China spy case exposes new electoral hazards of foreign policy

Good morning. The biggest story in Westminster today — and not just today but for many months and perhaps years — is the arrest of three men, all former advisers to Labour in the 2010s, on suspicion of spying for China.

It is a reminder of the biggest constraint facing the government’s China policy.

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Brace for more embarrassment

Keir Starmer is pursuing the same China policy as Rishi Sunak, but Sunak faced two major constraints while Starmer faces just one.

Sunak was held back by 1) a large and powerful faction of Conservative backbenchers who wanted an avowedly hostile policy towards the world’s second-largest economy, and 2) the difficult truth that China engages in espionage against us.

Starmer has a freer hand in that there is not a significant anti-China grouping within the Parliamentary Labour Party or within Labour as a whole. But he faces the same real-world constraint that Sunak did, which is that China is both an indispensable country in the modern world and a country that engages in espionage against us.

I’m not going to make the argument for the Starmer-Sunak China policy at great length today, because I’ve done it before, and Janan Ganesh did it more elegantly a while back:

Friedrich Merz is expected to visit China soon, despite Germany having to make up much less diplomatic ground there than Britain does. (Olaf Scholz had been twice and bilateral trade is huge.) Mark Carney went last month and Emmanuel Macron the month before. Was Starmer seriously meant to not go? Britain has real security concerns, but what threats does it face that other north Atlantic democracies have decided are manageable? If the issue is ethical — human rights and so on — what did a near-decade of estrangement from China achieve on that front? Are the absolute monarchies of the Gulf going to be shunned? With which democratic allies, if not the ones right across the Channel, should the UK seek strength in numbers against autocracies?

To all this I would add: the alternative to the Starmer-Sunak approach on China is not just more bellicose than any of the UK’s genuine peers: it is more bellicose than the approach favoured by Donald Trump’s America. The US is still the world’s indispensable power, with huge size, advantages and military might. The UK is . . . not.

Nonetheless, the arrest of three men, all advisers to Labour in the early 2010s, on suspicion of spying for China, is going to further shake this government. Given that the Labour Party’s senior figures are highly interconnected both on a personal and political level, allegations of spying against significant officials within the party will shock, discombobulate and anger many people as well as cause them considerable embarrassment and potential electoral damage.

The new geopolitical age in which we live means British governments are going to have to get used to foreign policies that will cost them embarrassment. These include a US policy that involves a degree of humiliation, whether in being castigated by Donald Trump or in going along with policies that most British voters strongly dislike. On China it is going to mean stories like this one, stories that will, sooner or later, claim at least one ministerial resignation.

Foreign policy has rarely been an area that wins votes in democracies, but it may increasingly become one where votes and political careers are lost.

Now try this

I saw My Father’s Shadow, a terrific film set during Nigeria’s 1993 election. It is an astonishingly assured directorial debut by Akinola Davies Jr, and I can’t wait to see what he does next. Jonathan Romney’s review is here.

Top stories today

• Trusted telly | The BBC will urge ministers to commit to sweeping reforms, including the end of political appointments to its board, as part of plans to secure greater institutional independence in talks over its next royal charter.

• ‘Embodiment’ of Labour values | Shabana Mahmood will curtail asylum seekers’ rights to accommodation and support as she doubles down on tougher immigration policies in spite of pressure from backbench Labour MPs.

• A million thanks | Nigel Farage’s Reform UK received a second large donation from businessman Christopher Harborne, pushing the party’s fundraising far ahead of Labour and the Conservatives last year.

• Spying allegations | Two men, including a former Border Force official, “took the law into their own hands” as they engaged in shadow policing operations in the UK on behalf of authorities in Hong Kong, a jury was told.