreign Secretary, David Lammy, is flying to China. So I am only guessing when I say that I expect he will ‘raise’ the case of Jimmy Lai, the newspaper publisher, businessman and Democratic party supporter, a British citizen. Mr Lai has now been imprisoned in Hong Kong for four years with his numerous trials not yet completed. ‘Raise’, yes, but not as in ‘do anything about’ the situation. So far, the best the Foreign Office has done is to ‘request consular access’ to Mr Lai.