The Great British Bind

I was listening to the latest outbreak of patriotic thunder from Westminster about “standing up to China,” and it struck me – this is what impotence sounds like. The Tories puffing out their chests, Labour treading on eggshells, and the media breathlessly pretending that a damp squib of a spy story marks the dawn of a new Cold War.

The so-called “China spy scandal” wasn’t treachery; it was theatre. The Tory accusations were pure performance – a desperate attempt to sound decisive after fourteen years of drift. They wrote the very law that caused the case to collapse, then feigned outrage when Labour obeyed it. The 1911 Official Secrets Act could only deliver a conviction if China were formally declared an “enemy,” and no sane government was going to do that while Chinese money is threaded through Britain’s infrastructure, property and education sectors.

The two accused – British citizens, not Chinese agents – were alleged to have shared little more than Westminster gossip and speculation about leadership contests. Hardly the crown jewels. To press ahead would have meant branding China an adversary and detonating trade, investment and diplomacy in one stroke.

For once, the government acted rationally. The Tories’ fury was pantomime. Their sudden talk of toughness is risible coming from the same party that courted Beijing for a decade, selling access, assets and influence while preaching sovereignty. They built the dependency, then blamed others for noticing it.

And somewhere in all this noise, two men have been dismerged – publicly named, smeared, and denied the one thing that could clear them: their day in court. If their conversations were truly just political tickle-tackle – chatter and hearsay – then they should have been allowed to prove it. Justice isn’t meant to be convenient; it’s meant to be fair. Instead, the law collapsed, and with it any chance to show that what they discussed wasn’t treachery at all, but triviality – talk that turned out not even to be true.

Now, even the head of MI5 has said that China poses a “daily threat” to Britain – and he’s right. But that isn’t a revelation. The intelligence community has been saying it quietly for years. What’s new is that politicians, hungry for headlines, are shouting it as if they’ve only just discovered espionage exists. It’s the right warning, delivered at the wrong pitch, for the wrong reasons.

Try explaining that nuance to a public spoon-fed by the tabloids. The press loves a spy story – it looks important to people who don’t actually understand what’s going on. “China”, “espionage”, “traitors” – the words alone guarantee outrage. And the louder the outrage, the less anyone asks whether there’s any substance behind it.

Britain today relies on China for trade, the US for security, and delusion for dignity. We posture as global players while begging for inward investment. “Global Britain” turned out to be an export slogan for our illusions. You can’t threaten the country that makes your solar panels, runs your supply chains and buys your debt.

If there’s a route out of this farce, it’s not more chest-beating but re-joining the grown-ups. Re-entering the EU – or at least aligning closely again – isn’t nostalgia, it’s strategy. Inside Europe we had scale, collective deterrence and credibility. Outside it, we have PowerPoint patriotism and economic anxiety. When Brussels talks, Beijing listens. When Britain talks, Beijing checks the exchange rate.

Diplomacy without leverage is theatre, and the Tories have turned it into an art form – waving flags, blaming others, mistaking volume for strength.

So yes – the China spy affair was a lot of hoo-ha about nothing: two men, a broken law, a credulous press, and a country still pretending it’s a superpower. Until we stop confusing isolation with independence, and noise with influence, we’ll keep mistaking the echo for applause.