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
