By now it is clear to anyone whose main news source is not China Daily that the Prime Minister has got himself into a tangle over the handling of the alleged Chinese spy case – specifically why a trial of two British citizens accused of passing sensitive information to agents of Beijing was abandoned.
It is now easier to count those satisfied with the government’s threadbare explanation than the growing number of senior insiders – including former national security advisors, the speaker of parliament and a former spy chief – expressing doubts and frustrations over the dropping of the court case. Highly unusually, the head of the Crown Prosecution Service Stephen Parkinson has made clear that prosecuting teams repeatedly failed to get the Government to confirm that China posed a present “threat to the national security of the UK”.
Had the trial gone ahead, Christopher Cash, a parliamentary researcher, and Christopher Berry, a teacher working in China, would have had the opportunity to defend themselves. They insist that they are innocent and could well have argued that they acted unknowingly or were drawn into giving information they could not have known was sensitive or intended to be used against the UK.
In such matters, a jury system guided by a judge is well-equipped to deliver a verdict, while allowing for a solid defence, as Starmer, a barrister turned chief prosecutor himself, hardly needs reminding.
But the trial did not go ahead and Number 10 and officials close to the PM now stand accused of having been the block. Suspicions fall especially on national security adviser Jonathan Powell. The head of the CPS has practically told us so.
“Efforts were made over many months,” Parkinson said, “but notwithstanding the fact that further witness statements were provided, none of these stated at the time of the offence China represented a threat to national security.” He concluded: “When this became apparent, the case could not succeed.”
For whatever reason, the “enemy” description disappeared from these statements in a manner that Beijing would welcome. In truth, this legal definition is not clear cut. Numerous sources in the Foreign Office intelligence services and government tell me that China clearly “is” an enemy, in that it repeatedly and aggressively targets the UK with cyber and human espionage to a degree which extends far beyond the norms of intelligence gathering which governments practice on each other.
Sometimes governments avoid saying so openly (as the Conservatives did latterly) but they choose their own words. China’s recent up-ramping of espionage and South China Sea activity seems to me to be hostility towards the West. It is just a matter of whether one chooses to call a spade a spade, or a digging implement with whom we wish to have a nuanced relationship.
The third angle that matters is discerning the real reason all of this came to a head. “Cutting out the blather and Whitehall BS,” as one former intelligence chief put it to me. “The government ran scared of this trial upsetting Beijing before Starmer heads there on an investment visit next year, and the Chancellor thinks China can help with green tech investments no one else wants to finance and battery EV capacity – and that’s pretty much the end of the excuses.”
Given the tension between the “hawks and doves” over how to handle all this, it is not surprising. What irks me is the lack of candour about the real reasons behind the dropping of a trial which the leader of the Commons Lindsay Hoyle rightly says should have happened. Democracies deserves better – it’s one advantage we do have over “deep state” China. The government should be more mindful of that.
The security services certainly thought a system in which the vetting of Chinese businesspeople visiting parliament and official institutions was kept light – visitors who are close to a security state which targets the UK – was nuts and dangerous to boot.
Anyway, the great plan is becoming even more embarrassing because it has attracted the attention of the Trump administration, which is now bloviating about not trusting the UK with intelligence. It is a painful irony that this charge is being made by the US when the bigger threat to international security cohesion is, in fact, on the opposite side – a leaky and unpredictable Trump administration.
Once again, Starmer has got into a muddle by overcommitting to measures which require more nuance and dismissing countervailing evidence too rashly. China invests in the UK not to please a transient Prime Minister, but because it is cash-rich and seeks know how from investments in the West. Inward trade from the People’s Republic was around £70bn in 2024 – exports were a mere £28bn. That is the kind of imbalance Donald Trump would start a trade war about.
More sensibly, the UK wants to work on trying to get China to take more UK goods and services. But that aim now collides too forcefully with sundry warnings that Britain is seen as a weak partner, which will not strike back when its interests are attacked.
I have known Powell for decades and always found him to be astute, wry and “pragmatic” in understanding dealings with unpleasant regimes. He is rightly feted as the author of the Good Friday Agreement to bring peace to Northern Ireland and a master of the grinding complexity behind that. His professional life out of government has behind-the-scenes deals on conflict resolution, which aim at getting the best for both parties – and I am sure he approaches this role with the same spirit.
It is nonsense to describe him as in some way “in hock” to Beijing for some self-interested purpose: he is simply making a judgement on the UK’s options. But it is also OK – and often necessary – for a leader to question the beliefs and biases of their associates, however close they are. That is what the “prime” bit of prime minister is all about.
One way or the other, it’s a fiasco which has ended up attracting more attention to the machinations of the British deep state than the declared benefits of Chinese cooperation. If this is successful statecraft, I am a peace-loving Chengdu panda.