THE HUAWEI row is clearly very fierce inside the Conservative Party, with leaks and sackings at the highest levels. But if you aren’t a Tory, it’s a bit harder to grasp who is doing what to whom and why.

Is Theresa May willing to let the Chinese Communist Party spy on all our mobile phones in exchange for a bit of investment?

Or does spider-wrangling fantasist Gavin Williamson want to start a war with China to show he is big, and suck up to President Trump to feel even bigger?

At the risk of making it more complicated, the Hauwei affair has echoes of the Westland Affair of 1985-6, a key internal row of Thatcher’s Tory government, also involving “security” and “international investment.”

The Huawei row has reflections of the Westland affair, although it also shows that Britain’s industrial base is a lot weaker now. The Westland Affair was an argument about keeping a British firm British. Huawei is about keeping a foreign firm out of Britain.

Both were “economic nationalist” arguments, but in the ’80s there was a “positive” case for British industry, now there is just a “negative” case against inward investment.

The Westland Affair, like Huawei, involved what the government saw as a “strategic industry.” Westland Helicopters, a British firm making key military and civil helicopters, was in trouble. Thatcher was happy for a US firm, Sikorsky, to come in and rescue them by becoming a major shareholder. Then-defence secretary Michael Heseltine said a mix of other British and European firms should invest and own Westland to save the firm.

Thatcher was happy to let the “market” go where it would, even if that meant a “key” industry ended up in US hands. Heseltine said this crucial employer, involved in key British jobs and in a key “strategic” arms industry, should stay British or accept European partners.

The argument was so fierce that there were Cabinet-level leaks and huge rows. Heseltine resigned. Thatcher survived, but only by “allowing” her key ally, trade secretary Leon Brittan, to resign. The row was so fierce that it looked like it might bring Thatcher down.

This was a deep division between two different visions of a big-business led Britain. Both thought the nation’s strength was best measured by big companies making big profits.

For socialists, the measure of the strength of the nation would be the health, security, and enjoyment of its people and the strength of the social system.

But for the Tories the argument centred around whether we should have Big Companies making Big Profits in Britain, or Big British Companies making Big British Profits.

The Westland argument was more intense inside the Tory Party than outside it: the fact that this was an arms firm added to the fierceness of the Tory argument without drawing in the broader public.

A British chocolate manufacturer being sold off to a foreign owner, and jobs being cut, makes an impact, because everyone buys chocolate. The sense that Westland was important is stronger for those who buy attack helicopters than the general public.

The argument between Thatcher and Heseltine was about whether the “invisible hand of the market” should be left alone, or nudged in a “national” direction by the government.

I’ve always found the “invisible hand of the market will help us” crowd hard to understand. Yes the invisible hand is powerful, but why do you think it will help you, instead of, say, slapping your face or grasping your testicles very, very hard?

It’s a bit like stone age cave people worshipping the volcano. Yes, the fire-god looks powerful. But worshipping it looks a bit daft when the lava starts falling on your head.

The Huawei argument seems similar — and similarly more intense inside than outside Tory circles. The May camp seem to be saying — we are in a tight spot for trade and investment after Brexit, so we’ll just deal with any possible security threats of having a Chinese government-linked corporation in our “essential national mobile phone infrastructure.”

Gavin Williamson seems to be saying “the invisible hand of the free market puts us at risk of foreign national power.” The security threat is that the Chinese government will have an advantage by a firm they influence helping run the 5-G network.

It’s a bit of a pure free market vs economic nationalism argument.

Williamson also wanted to both sabre rattle against China by sending a warship into the South China Sea. And he clearly wants to be closer to Trump, whose officials are playing up the Huawei danger: the fact that Trump wants to start a trade war with China suggests this is as much about competing trade blocs as a genuine fear that Huawei will spy on our mobiles or suddenly turn off all our phones at a crucial moment.

Inevitably, with any big row inside the ruling elite, there are jobs to be had. Huawei has hired former BP boss Lord Browne and former senior civil servant Sir Andrew Cahn to sit on its British board, in an effort to show they are friendly.

There is one big difference with the Westland argument: back then, Heseltine wanted to keep a big British company “British.” Now, Williamson just wants to keep one big foreign firm out of our infrastructure.

It’s a negative campaign, to “keep out the Chinese” because there is no positive to promote — Britain lacks a big telecoms “national champion” to do the work instead.

Like the Westland affair, Huawei looks set to cause real damage within Tory circles. But for the rest of us there are, I think, bigger questions.

Firstly, our “national security” is principally about the health of our people, not the profits of our top companies.

And secondly, if we are worried about which companies are involved in the 5-G network, the bigger question is why our industrial base has weakened so we don’t have our own high-tech engineering champion.