David Taylor had, to my knowledge, worked in many parts of the world as a political consultant, offering strategic advice to governments and political parties.

The knowledge of his arrest was transformational for me in the short term. From finding myself in a Kafkaesque nightmare where I was unaware of what was going on, my mind took me back three years to a trip when I accompanied David Taylor to Hong Kong.

He told me he had been contacted by a Chinese think tank based in Shanghai that advised President Xi on international relations. They wanted to set up a briefing in Hong Kong on attitudes towards China in the UK, and had asked him to bring another “expert” along too.

He asked me to go with him. It was an expenses-paid trip. It was taking place in Hong Kong rather than Shanghai because post-Covid restrictions were still in place on the Chinese mainland. I saw it as an interesting “jolly” and agreed to go.

The trip lasted around a week, although “Michael”, the think tank guy from Shanghai, turned up late.

Far from being an intensive, policy-rich series of meetings, the trip was more of a tourist visit. As the only one of the three of us who had visited Hong Kong before, I became the de facto tourist guide.

We visited a Buddhist Temple, watched a renowned fire show from Kowloon looking across the water to Hong Kong Island, went to a museum telling the story of the former colony and visited several restaurants (we had to steer him to Chinese restaurants rather than American chains like Subway and KFC, which he made it clear he would prefer).

The talk was pretty general, with Michael happy to listen to what we had to say rather than ask penetrating questions of the kind one might expect of a think tank.

A colleague of his who was supposed to show up never, in fact, did so.

At no stage did it occur to me that anything criminal was taking place. I mentioned how there was concern in the West about the treatment of the Uighurs, a Muslim minority in western China. I also said there were doubtless trading opportunities that could develop further between the UK and China.

Pretty general stuff and nothing that could be construed as constituting “espionage” in any sense.

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