Daily Record Political Editor Paul Hutcheon analyses the latest national security row for the UK.
17:00, 05 Mar 2026
Anas Sarwar reaction to arrest of MP Joani Reid’s husband
The latest Westminster scandal has all the ingredients of a Netflix hit or a Jeffrey Archer novel.
A rising star Labour MP, her lobbyist husband, claims of spying for China and a national security panic.
The story of Reid’s spouse David Taylor, one of three men arrested on suspicion of assisting Chinese intelligence, is remarkable.
UK Ministers regularly cite Vladimir Putin as their biggest enemy, but China is the super power they fear the most.
The communist regime is ruthless in using cyber and other espionage tactics to steal commercial and Government secrets.
Intelligence agencies have repeatedly sounded the alarm that China has used espionage to target government, industry and academia.
David Taylor has been arrested amid a counter-terrorism probe
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MI5 Director General Ken McCallum last year warned of a 35% increase in the number of individuals under investigation for “state threat activity”, including “against our Parliament”.
Taylor, 39 is a businessman who has a long history with Labour and an interest in China.
He was a special adviser in Gordon Brown’s Government who is also the point of contact for the All-Party Parliamentary Group on Central Asia.
His wife, who became the Labour MP for East Kilbride and Strathaven in 2024, appears to have no connections to China and is not under investigation.
She is a foreign policy hawk who is opposed to Putin and the regime in China, and who favours standing up to hostile actors on the world stage.
Unlike her late grandfather, the legendary trade unionist Jimmy Reid, she is also anti-communist and a critic of the Left of her party.
Reid is also known as a vocal champion of the causes she pursues in Parliament, such as the primacy of biological sex and calling for a grooming gang inquiry in Scotland.
As one Scottish Labour figure said: “If you were looking for an MP spy who would be low-profile and act surreptitiously, I don’t think Joani Reid would fit the bill.”
Details of what the three men have allegedly done are scant and each is entitled to the presumption of innocence.
But the allegations overlap with the world of politics and this fact presents a danger for Labour.
The Prime Minister will be asked by political opponents to provide details he is in no position to offer.
UK Labour will suspend Reid, despite her not being investigated by the authorities, triggering a push back from Scottish Labour and heightening tensions between Glasgow and London.
In the meantime, the focus is more likely to be on Taylor’s links to China and Labour.
He is a party donor and questions will be asked about the full extent of his financial contributions.
The Labour Government cannot catch a break and Starmer will want to shut down the row as quickly as possible.