\n<\/p>\n
Once, before the election, Labour\u2019s approach to China was forthright. The party promised to declare China\u2019s systematic repression of its Uyghur Muslim minority as a genocide. Its MPs united to support a genocide amendment to a 2021 trade bill, voting with Tory rebels and only failing to defeat Boris Johnson\u2019s government by 11 votes.<\/p>\n
But in the past week recriminations have swirled after the prosecution of two Britons accused of spying for China was dropped. A refusal by the government to describe China as a national security threat has reinforced Labour\u2019s already softened approach to Beijing and sharpened focus on the figure at its heart: Keir Starmer\u2019s national security adviser, Jonathan Powell.<\/p>\n
Critics say Labour is hastily pursuing a return to the \u201cgolden era\u201d rapprochement led by David Cameron in 2015, when China\u2019s president, Xi Jinping, came on a state visit and Beijing was given approval to build nuclear power stations in the UK.<\/p>\n
That collapsed after China crushed the pro-democracy movement in Hong Kong and repeatedly engaged in cyber espionage against British targets. Beijing then became a \u201cdecisive enabler\u201d in supporting Russia\u2019s war in Ukraine with critical components.<\/p>\n
\u201cIn opposition, there was a strong sense of moral conviction on Labour party policy on China,\u201d said Luke de Pulford, director of the International Parliamentary Alliance on China, a cross-party group of China-sceptic legislators. \u201cNow that seems to have fallen by the wayside in favour of a focus on trade, investment, sacrificed at the altar of perceived economic gain.\u201d<\/p>\n
In the run up to the election, Labour had already lightened the policy load in its manifesto, promising \u201ca long-term and strategic approach\u201d to China that would be generated by an \u201caudit of our bilateral relationship\u201d.<\/p>\n
At the same time, threats from China continued. The chief executive of the Electoral Commission said last month that it took three years to recover from a Chinese hack between 2021 and 2022 in which the details of 40 million voters were accessed.<\/p>\n
An estimated 20,000 Britons have been approached by Chinese state actors on LinkedIn in the hope of stealing industrial secrets, the head of MI5 warned in October 2023. Over a quarter of a million military payroll records were compromised by hackers from China in May 2024.<\/p>\n
Powell, Tony Blair\u2019s chief of staff between 1995 and 2007, arrived in November as national security adviser \u2013 in effect the prime minister\u2019s most important geopolitical adviser. A political appointment, he is the first special adviser, reporting to Starmer, to hold the post.<\/p>\n
A veteran of the Northern Ireland peace negotiations, Powell had set up Inter-Mediate, a charity aimed at promoting dialogue between parties to a conflict. \u201cIf we ever want to secure lasting peace then we have to engage with our enemies, not just with those we like,\u201d he said in a Guardian article in September 2021.<\/p>\n
Other figures were also trying to exert influence on China policy after Labour\u2019s election victory. A couple of months before his nomination (and short-lived appointment) as UK ambassador to the US, Peter Mandelson \u2013 the only Labour peer to vote against the genocide amendment \u2013 said Britain had gone too far in its falling out with China. In September 2024, he also told the South China Morning Post \u201cwe need a relationship that enables us to cooperate with China when desirable and necessary\u201d.<\/p>\n
Labour backtracked on its commitment to label Uyghur repression as a genocide in October 2024 before a visit to Beijing by then foreign secretary David Lammy.<\/p>\n
The month after, Starmer met Xi at the G20 summit in Rio de Janeiro, the first time leaders from the two countries had met since 2018. Other engagements followed. Rachel Reeves, the chancellor, visited in January, and said the UK should have \u201ca pragmatic and good relationship\u201d with countries around the world.<\/p>\n
She returned with pledges of \u00a3600m of investment over five years, though some specialists argued that was a poor return. \u201cShe shouldn\u2019t have been getting out of bed for less than a billion,\u201d said Sophia Gaston, a senior research fellow at King\u2019s College London.<\/p>\n
Powell himself visited Beijing this July, meeting China\u2019s foreign affairs minister, Wang Yi, in an announcement placed on the Chinese embassy\u2019s website. \u201cPowell expressed the UK\u2019s willingness to enhance dialogue,\u201d the Chinese statement said. Starmer will visit China, perhaps as soon as next year.<\/p>\n
Meanwhile, China was left off the enhanced tier of the Foreign Influence Registration Scheme (Firs) when it launched in July. It is only occupied by Russia and Iran.<\/p>\n
The enhanced tier requires anyone in the UK acting for a foreign power or entity across a full range of political and economic activity to declare their activities to the government or face sanctions. Even a proposal to only designate China\u2019s military and espionage apparatus in the higher tier has not been implemented, amid Beijing\u2019s threats of retaliation.<\/p>\n
The promised China audit never publicly materialised, with experts arguing it was too difficult to publish a frank document. Instead it was subsumed into a UK national security strategy published in late June by Powell\u2019s team in the Cabinet Office, which promised \u201cgreater robustness and consistency\u201d in dealing with Beijing.<\/p>\n
<\/span>Christopher Berry (left) and Christopher Cash leaving Westminster Magistrates\u2019 Court, where they were accused of spying for China under the Official Secrets Act.<\/span> Composite: Jeff Moore\/PA<\/p>\n It is against this backdrop that Stephen Parkinson, the director of Crown Prosecution Service, revealed this week that for \u201cmany months\u201d before August, he had tried and failed to get an assurance he thought necessary to prosecute Christopher Cash, a former parliamentary aide to backbencher Alicia Kearns, and his friend Christopher Berry. Both men were accused of spying for China, passing information from Westminster to the country\u2019s ruling politburo \u2013 though they denied the charges.<\/p>\n Parkinson had wanted Matthew Collins, a UK deputy national security adviser, to testify that China was currently \u201ca threat to the national security of the UK\u201d. But when it was clear the statement was not forthcoming, he abandoned the case.<\/p>\n On Thursday, while visiting India, Starmer said he could \u201cbe absolutely clear no ministers were involved\u201d in decisions relating what evidence to submit. Downing Street aides were emphatic that denial covered Powell as well.<\/p>\n The allegation that China was seeking to obtain information from Westminster was novel, unlike accusations of hacking or industrial espionage. Yet, due to a still unclear set of circumstances, the trial of Cash and Berry did not begin, because the director of public prosecutions could not obtain what he wanted from the government machine.<\/p>\n Whoever was at fault, it amounted to \u201cpusillanimous judgment over what would upset the Chinese\u201d, according to one former senior Whitehall insider.<\/p>\n Gaston, a foreign policy expert, argues that any engagement with Beijing should always be undertaken from a position of confidence. \u201cThe last thing we want when the government is pursuing a relationship reset with China is to send a message that there were any constraints in its capacity to defend national security, and that we might not have all the right tools to sufficiently protect our democracy,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Once, before the election, Labour\u2019s approach to China was forthright. The party promised to declare China\u2019s systematic repression of its Uyghur Muslim minority as a genocide. Its MPs united to support a genocide amendment to a 2021 trade bill, voting with Tory rebels and only failing to defeat Boris Johnson\u2019s government by 11 votes. But<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":27350,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[48],"tags":[1844,2153,1330,258,1121,328,16334,3184,6413,14373],"class_list":{"0":"post-27349","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-politics","8":"tag-case","9":"tag-china","10":"tag-dropped","11":"tag-foreign","12":"tag-labours","13":"tag-policy","14":"tag-reinforced","15":"tag-softening","16":"tag-spy","17":"tag-stance"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/27349","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=27349"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/27349\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/27350"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=27349"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=27349"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=27349"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}