Barry Gardiner has sat for Brent since 1997, first for Brent North and now, after boundary changes, for Brent West, a fixture of the Labour benches who ran the environment and trade briefs under Jeremy Corbyn without ever reaching the cabinet. What attached itself to his name came from another direction. Over six years he took more than £500,000 from Christine Lee, a London solicitor, money that largely funded his office, and Lee's son worked as his diary manager. In 2022 MI5 issued a rare public alert that Lee had engaged in political interference on behalf of the Chinese state; she later lost a legal challenge against that warning. The strangest part is not secrecy. The money was declared, the relationship was known, Gardiner says he had liaised with the security services throughout, and the judgment still looks extraordinary. He votes reliably, 388 of 429 divisions. Verdict: the paperwork was in order. The choice was not.