When government is less transparent than it should be, the problem may be indifference or bureaucratic inertia. But sometimes the problem is a desire to actively hide what’s going on. When government neglects to follow up on the findings of an investigation, it may lack sufficient evidence to continue. But sometimes decision-makers refuse to proceed in deference to those who would be offended by proper follow-up.
The Cordoba Foundation
In a Substack piece on “The Quiet Tolerance: How the UK Named, Investigated, and Then Ignored the Cordoba Foundation,” Thom Aster detects a pattern (April 7, 2026).
The Cordoba Foundation case is about Islamic terrorism. “The government called it a front for the Muslim Brotherhood. A foreign state designated it a terrorist entity. A major bank shut its accounts. And then nothing happened.”
The UK government had known that the Cordoba Foundation was a front for the Muslim Brotherhood since at least 2009. “In 2015, a UK government-commissioned review concluded the Muslim Brotherhood was secretive, its denial of violence not credible, and its ideology contrary to British values. And through all of this, the Cordoba Foundation continued operating from London while the UK government took no action against it whatsoever.”
A companion piece discusses “The Transparency Gap: How the UK Confirms Chinese Influence Threats But Stays Silent When Investigations Fail.” But what tends to happen is refusal to finish the job, not “failure” that comes as a bolt out of the blue. “The UK government names and acts on Chinese influence threats. It goes quiet when investigations close without charges and when compliance data does not exist…” (April 6, 2026).
One of Aster’s examples pertains to the discovery of loci of transnational repression in the UK, Chinese so-called “police stations.” He contrasts the lack of follow-up in the British case with the existence of follow-up in a similar American case.
The Chinese embassy told the Foreign Office the stations had been closed permanently. Beijing called the allegations a complete political lie. But the crucial comparison is with the United States. In April 2023, the US Department of Justice arrested two individuals in New York for operating a secret Chinese police station in Manhattan. They were charged with conspiracy to act as illegal agents of the Chinese government. The UK response was investigation without charge, followed by a statement that public scrutiny had suppressive impact on the stations’ operations. The implication is that the UK chose a different enforcement path, relying on public exposure rather than criminal prosecution. But the silence that follows such decisions creates a vacuum. The public knows Chinese police stations existed. The public knows they were investigated. The public knows no charges were brought. What the public does not know is why the UK chose not to follow the US precedent.
Aster concludes:
The pattern is consistent. When the UK government takes action against Chinese state influence, it publicises it…. When investigations close without action, the public is told nothing. The police station investigation [allegedly] found no criminal activity, but the public does not know what was investigated or what thresholds were applied….
The National Security Act 2023 provides powers to prosecute foreign interference. The FIR [Foreign Influence Registration] Scheme provides transparency mechanisms to expose foreign influence. But transparency only works when it is symmetric [Aster by this seems to mean “consistent”]. Confirmed threats should be publicised. Closed investigations should be explained. Compliance regimes should publish data. Otherwise, the UK government is not shedding light on foreign influence. It is selectively illuminating its own enforcement successes while leaving the public in the dark about its failures, its non-findings, and its enforcement gaps. The Chinese state operates in darkness. The UK response should not mirror it.
Spies and lies
The UK government may not be entirely quiet under the described circumstances. The silence may be leavened by lies. This was true last year when the Starmer administration abandoned a developed case against two Brits accused of spying on Parliament for China as it was about to go to trial.
An alleged insufficiency of evidence pertained not to whether the accused men were guilty of spying for the People’s Republic of China but to whether China is a threat to the United Kingdom (it is) or had been regarded as such by the previous administration (it was); propositions which, had there been any genuine doubt about them, could have been amply explored and substantiated in court. But Keir Starmer, desiring to appease Xi Jinping, didn’t want the matter to get so far. He and his colleagues tied their own hands and then lamented that their hands were tied.
The problem is not primarily one of inconsistent or “unsymmetrical” transparency. Suppose Starmer had been consistently transparent about last year’s spy case and had said “Despite an abundance of conclusive evidence, we’re dropping the case against these two men and flouting the dictates of justice in order to appease China.” There’d still be a problem.
