The British prime minister, the man who is the likeliest suspect on the short list of those who might have ordered British prosecutors to drop their recent “slam-dunk” case against alleged British spies for China Christopher Cash and Christopher Berry, is reportedly blaming the Tories for the problem.
The short list of possible rug-pullers consists of one person. If the prime minister had adamantly wanted the trial of Cash and Berry to proceed, it would be proceeding, regardless of the advice of any other ministers.
Enemies are enemies
In another post, we reviewed some of the latest details of these egregious happenings, which were being rationalized in part by a sturdy pretense by the Keir Starmer–led government that the People’s Republic of China is not an enemy of the United Kingdom according to the wording of a 2025 policy document. The real problem is the Keir Starmer–led government’s desire to appease the People’s Republic of China.
The Telegraph now reports (October 8, 2025) that “PM blames Conservatives for failing to define Beijing as threat at time alleged spying offences were committed”; i.e., prior to 2025.
[The Crown Prosecution Service] believed it had a strong case against the two men. So why, after the case was unexpectedly dropped, is the CPS now blaming the Government for failing to provide it with evidence that China is a threat to national security?
And why is Sir Keir Starmer blaming the Conservatives for failing to define China as a threat at the time the alleged offences were committed?
There are so many examples of the Government describing China as a threat during the relevant period [when the government was being led by Tories] that many MPs believe the real reason the spying trial collapsed is that the Labour Government deliberately pulled the plug on it. [What else could possibly be going on?]
In a letter to the chairmen of Parliament’s home affairs and justice committees earlier this week, Stephen Parkinson, the director of public prosecutions, gave his own explanation of what had happened.
He said that under case law—as established in a 2024 High Court ruling concerning a Russian spy ring—an enemy of the state was defined as “a country which represents, at the time of the offence, a threat to the national security of the UK”.
Mr Parkinson went on to explain that, in the case of Mr Cash and Mr Berry, “none of [the witness statements] provided [to the CPS] stated that at the time of the offence China represented a threat to national security”.
That Keir Starmer (shown above) is blaming members of the opposition party for failing to adequately describe China as an enemy during the time Labour was out of power is a detail new to me.
What is not new is the fact that the only reason that “none of [the witness statements] provided [to the CPS] stated that at the time of the offence China represented a threat to national security” is that they had recently been instructed to change their testimony. Instructed by somebody on the one-name short list of suspects mentioned above.
Threats are threats
It doesn’t matter in fact and in justice whether any government documents extant at the time of the spying or any officials in power at the time of the spying defined the PRC as a “threat,” only as a “challenge,” only as a “bingo partner,” or whatever. The fact that China is and has been a threat to the United Kingdom and the fact, if it can be proved, that Cash and Berry were spying for China in 2022 and 2023 are enough—or were enough until the case against them was dismissed—to convict them of spying on Parliament for China.
The court ruling now being dredged up which concludes that spying for an enemy country must be spying for “a country which represents, at the time of the offence, a threat to the national security of the UK” does not impair the case against Cash and Berry by any linguistic-legal stretch of the imagination. The People’s Republic of China was in fact a threat to and enemy of the United Kingdom during all the period of Cash and Berry’s alleged wrongdoing in 2022 and 2023. The PRC is not a new threat to the United Kingdom.
The Telegraph’s reporter, Gordon Rayner, recounts a long list of acts of spying and other CCP incursions against the United Kingdom that were taking place and being reported around the time that Cash and Berry were allegedly committing their acts of espionage in 2022 and 2023. British politicians and commentators who recognize the threat of China were not and are not coy about calling it a threat. Other politicians and commentators, of course, routinely evade the reality of the threat. This dichotomy obtains in any post-1949 year you care to name.
But if “Sir Keir Starmer [is] blaming the Conservatives for failing to define China as a threat at the time the alleged offences were committed” and this is the only problem with the case against Cash and Berry that the prime minister can come up with, Starmer is implicitly conceding that the evidence against Cash and Berry is still as strong as it was when prosecutors were regarding their case as slam-dunk. Starmer is conceding that the case is still in tip-top slam-dunk condition and that the only problem is the Starmer government’s bad faith and word games. He is conceding that the prosecutors, i.e., the Starmer government, had no (rational) reason to dismiss the case.
If it were possible to dismiss the dismissal, I would say that by way of remedy Starmer should now order his prosecutors to proceed to trial. At the very least, he and his ministers should resign and hold new elections; and Keir Starmer should turn himself in as an unregistered agent of the Chinese Communist Party.
