James O’Brien condemns ‘utterly appalling’ Mark Spencer after Tory MP’s ‘little man in China’ comment

Former chief whip was discussing reports that Liz Truss’s personal phone had been hacked

LBC radio host James O’Brien has condemned Mark Spencer following a comment the Conservative MP made about China.

Former chief whip Spencer, who serves as the MP for Sherwood, was discussing the reports that Liz Truss had been targeted by Russian spies on Sky News, claiming that she had “clearly” been hacked while she was foreign secretary.

When it was put to him that Truss’s personal phone could have been at the centre of the breach, Spencer said that “some little man in China” could be listening into his own private conversations.

“We all talk on personal phones, don’t we?” he said. “I ring my wife, maybe there’s some little man in China listening to the conversations between me and my wife.”

The remark has been widely criticised by figures including Labour politicians and others.

O’Brien, who hosts a daily talk show on LBC, delivered a damning assessment on Twitter.

“It’s been a while since I did a tweet about how, every time you think you’ve reached the bottom of the barrel another utterly appalling Tory MP pops up on the telly to lower standards still further,” he wrote. “So cheers for that, Mark Spencer.”

Shadow ministers Afzal Khan and Sarah Owen accused Spencer of showing his “ignorance, on many levels”, and characterised his language as “outrageous and reckless”.

Labour whip Chris Elmore, meanwhile, shared the story alongside the comment: “The state of this.”

The Mail on Sunday had previously reported that the hack on Truss’s phone had given agents access to exchanges between the former prime minister and foreign officials regarding the Ukraine war, and personal correspondence with the former chancellor of the exchequer Kwasi Kwarteng.