THE China spy case is fast turning into yet another crisis for Calamity Keir Starmer.
The case — or rather the collapse of that criminal prosecution — could even end up bringing about the downfall of this Labour government.
Every day, hour by hour, more claims and counterclaims about who did what, who knew what and when they knew it, are being made.
And, again and again, the Government’s efforts to spin the collapse of the prosecution of two alleged spies as everyone’s fault but their own have only led to more questions than answers.
Of course this is rather more complicated than Partygate, the last scandal to bring down a Prime Minister.
But just like Partygate, the nub of the matter is really pretty simple: Is the Prime Minister telling us the truth or not?
The China spy case may not have come to trial, but the jury is very much still out on whether Starmer is a reliable witness.
And if he is shown to have lied at the Commons despatch box, then his premiership will soon be over.
Blame game
How the PM ended up at the heart of this crisis is another mystery altogether.
The original criminal case involved two men, Christopher Cash and Christopher Berry, accused of spying for China.
They deny all charges and the case was due to go to trial but collapsed last month after the Crown Prosecution Service said it did not have enough evidence to prove that China was an “enemy”, as the law required for a spying case.
What happened next is where the Prime Minister’s problems started, with a blame game of epic proportions.
Starmer first blamed the CPS for dropping the case, then the last Tory government for failing to designate China as an “enemy” at the time of the alleged offences.
Then, apparently, it was all down to a single civil servant who chose not to provide the evidence needed for the case to proceed.
The PM will probably be blaming Brexit next.
It was this blame game which has caught Starmer out and this time it wasn’t just Opposition MPs who were asking awkward questions.
Was this all a conspiracy by Downing Street to make the case go away to curry favour with the Chinese government and win trade benefits to rescue the woeful British economy?
Julia
The Chinese whispers across Whitehall became very loud indeed, with everyone from former Cabinet Secretaries to ex-security chiefs putting their tuppence worth in.
And many are claiming that the REAL reason behind the case collapsing was actually backroom political meddling by Number 10.
Was this all a conspiracy by Downing Street to make the case go away to curry favour with the Chinese government and win trade benefits to rescue the woeful British economy?
Had there been secret political interference by the PM’s own National Security Adviser, Jonathan Powell, in a deliberate bid to scupper the trial?
We don’t yet know the answers to those questions for certain but what we DO know is that the Government’s line of defence so far doesn’t pass the smell test.
It simply isn’t believable that just one civil servant, Deputy National Security Adviser Matthew Collins, was left in sole charge of providing evidence about the Chinese threat to the CPS for this high-profile trial.
Or that he chose to ignore months of requests from the CPS for more evidence to support their case, single-handedly choosing to include a line from the Labour manifesto about China in one of his statements — and yet, in all that time, he didn’t mention it to anyone else, not a single soul.
Are we also really expected to believe that the Prime Minister, upon being informed that the case was about to collapse within days due to that lack of evidence, just shrugged his shoulders and carried on with his day?
It’s all as ludicrous as it is insulting to our intelligence.
Amid the fog of claims and counter-claims, there is one thing that EVERYONE can agree on: China is most definitely a serious threat to the British state.
From the former head of MI6, Sir Richard Dearlove, to the current head of MI5, Sir Ken McCallum, security experts have lined up to tell us again and again how serious that threat is, whether that be militarily, economically or through cyber-espionage.
If the China spy case had gone ahead, it would have been up to a jury to give their verdict. Now it will be up to the court of public opinion to decide if Starmer is guilty of incompetence, or lying — or both.
Julia
And no one is denying revelations in The Spectator magazine that China was able to buy a company that controlled a data hub through which Whitehall sent secret materials.
Every government has the difficult task of trying to balance our national security needs with the desire to keep good trading relations with the powerhouse economy that is China.
Yet time and again they have got that balance wrong, from David Cameron’s plan to allow Chinese firm Huawei to build our 5G network, to allowing China to have a stake in our nuclear power stations, supply most of our solar panels and wind turbines and now many of our electric vehicles too.
And, despite delaying the announcement, the Government is still widely expected to approve plans for a new Chinese mega-embassy near the City of London and, crucially, close to critical communications cables — despite every expert warning that this would pose a serious security risk.
Lives at risk
Is Sir Keir Starmer just hopelessly incompetent or is he willing to do ANYTHING to suck up to President Xi of China to save the UK economy and, by extension, he hopes, his own skin, even if it undermines the long-term national security of our country?
Certainly the abject incompetence of this government is beyond reasonable doubt.
When it comes to managing the economy, immigration, energy policy, welfare, you name it, they are useless at it.
But incompetence when it comes to national security is another thing altogether because it aids and abets the enemy and puts British lives at risk.
Yet there are many in Westminster who believe there is something more sinister afoot. That once again, the tentacles of Chinese state influence have reached into and taken hold of the heart of our government.
This crisis is not going away and there are many more questions that need answers. If the China spy case had gone ahead, it would have been up to a jury to give their verdict.
Now it will be up to the court of public opinion to decide if Starmer is guilty of incompetence, or lying — or both.
UNIS MUST TACKLE JEW HATRED
IT’S high time that universities started tackling the scourge of antisemitism on our campuses.
So I was delighted to learn that Oxford University has suspended student Samuel Williams after he was arrested by the Met Police on suspicion of inciting racial hatred.
The keffiyeh-wearing 20-year-old was filmed at Saturday’s pro-Palestinian march leading chants of “Gaza, Gaza make us proud, put the Zios in the ground”, which is a blatant death threat to Jews and those who, like me, support Israel’s right to exist.
It’s pretty scary that this idiot is supposedly one of the country’s brightest and best.
It’s even more worrying that he is not alone and that many other students and academics think like him.
No wonder so many Jewish students are afraid to walk to their lectures for fear of abuse while university authorities do NOTHING.
Sadly, this pathetic, cosplaying idiot is only a symptom of a disease that has infected so many of our universities for too long.
We need to take a scalpel and cut out this gangrenous hatred once and for all.
