CP

This should be the end for Keir Starmer. It really should. The collapse of the China spy trial, and the web of contradictions that have followed, expose a government that is both incompetent and dishonest.

If this China fiasco does not end with Starmer’s resignation, it will say everything about a broken system and a media class more interested in protecting him than holding him to account.

When the Director of Public Prosecutions publicly confirms that the Labour government’s refusal to provide key evidence caused a national security case to collapse, you are no longer talking about political spin, you are talking about a cover-up, executed in broad daylight.

The CPS’s letter could not have been clearer: the prosecution failed because the government refused to confirm that China was a threat to the United Kingdom during the period when Christopher Berry and Chris Cash were accused of passing information to Beijing. Yet at the same time, MI5, MI6, and ministers were all on record describing China as precisely that, a threat to national security.

How does that square? It doesn’t. And everyone in Westminster knows it.

Starmer’s defence, that he was merely following the “legal situation” left by the Conservatives, has already collapsed under its own absurdity. His own former Cabinet Secretary, Lord Simon Case, has now publicly challenged that line, joining a list of senior figures, including a former head of MI6, a former Director of Public Prosecutions, and three former Cabinet ministers, who have all questioned the prime minister’s account. When your own top civil servant disputes your story, it’s not “party politics,” it’s a crisis of trust.

This is not a minor bureaucratic mishap. This is Britain’s Crown Prosecution Service confirming that the government’s political position, its desire not to offend Beijing, directly affected a live espionage trial. Think about that. A national security case was allowed to collapse because the government didn’t want to upset China.

That is not diplomacy. That is dereliction.

The CPS has effectively hamstrung its own prosecutors. Matthew Collins, the deputy national security adviser, was reportedly prepared to testify about China’s “espionage, cyber interference and other malign activity.” Yet he was prevented from stating the obvious, that China was a threat, because that “did not align with the government’s position.”

The result? A collapsed trial, two accused men walking free, and a British government now accused of misleading Parliament about why it happened.

It is difficult to imagine a more serious breach of public trust. When national security cases are compromised for political convenience, when the civil service is silenced to appease a foreign power, and when the left-leaning press largely shrugs, something fundamental has gone wrong.

Where are the questions from the pro-Labour press? Where are the headlines demanding accountability? Many journalists seem more interested in protecting Starmer’s image than in protecting Britain’s interests. They should ask themselves who they serve… the Labour Party, or the British public.

This affair is not about party politics, it is about principle. It is about whether Britain still has the courage to defend its own security, its own sovereignty, and its own truth.

Starmer’s line on China will not hold. His government’s attempt to downplay this episode only exposes how deeply entangled it is in a strategy of appeasement. This is not leadership. It is capitulation dressed as pragmatism.

If any Conservative prime minister had done this, the airwaves would be on fire. There would be wall-to-wall coverage, emergency debates, resignations by the hour. Instead, there is silence… a silence that speaks volumes.

The British people deserve better than a government that misleads Parliament, undermines its own prosecutors, and bends before Beijing.

The prime minister’s position is untenable. He should resign. And if he will not, Parliament should demand that he does.

By Claire Bullivant

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This article (China Scandal: Starmer’s Position Is Now Untenable, He Must Resign) was created and published by Conservative Post and is republished here under “Fair Use” with attribution to the author CP

Chinese Burn

When policing the Secret World becomes a fool’s errand

DOMINIC ADLER

The farce playing out in SW1 speaks to the difficulty of prosecuting espionage. Did powerful political advisors squash an important spying case to keep the Chinese sweet? Crimes require victims – in spying cases, the victim is usually the State. Which begs an interesting question – what is the State? Is it our servant or master? Are its needs ours? Is, say, a strategy of economic engagement with China less important than letting them blatantly spy on us? To damage us, albeit subtly, using webs of covert influence?

Jonathon Powell seems to think so. This bubble-haired smoothie has stuck a finger in every surrender pie since the Nineties. The Belfast Agreement. Hong Kong. The Chagos Islands. Did I mention Johnny runs a private international schmoozing consultancy? I’d love to see him explain himself, under oath, in Crown Court. I’m not holding my breath, though. Powell strikes me as the quintessence of elite foreign policy arrogance, lost in a world of post-Colonial, quasi-progressive mirrors.

As for the benighted detectives investigating National Security matters? The politics of diplomacy, politics and espionage drip, like slow poison, into cases concerning spies and spying. And, in a world of Whitehall realpolitik, sometimes that’s for legitimate reasons. The identities of sources and intelligence-gathering techniques should be protected, after all. Yes, the State has secrets. And, yes, there are sometimes harsh strategic realities to be observed. Although – you won’t be remotely surprised to learn – on other occasions secrecy masks skulduggery, hidden agendas or incompetence.

Which sticks in my craw, but I don’t make the rules. Still, it’s the rank hypocrisythat (still) boils my piss. Starmer, the holier-than-thou proceduralist, squirming when it’s revealed he’s a greased weasel too. Please, anyone, eject him from office soon.

I once worked on Official Secrets Act (OSA) investigations, including those involving the MI5 and MI6 officers David Shayler and Richard Tomlinson (Dave was funny, whereas Tomlinson was straight out of an Ian Fleming novel). Then there was the Litvinenko murder case, which was an eye-opener too. There were other cases, which never reached court – and for those reasons I can’t discuss them in any detail. I subsequently worked in the Met’s anti-corruption unit, planning sting operations against officers suspected of leaking information to criminals. That involved close liaison with the CPS Special Casework Section, the lawyers who ultimately decide whether complex cases are prosecuted or not – and who feature in the current Chinese espionage affair.

Which is to say I’ve seen the worlds of coppers, spies and lawyers collide – not to mention politicians, diplomats and the media. So here’s my take on the pain in the arse that is investigating espionage.

Jonathon Powell – hardly Prince Metternich, who seldom gave an inch to his enemies.

Which brings me to the British army L1A1 1958 pattern bayonet. I mention this to illustrate how legal definitions are critical during criminal proceedings, and how lawyers (who are paid by the hour) adore time-consuming pedantry. In the China case, the argument (allegedly, but rather dubiously) turns on whether China is ‘an enemy’ under the terms of the creaky old 1911 Official Secrets Act. This novel interpretation is the kind of sophistry one would expect from a government led by a former Director of Public Prosecutions. Yet, this is how the law works.

So, back to my bayonet.

Many moons ago, when the police charged suspects without CPS permission, an officer on my division arrested someone carrying a bayonet. A bayonet is a ‘made’ offensive weapon under the Criminal Justice Act 1988, as opposed to an ‘improvised’ offensive weapon. In law, carrying a carving knife is different to carrying a combat knife. It sounds an academic distinction, given you can kill someone with either, but there you go. It’s deemed to be more serious to carry a weapon designed to kill, rather than one designed to (say) slice ham.

Bayonet guy was duly charged. An open-and-shut case, right? Ha ha ha, my sweet summer child! The CPS sent the arresting officer a memo. Could he prove a bayonet was a made offensive weapon? If not, the charges would be dropped. The officer sent a memo back. He noted how a 1958 pattern bayonet was specifically designed to be fixed to the end of a self-loading rifle and stuck in a Russian’s belly. This, the CPS replied, wasn’t good enough. They needed expert witness testimony, in case the defendant challenged the evidence. This is how lawyers think, don’t blame me. I’ve seen judges deal with such bullshit, during proceedings, using simple commonsense. This appears to be lost on the average CPS caseworker.

The officer, who was admirably bloody-minded, had the bit between his teeth. He sought the advice of a fellow Pc, a former soldier. He decided to ask a Sergeant Major, at the School of Infantry at Warminster, to provide a statement stating yes, a bayonet was made to be hurty.

Which he did. He pointed out how the bayonet had lugs, a blood channel and a nasty pointy bit designed to facilitate the blade’s progress through a ribcage.

The CPS pondered the Sergeant Major’s statement. Would it be possible, they asked, to get a statement from the people who manufactured the bayonets? At this point, the Pc told the CPS functionary to fuck off (it was the early 1990s, which were fun times), else he’d rock up to their office and provide a practical demonstration of how bayonets worked. And, finally, the case proceeded to court.

My point? If this is how lawyers equivocate over the purpose of a sharp piece of stabby metal clearly designed to kill, what chance is there of them agreeing a statutory definition of Britain’s 21st Century geopolitical foes?

This question is allegedly central to the Chinese farce. Apparently, the definition of ‘enemy’ (which was hitherto uncontested) was modified by a stated case under the National Security Act (which was introduced after I left the police). One can imagine the orgy of masturbatory mendacity government legal advisors had with that one, cooking up reasons not to prosecute the alleged spies (who, it should be said, maintain their innocence).

As The Guardian reported:

The 1911 act says a person is guilty of espionage if they have acted in a manner “prejudicial to the safety or interests of the state” and passed on information that might be “directly or indirectly useful to an enemy”.

In the clarifying ruling, made in July last year, Dame Victoria Sharp said: “There is no reason in our view why the term ‘an enemy’ should not include a country which represents a current threat to the national security of the UK.”

Except, as we shall see, it was the CPS who bit back. Which in and of itself, is unusual and deeply significant – the current Director of Public Prosecutions is a blobby, progressive, Starmerish specimen. Even Simon Case, the former Cabinet Secretary and Deep State wunderkind, has weighed in against the Government’s dodgy account of events.

They’re beginning to fight like rats in a sack. Settling scores. It’s what happens in flagging regimes. All they need to do now is fix bayonets.

The 1958 Pattern bayonet. Like China, it’s obviously bloody dangerous.

How, then, do politics impact on actual investigations? The China case is instructive. Unlike TV spooks, real intelligence officers don’t mysteriously appear at crime scenes and tell police what to do. That would be, er, Obstruction, Misconduct in a Public Office and Conspiracy to Pervert the Course of Justice. Not to mention most experienced detectives would gleefully tell a twenty-something MI5 officer called Ollie to fuck off.

In OSA cases, that stuff never occurs at the scene of the crime. If it does, it occurs in the Cabinet Office and during endless voire dire, or meta-trials, with lawyers enjoying silky verbal combat deciding the admissibility of evidence. Furthermore, these arguments usually take place in camera or in Judge’s Chambers, or involve issuing Public Interest Immunity certificates. The process is typically English – nominally open, but very, very closed. A masterclass in opacity. And, again, sometimes (like it or not) it’s for a good reason. Judges, to be fair, are usually stubborn bastards. They loathe being told what to do, especially by spooks.

Which is why the China case stinks. I think the police case is probably solid – the CPS don’t charge this stuff lightly. Yet whistles are being blown by the unlikeliest of suspects. Make of that what you will. Me? I’d call it a reverse miscarriage of justice. Or perhaps, even a perversion of it.

Who in the police, then, ends up investigating this stuff? In my day, it was Special Branch. With the end of the Cold War, there was no full-time OSA unit – as an allegation was received, an SB team would be assembled to investigate it. After I joined, I became involved after volunteering as a counter-espionage search officer (which I wrote about here). I wrote of the experience:

The training took place at the (now closed) police training facility on Hounslow Heath where the Anti-Terrorist Branch, SO13, search wing was based. The course covered the basics of search methodology, with a strong emphasis on counterespionage. This was back in 1996 or 1997, when the internet was something of a novelty, so a lady from the Security Service showed us brilliantly vintage spy kit; a hollowed-out pair of Cuban heels with a recording device inside. Tiny Minox cameras. Disguise kits with comedy sideburns and moustaches. We were shown how to identify secret writing and basic cryptographic keys. The MI5 lady, formidable and equipped with a desert-dry sense of humour, was the sort of person I imagine volunteering to parachute into occupied France.

Then, once you worked on an OSA job, chances were you’d be asked to work on another. Eventually, a dedicated Branch prosecutions unit was created, investigating Public Order Act race hate publication offences (long before any NCHI nonsense – prosecutions were rare), Representation of the People Act (RPA) offences, the OSA and a few other odds and sods.

RPA offences, involving voting and election crime, are fascinating. They offer another example of how politicians tend to manage legislation concerning offences they find, er, problematic. My experience of the RPA showed the extent to which all political parties, especially at a local level, shamelessly took the piss to win extra votes. Vote early, and vote often, as Sinn Fein used to say.

I digress.

When Special Branch was replaced by the Counter Terrorism Command (SO15) in October 2006, it took over all national security investigations. I don’t know if they’ve since created a designated investigative ‘pod’ for OSAs, or whether investigations rotate between whichever team happens to be free. The Alexander Litvinenko murder, although not an OSA investigation, had clear national security implications. I was briefed by the Security Service’s Russia section, which was then something of a Cinderella. The Cold War over, after 9/11 everything was thrown at counter-terrorism, including the most capable, sharp-elbowed and ambitious spooks and coppers. Counter-intelligence, espionage and domestic extremism were the babies thrown out with the bathwater.

Now, the espionage threat to the UK is very real. It’s possibly – given the threat of information warfare and hacking, more acute than the Cold War. And, yes, that includes China. In fact, its well-organised, industrial level spying, facilitated by big money, political infiltration and a sizeable diaspora community, is possibly the single most serious threat to UK national security. Don’t ask me. Ask MI5.

The reptilian politicking national security invites tends to inveigle its way into the simplest policing task. I thought the story of the CPS bayonet was frustrating until I took a ‘loser’s statement’ from one of the intelligence services. A loser’s statement is a legal requirement, proving to a court that property was ‘appropriated without the owner’s consent.’ Which is to say it was stolen. Despite the name, a loser’s statement doesn’t mean the victim is a saddo for having their stuff nicked.

In this case, it was fairly simple. A naughty spy stole a load of files from the records section and took them home. They ended up in the safe of a national newspaper (a proposed charge of handling stolen goods, aimed at the editor, was dismissed for political reasons). That, my old China (ha ha) is theft, right? All I needed to ask the spies was (a) did that file belong to you? (b) Was the naughty spy allowed to take the file home, or pass it to a third party?

It really was that simple.

Except it wasn’t. I walked into a boardroom to meet three charming, and fairly senior, intelligence officers (who declined to give their names, instead offering alphanumeric cyphers). They were accompanied by a barrister. As I wrote a sentence, or asked a simple Old-Bill style question, I’d be politely dismissed while they held a top secret meeting. Presumably, this was to discuss the national security implications of – I suppose – my punctuation. In the end, the one-page statement took two visits and nearly six hours. Although, to be fair, the sandwiches were excellent, the coffee plentiful and views across the Thames scenic. I suppose the OSA forbids me from divulging more, such as the precise type of sandwiches Moneypenny provided.

These investigations are like wading through treacle. They are, however, important. My heart goes out to the officers who investigated the China case – I know how hard they’ll have grafted (at a cost of hundreds if not millions of pounds to the public purse) to get a charge approved. Then, to see the job strangled at birth, by a smirking Jonathon-fucking-Powell?

Welcome to National Security Investigations!

I am unable to confirm or deny if this was the sandwich I was offered by an unnamed intelligence agency in 1997.

The China affair, farce, or whatever you want to call it, reveals why coppers should approach these investigations with caution. Nonetheless, they are important. The nature of war is changing – some people suggest we’re already fighting a shadow conflict with Russia. It’s a strange war, though, where we happily trade with our enemies while indulging in bogus counter-espionage pantomime. A pantomime where clowns like Keir Starmer and Jonathon Powell think they’re playing 4D chess, rather than driving a car with the wheels falling off.

My advice, were I to be so bold, to any future Senior Investigating Officers lumbered with one of these jobs? Ask difficult questions up front. Get guarantees. Try to nail these slippery fuckers down before you spend public money chasing shadows. If they move you find a more compliant candidate, so what? At least you won’t have wasted your time. On the other hand, you might be an over-ambitious lizard who doesn’t give a shit. Hey, you’re the person who has to look in the mirror every morning, not me.

Until then? We rely on decent politicians, journalists, activists and the occasional whistle-blower to keep these fuckers on the straight and narrow. Keep asking questions. Keep this scandal on the boil. Because, right now? The Chinese are laughing. Playing a long game. Watching our ‘leaders’ chase the pennies they toss from their pockets, like paupers teased by 18th Century French aristocrats.

And I don’t know about you, but I’m sick to my back teeth of it. We’re meant to be a sovereign country. Put this case in front of a court. An English court. And, respectfully, tell Xi Jinping to mind his own repressive, expansionist, dictatorial bloody business.

Thanks for reading. In a world of plentiful information, I consider it a privilege you taking time to read my stuff.

Cheers,

Dom.

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This article (Chinese Burn) was created and published by Dominic Adler and is republished here under “Fair Use”

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