Over the summer, I spent a couple of months in the United Kingdom and couldn\u2019t fail to notice a glaring weakness in its democratic political landscape. This is the constant obsessing by politicians and political commentators about the wrong issues. There is so much in Britain that politicians should indeed be obsessing over: a dysfunctional health service; inefficient, unreliable and expensive public transport; an overstretched and often unresponsive police force; overcrowded prisons; an inefficient \u201cworking from home\u201d culture; potholed roads; decaying town centers; neglected and unkempt public spaces, grass verges, and roundabouts. The list goes on.<\/p>\n
![](\"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/11\/1762278132_813_high_wm.jpg\"\/)
Yet rather than focusing on these key issues, much of the political debate centers on party tribalism, Westminster gossip, the personality traits of politicians, or spurious claims about external threats. Often, the focus is on simplistic \u201cgoodies versus baddies\u201d narratives aimed at attracting populist support and diverting attention from the real issues.<\/p>\n
A classic example is the way UK politicians and media pundits are currently obsessing over claims that China is a threat to Britain, no matter how irrational these claims are. If Britain swallows the United States\u2019 \u201cChina threat\u201d narrative, it will undoubtedly be the triumph of ideology over reality. Yes, China is an economic competitor, but it is also an economic partner. The same is true of virtually all countries trading with Britain, including the US and European countries. To single out China as an economic threat is completely irrational, particularly at a time when the US is imposing punitive tariffs worldwide, including on Britain. The UK benefits from trade with both China and the US. It also has concerns about elements of economic competition with both China and the US. This doesn\u2019t make either China or the US an enemy.<\/p>\n
As for China being a \u201cnational security threat\u201d to Britain, we need to remind ourselves that, in sharp contrast to the US, China has not fought in any war or instigated regime change anywhere in the world over the past 45 years. It has never threatened the UK. It has espoused a frequently articulated policy of peaceful coexistence. It recognizes the sovereign rights of all nations, and has repeatedly stated its opposition to foreign intervention in the internal affairs of independent states. China\u2019s peaceful internationalist vision was recently articulated by President Xi Jinping, who urged all countries to \u201coppose Cold War mentality, bloc confrontation, and bullying practices\u201d. To portray such a country as a security threat is completely irrational. Yet UK political debate is frequently dominated by this fantasy. The latest iteration of this is the confected furor over the collapsed legal case against two British men accused of spying for China. Christopher Cash, a former parliamentary researcher and director of the hawkish China Research Group, and his friend, Christopher Berry, a teacher and consultant working in China, were charged under the Official Secrets Act in April 2024. They were accused of gathering and providing information prejudicial to the safety and interests of the state between December 2021 and February 2023. However, the case has now collapsed because (unsurprisingly) evidence could not be obtained from the government that China was in fact a national security threat.<\/p>\n
\nBritain needs good economic and diplomatic relations with Beijing, rather than portraying it as an enemy. It also needs to focus on its significant internal problems. … British politicians do indeed need to be obsessive, but about their own country\u2019s failings, not some fantasy about China\u2019s designs on the UK<\/strong><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n
Quite apart from this fundamental point that China is not an enemy of the UK, Cash and Berry have strongly asserted their innocence. The two men, who had first met when they were both teaching in China, were accused of collecting insider information about UK politics and government policy, and passing this on to a Chinese intelligence agent, who then forwarded it to a senior politician in China. However, Cash has strongly denied any wrongdoing in the information he passed on via Berry. He clearly stated his belief that Berry was working for \u201ca strategic advisory company\u201d helping clients to \u201cinvest in the UK\u201d. He maintained that the information he gave Berry was publicly available or \u201cjust political gossip that formed part of the everyday Westminster rumor mill\u201d.<\/p>\n
Similarly, Berry has maintained that the information he received from Cash was in fact \u201cprovided to a Chinese company which I believed had clients wishing to develop trading links with the UK\u201d. He insists his reports \u201ccontained no classified information\u201d. They only \u201cconcerned economic and commercial issues widely discussed in the UK at the time and drew on information freely in the public domain, together with political conjecture, much of which proved to be inaccurate\u201d.<\/p>\n
Part of the so-called evidence against Cash and Berry focused on their exchange of political gossip at the time of the Conservative Party leadership contest in 2022 following the resignation of the scandal-hit prime minister at that time, Boris Johnson. In June 2022, Cash is alleged to have told Berry that he thought one of the candidates, Jeremy Hunt, would withdraw from the leadership race. Then in July, he is alleged to have sent a voice message giving his opinion that China hawk Tom Tugendhat would likely be appointed to Rishi Sunak\u2019s Cabinet if Sunak became leader and prime minister. Not only were both these predictions wrong (Hunt was eliminated in the first round of voting, and Tugendhat backed the ultimately victorious Liz Truss rather than Sunak as leader), but they hardly counted as sensitive information of value to a foreign government or prejudicial to the safety or interests of the country. Indeed, Westminster gossip was full of such stories, which were also being widely reported in the media. The apparent importance placed on such \u201cevidence\u201d would make any political commentator vulnerable to similarly dubious charges. The thought also strikes me that if Cash and Berry really had been Chinese spies, the British government, rather than prosecuting them, could have encouraged them to continue providing inaccurate \u201cpolitical conjecture\u201d to misinform and misdirect Beijing.<\/p>\n
Whatever the nuances of this latest \u201cChina threat\u201d story, it beggars belief that at a time when UK politicians should be focused on fixing the myriad of serious problems facing the country, a confected spy story has been dominating the headlines. In Prime Minister\u2019s Questions on Oct 15, this was the only issue repeatedly raised by the leader of the opposition, Kemi Badenoch. Clearly, illogical China-bashing and political posturing were deemed to be more important than the parlous state of Britain\u2019s public services, its economic woes, or the peace process in Gaza.<\/p>\n
This sort of China grandstanding is clearly detrimental to the UK\u2019s national interests. Britain needs good economic and diplomatic relations with Beijing, rather than portraying it as an enemy. It also needs to focus on its significant internal problems. Debate on urgent political, social and economic reforms is being sidelined by the import of America\u2019s irrational anti-China obsessions. British politicians do indeed need to be obsessive, but about their own country\u2019s failings, not some fantasy about China\u2019s designs on the UK.<\/p>\n
\u00a0<\/p>\n
The author is a British historian and former principal of Sha Tin College, an international secondary school in Hong Kong.<\/p>\n
The views do not necessarily reflect those of China Daily.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Over the summer, I spent a couple of months in the United Kingdom and couldn\u2019t fail to notice…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":548923,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3,4],"tags":[748,167454,164790,176108,393,4884,2827,1144,712,16,15,1764],"class_list":{"0":"post-548922","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-uk","8":"category-united-kingdom","9":"tag-britain","10":"tag-china-threat","11":"tag-christopher-cash","12":"tag-conservative-party-leadership","13":"tag-england","14":"tag-great-britain","15":"tag-jeremy-hunt","16":"tag-northern-ireland","17":"tag-scotland","18":"tag-uk","19":"tag-united-kingdom","20":"tag-wales"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/548922","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=548922"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/548922\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/548923"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=548922"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=548922"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=548922"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}