Don’t want good acting talent going to waste, do we.
A case against two researchers who are accused of spying for China has collapsed - because the UK government could not produce evidence that China was “a threat”.
The CPS had to drop the case.
That’s interesting in itself. The CPS brought the prosecutions, without seeing any evidence? Boo hiss!
Evidence isn’t what it used to be…Dear old Dearlove, the old ex-MI6 grandee tells us that China is indisputably a threat, because of…cyber attacks, and loads of MI6 people that - it is alleged - could have said it was.
Maybe MI6 thought being cross-examined on digital allegations and hearsay was too embarrassing.
The standard of the 1911 Official Secrets Act is “a threat”. You know, Kaiser Wilhelm, Adolf Hitler.
I don’t buy it myself - if China was a threat, Yvette Cooper would have proscribed it.
Funnily enough, Old Tory Dearlove agrees with Young Tory, the the leader of HM opposition Kemi Bad Enough.
Dearlove: "If the Government had “caved” to Chinese pressure then it was “absolutely outrageous”.
Badenoch: Labour “deliberately collapsed the trial” because “the Prime Minister wants to suck up to Beijing”.
Anyway politics apart, diplomacy around spying isn’t like that. China “exerting pressure”… where are the tit-for-tat expulsions (as necessary for theatre as were the Keystone Cops?). The audience being short changed, can’t get the funding.
Anyway, Dearlove must still be good box office, as the BBC was playing it all day, with a stiff upper lip that belied the absurdity of the pantomime, which helped deflect from the dubiety of the prosecution itself.
Let’s not be hard on this national treasure. He knows how to tell a good story, and that’s what counts.
Fellow actors rush to his defence:
“He was head of MI6 during the invasion of Iraq. He was criticised by the Iraq Inquiry for providing unverified intelligence about weapons of mass destruction to the Prime Minister, Tony Blair.[2]”
[Wikipedia]
Trailer by the Independent…
ED
Former head of MI6: Starmer is damaged by spy trial row - China is a threat to UK
Sir Richard Dearlove, who led MI6 between 1999 and 2004, told The i Paper that China was indisputably a national security threat
Richard Dearlove, pictured left, said he could not understand why the case against Christopher Cash and Christopher Berry was dropped
Whitehall Correspondent
October 08, 2025 4:31 pm (Updated 8:26 pm)
The collapse of a case involving two men accused of spying for China is a “mess” which is “damaging” to Sir Keir Starmer, a former head of MI6 has said.
Sir Richard Dearlove, who led MI6 between 1999 and 2004, told The i Paper that China was indisputably a national security threat and that he could not understand why the case against Christopher Cash and Christopher Berry was dropped.
He said that if the Government had “caved” to Chinese pressure then it was “absolutely outrageous”.
Cash, a parliamentary researcher from London, and Berry, a teacher in Oxfordshire, were arrested in March 2023. They were accused of gathering and providing information prejudicial to the safety and interests of the state between December 2021 and February 2023 but denied the allegations.
The case against them collapsed last month, triggering criticism from ministers and MPs.
On Tuesday, Stephen Parkinson, the Director of Public Prosecutions (DPP), said the Crown Prosecution Service dropped the case because evidence could not be obtained from the Government referring to China as a national security threat.
Some critics have suggested the Government did not want the trial to proceed for fear it would damage attempts to reset relations with China – a claim that the Government has emphatically denied.
Sir Keir Starmer, who is currently on a trip to India, has blamed the collapse of the case on the previous Tory government (Stefan Rousseau/Pool via AP)
Speaking to The i Paper, Dearlove said: “It’s all based on the technicality to do with the law, the law being an ass in this particular case. I just can’t understand why the Government was not prepared to make a statement.”
“Actually under the 1911 [Official Secrets Act] my understanding is that to secure a prosecution you only need to secure in court evidence of damage to national security… now I would have thought in this case it was pretty straightforward.
“I gather from talking to people in Parliament, particularly amongst the officials who are responsible for parliamentary security, they’re absolutely spitting tacks, including the Speaker.”
Dearlove said there were public statements made by top security officials confirming that China poses a threat to UK national security.
“You’ve had the Director General of the Security Service [MI5 boss Sir Ken McCallum] standing up, identifying China as a major threat to national security… That was way back.
“You’ve had a joint press conference [in 2024] with the then head of MI6 [Richard Moore] with the head of CIA [Bill Burns] identifying China as a national security threat. I just frankly don’t get it.”
In 2023, McCallum said there had been a “sustained campaign” of Chinese espionage on a “pretty epic scale”.
In September 2024, Moore appeared alongside Burns at an event organised by The Financial Times in which he talked about China working together with Russia, Iran and North Korea and said the country “in many cases contests our interests, contests often our values”.
They said that for both agencies, “the rise of China is the principal intelligence and geopolitical challenge of the 21st century, and we have reorganised our services to reflect that priority”.
Dearlove said there was a wealth of additional information which could be drawn upon to show that China is a threat.
“You’ve got all the evidence of cyber attacks, you’ve got evidence of the rip-off of intellectual property, you’ve got a tonne of stuff that you can point to,” he said. “Plus other stuff which I’m sure is numerous and detailed which isn’t necessarily in the public domain which the National Security Advisers would have access to.
“Why couldn’t they produce a senior officer from MI5 who would stand up and say? I mean if [the Government] caved into the Chinese that’s absolutely outrageous.”
He said that he hoped it might be possible to bring a fresh case. “I think what they should do is – it’s not double jeopardy because the case was abandoned – why can’t they indict them again?”
Asked whether the collapse of the case would be viewed as a signal of weakness by China, and whether the Government needed to toughen its act, he said: “We don’t know the background, we don’t what other issues there are.
“Normally Labour governments in the past have been tough, if not tougher than Conservative governments when it comes to national security issues, so I would hope that this ones the same and that this is, well, mismanagement, aberration, I don’t know, it’s a mess.
“And of course it’s very damaging to the Prime Minister, particularly as a former DPP.”
Tories to blame, says Starmer
Speaking on his trade visit to India, Starmer said the previous Conservative government was to blame for the collapse of the trial because China was not labelled as a threat to national security at the time.
“We were disappointed that the trial didn’t proceed, but the position is very clear that the trial would have had to take place on the basis of the situation as it was at the time under the previous Tory government,” he said.
“So whatever their position was, was the only position that could be presented at trial. So it wasn’t as it were this Government’s position. It was the Tory government before’s position.
“Now that’s not a political to and fro, that’s a matter of law. You have to prosecute people on the basis of the circumstances at the time of the alleged offense, and so all the focus needs to be on the policy of the Tory government in place then.”
In her speech at the Conservative Party conference in Manchester, Tory leader Kemi Badenoch claimed Labour “deliberately collapsed the trial” because “the Prime Minister wants to suck up to Beijing”.