Thu, Oct 23, 2025 page7

• Britain should not be conducting foreign policy in the shadows

  • By Martin Ivens / Bloomberg Opinion
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  In a rare interview more than 20 years ago, Jonathan Powell, who is British Prime Minister Keir Starmer’s national security adviser, admitted: “My job is best done in the shadows.”

  The collapse of the state’s prosecution of Christopher Cash and Christopher Berry, two Britons accused of spying for China, has thrust this reclusive civil servant into an unwelcome spotlight.

  The intelligence agencies, MI5 and MI6, have been increasingly vocal about the threat from Chinese cyberwarfare and intelligence gathering, and appear to be furious that the prosecution was dropped.

  Both men have denied the accusations. Director of Public Prosecutions Stephen Parkinson has implicitly accused No. 10 Downing State of sabotaging the case weeks before the trial. Powell has been fingered as the chief culprit. The alleged motive? Fear of antagonizing Beijing and jeopardizing hopes of a better trade relationship. On this view, the government deliberately failed to provide sufficient legal proof that China is an active enemy of the British state, such that spying for it would merit a court conviction.

  With the Conservative Party and China hawks in full hue-and-cry mode, this murky affair has topped the news agenda for two weeks and shows no signs of quieting down — a reproof to the Whitehall view that this sort of thing is of little interest outside of London. Starmer, having belatedly released some official witness documentation, is still under pressure to publish the minutes of an allegedly pivotal Sept. 1 meeting involving Powell, and as many as 20 senior mandarins and spy chiefs.

  Behind the blame trading, the case shows the prime minister failing to articulate another key policy — how to manage relations with China. What we do know is that Beijing was left off the enhanced tier of the Foreign Influence Registration Scheme when it was introduced in July (Russia and Iran made the cut). A “China audit” was buried inside the national security strategy. It does not take a wild cynic to speculate that the administration wants as little discussion about Britain’s multilayered relationship with Beijing as possible.

  As a result, the government is in the midst of its own China syndrome, triggered by an unelected mandarinate making decisions without due scrutiny.

  The world of diplomacy is novel to Starmer, and that makes Powell one of the most powerful unelected people in government as his chief adviser on sensitive international issues. Powell is the brains behind foreign policy where Starmer has had more visible successes, including forging an affable relationship with the administration of US President Donald Trump, than at home. The civil servant’s role in conflict resolution has, as he admitted, been best done out of the glare of publicity. That is less healthy when democracies need to know what their leaders are doing in key relationships with powers that might benefit Britain — but also threaten it.

  The Powell family business is a mix of diplomatic service and networking. Jonathan Powell is the younger and more Labour-loyal brother of Charles Powell, who was Margaret Thatcher’s foreign-policy guru and was elevated to the House of Lords for his assistance. Charles Powell helped his boss discover an up-and-coming Mikhail Gorbachev; Jonathan Powell was the mastermind behind the Good Friday peace agreement that brought peace to Northern Ireland. Neither man, despite their achievements, is a glory hunter, but both brothers have thrived best under leaders with a strong political compass.

  The national security adviser, too, often operates without oversight (as does Morgan McSweeney, Starmer’s chief of staff, who has been embroiled in bitter infighting over his role). No one in No. 10 Downing Street other than Jonathan Powell, for instance, seems to have been across the agreement to hand sovereignty of the Chagos Islands to Mauritius while retaining a 99-year lease of a UK-US air base in the territory. Johnathan Powell and the Foreign Office delivered the goods, but Starmer seemed wholly unprepared for the domestic fallout over the ￡3.4 billion (US$4.5 billion) price tag and the embarrassment that Mauritius is also an ally of China.

  More revelations followed last week about Chinese intelligence penetration of critical British infrastructure; on Thursday last week, MI5 Director General Ken McCallum revealed that his service had disrupted yet another unspecified threat from China. He, too, vented frustration at the collapse of the espionage case. Meanwhile, a decision on a new Chinese super-embassy in London has been delayed until December, prompting the Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs to warn of unspecified “consequences.” None of this looks like a confident way of handling an adversary, whatever the potential rewards of inward investment.

  The objectives of the Starmer-Jonathan Powell world view are typically sensible: Keep the US lifeline to Ukraine open, shore up a crumbling NATO alliance and lighten the load of US tariffs on British exports. Job partly done, but a political price always has to be paid. Starmer’s obsequiousness to the White House sticks in the craw of his party and might prompt some voters to defect to Labour’s left-wing upstart rivals.

  The lesson of the British government’s China crisis is that the cloistered world of high statecraft with great powers, conducted by a few figures on their own terms, cannot be separated from the rough-and-tumble of everyday domestic politics, so it is better to be transparent about the grand scheming from the get-go. That is the price of operating in a democracy: Britain is not China, so it might be a good idea for No. 10 Downing Street and its secretive mandarins to stop behaving as if it is.

  Jonathan Powell clearly thinks relations with China need a reset, too — Starmer is due to visit Beijing in April next year — but the lure of Chinese billions has proved illusory before. When the Conservative Party wooed Beijing in the vaunted era of so-called golden relations a decade ago, trade actually declined. As it is, China’s exports to Britian amount to ￡70 billion, dwarfing the ￡28 billion flowing the other way. Major Chinese investments in sensitive British infrastructure have been frozen or reversed as the security implications have slowly dawned on successive governments.

  The foreign policy logic of Jonathan Powell and those he serves needs contesting in the public sphere. The British government, like the national security adviser himself, is shy about defending its China policy in public. Consequently, ministers are suspected of putting commerce before security — and the rule of law. Once more, the prime minister has absented himself from the field of battle.

  Martin Ivens is the editor of the Times Literary Supplement. Previously, he was editor of the Sunday Times and its chief political commentator. This column reflects the personal views of the author and does not necessarily reflect the opinion of the editorial board or Bloomberg LP and its owners.
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