We’ve already come across Glen Owen and Harry Cole, broadcasting batty bunkum about the novel coronavirus pandemic from the platform of the Mail on Sunday. Glen and Harry are now turning their searchlight away from science, and submitting business and economics to its cold, hard glare. In an article under one of the Mail’s trademark lengthy headlines they tell to us today the tall tale of the:

“‘Suited svengalis’ who help the Chinese government decide which British businesses to buy will be investigated by MPs amid fears Beijing is using coronavirus pandemic to advance its commercial interests”

Political figures and advisers who profit by helping the Chinese regime to target British businesses are to be investigated by MPs amid growing fears that Beijing is using the cover of Covid-19 to advance its commercial interests. 

The move comes after a China backed company mounted an attempted coup at Imagination Technologies, a UK firm which designs graphic chips for apple. 

The company was sold to private equity business Canyon Bridge Capital Partners in 2017 for £550million in a deal approved by Theresa May’s Government on the basis that the company would remain subject to US laws. 

However, the organisation later moved its head office to the Cayman Islands – outside US jurisdiction. Last week, senior MPs sounded the alarm after China Reform Holdings, the Beijing-backed lead investor in Canyon Bridge, tried to take control of the firm – amid fears it planned to transfer the ownership of intellectual property to China.  

I’m afraid I’m a bear of very little brain, and it’s unclear to me what Covid-19 has got to do with the alleged “attempted coup”. Perhaps the terrible twins can elucidate?

Tom Tugendhat, the Tory chairman of the Foreign affairs Committee, warns ‘suited svengalis’ who profit from the skills they’ve acquired over years of training would face scrutiny. 

Writing in the Mail on Sunday, he says: ‘too frequently, we’ve seen those who once wrote the rules and negotiated agreements to protect us, and some who still sit in our Parliament, selling the tricks they learned in Government.’ 

This newspaper has seen correspondence linking Global Counsel, the public affairs company chaired by Peter Mandelson, to Canyon Bridge. Global Counsel’s staff includes Alex Dawson, who was working for Mrs May in Downing street when the 2017 deal was agreed.

In the correspondence, Ben Wegg-Prosser, the company’s managing director, advises Canyon Bridge over how to respond to MPs demanding reassurances over the British company’s future.

Or perhaps not. Please excuse my French, but WTF has any of that got to do with Covid-19 pandemic? Please feel free scan the rest of the article if you have a well developed sense of the ridiculous. Then you’ll no doubt be able to point out to me the Covid-19 reference(s) that I must have inadvertently blinked and missed.

I still haven’t received any answer from anyone at the Mail on Sunday following my last such enquiry, but I’m a glutton for punishment, so here we go again:

Hello again @MrHarryCole,

I still haven’t received an answer from you or @MailOnline to my previous missive, but I’m a glutton for punishment!

Please can you explain the relevance of #COVID19 to your recent article with Glen about #SuitedSvengalis?https://t.co/lEh4Y6iAks

TIA pic.twitter.com/ZgMaCAKsDc

— Jim Hunt (@jim_hunt) April 19, 2020

Watch this space!

(But please don’t hold your breath)