461. Question Time: China’s Spy Web, the Tel Aviv Fan Ban, and Japan’s New Thatcher

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2:15Welcome to the Restless Politics Question Time with me, Rory Stewart. And me, Alistair Campbell. Now, Rory, we've had lots of questions on this over the recent weeks and we haven't really got into it. Dominic, Trip Plus Glasgow. Does Alistair agree with Chris Philp, Shadow Home Secretary? The answer is almost certainly no. That Jonathan Powell's job is hanging by a thread? Definitely the answer is no. After the whole China spying day backle. And can we have a classic Rory explainer about the Chinese spying issue? So, Rory, I managed to answer my part of the question in one word. Over to you. Okay.

2:50So what happened here is that somebody called Chris Berry, who's a Brit who was living in Hangzhou in China, became very close, it seems, to an officer from the Chinese security service and began briefing Chai Chi, who's a very senior Politburo member, and writing reports from him, almost 40 reports on what was happening in British politics. Let me just jump in there. He's almost like the Jonathan Powell of the Chinese government setup. So we're not talking about, you know, Politburo member. We're talking somebody really serious and heavyweight here. Really senior and heavyweight and therefore presumably very flattering to the ego of this British academic who's writing reports for him.

3:30The British academic then recruits his friend who is called Cash, Christopher Cash, who is working as a parliamentary assistant for Tom Tugendhat and Alicia Kearns, who are senior Tories. Tom Tugendhat, who's been chair of the Foreign Affairs Committee, Alessia Kearns' successor, Tugendhat on his way to be the security minister. And they're very focused on China. Cash starts producing reporting back to Berry that then gets fed into the report to Chaichi. And it's pretty straightforward, classic espionage, because it's a case of somebody in the office of a senior member of parliament passing information to the Chinese government for payment.

4:17The case really broke open because landing at the airport, Berry's bag is opened and thousands of pounds of cash are found inside the bag. So a case is launched by the Crown Prosecution Service and then the Crown Prosecution Service to the horror of people like Tom Tugendhat and others decide not to proceed with the case. And their argument is that in their interpretation of the 1911 law, they would need to convince the jury that China was a really significant threat to UK national security. It wouldn't be enough just to say that this guy was spying for the Chinese government, giving them information, have to demonstrate that China was a serious threat to national security.

4:58And so they don't proceed with the case. And the reason that your friend Jonathan Powell is in the mix is that Jonathan Powell held a meeting and a senior civil servant wrote a brief for the Crown Prosecution Service in which he pointed out, in a brief that was pretty clear about the spying that had taken place and what had happened, that under the new Labour government, they were trying to create better economic relations with China. Now, my view on the whole thing is that the Crown Prosecution Service made a big mistake. And the government should have been clearer in explaining the law here.

5:35Essentially, the Crown Prosecution Service were worried that under the 1911 Act, and actually, incidentally, now you charge it under a later Act, 2023 Act, where spying for a foreign power, full stop, is a crime. It basically fell between the cracks of this legislative change from an Official Secrets Act that was long said to be out of date to a National Security Act, which is, As you say, basically says, if you're taking bundles of cash for selling secrets to a foreign power, ally or enemy, then that is not all. Yeah. And actually, the official secret said, certainly when I was in government, it didn't matter whether you were spying for the French, the CIA or the Russians.

6:13Which did you do, Rory? Exactly. When you say it didn't matter, what do you mean by that? What I mean is that you would be prosecuted, right? You were betraying your country. You were a traitor regardless of whether it was the Americans, the French, the Israelis, or the Chinese who'd convinced you to pass over secrets. So, I think the Crown Prostitutes Service was unbelievably weird and risk-averse. Presumably, they were worried they would take the case and lose the case. I don't know why they didn't take that risk. It's very, very, very odd. The government, I think, is innocent, completely innocent.

6:44I don't think the government's done anything improper in this. But as I said last week, they've been really bad at explaining it. They should have been straight out there saying, listen, and perfect for Keir Starmer. I used to be the head of the Crown Prosecution Service. I know more about this than any single person in Parliament and probably more than anyone in the entire United Kingdom. It's an independent decision. This isn't like Trump's America. We're not going around telling prosecutors who to prosecute. They make their own decision and they make a decision on whether they think they're going to win.

7:16And they decided they couldn't win. Now, and then the question is, does Starmer want to go further than that and comment and say, well, actually, in my personal view, it's a bit surprising. Maybe that's something that you leak, you get someone to say informally off the record to a journalist that number 10 is a little bit surprised that they didn't proceed with this because actually they would have had a very good case of winning, regardless of what was said about China's national security threat. Yeah, I mean, look, it's one of those, Fiona kept saying that as it was sort of churned out on the news again and again and again, with very few new facts being added, although then eventually the government published the evidence that had been given by their representative in the case, who was Jonathan Powell's deputy, the deputy national security advisor, that she said it's, this reminds me a bit of the whole Westland story back in the, do you remember the Westland helicopter story?

8:05It was one of those sort of churned on and on and on. And by the end of it, nobody really fully understood what the hell it was about. And to this day, I can't fully explain it. I'm sure Michael Heseltine could, but I couldn't. But I'm glad, by the way, that you think the government is because I just don't. The question is Jonathan's job hanging by a thread. No, it's not. And it certainly shouldn't be. And what the government published, it strikes me, fits with the narrative that you've just put. But of course, we're in this very highly politicized world where Chris Philp and Kimi Baden-Ock are determined to prove that the government has somehow done something wrong.

8:42And then in the government's response to that, their line of attack has been, well, this was happening on your watch with your MPs when you were in power under legislation that you failed to change in a timely fashion. So it's just become a bit of a mess. Alistair, on the communications point, though, why couldn't they have done what I'm suggesting, which if Starmer say, I was the head of the Crown Prosecutor, I know more about this than anyone else. He kind of did that. He kind of did that. And then where was the quick off-the-record brief to the journalists that would set out on the front page of the Times what the government's position was?

9:14I'm not entirely convinced that you had to do that off the record. I think you could get out. Look, look, we're going to talk in a minute about the Maccabi Tel Aviv. The prime minister downward, they had no problem intervening in what is actually a process that is meant to be left to independent authorities. So I don't think there would have been any problem. Look, if this had been on our watch, I think you would absolutely have made sure everybody understood you thought this was the wrong decision. Now, Stephen Parkinson, the guy who apparently made the decision, who I know from our government days, He was actually part of the legal team.

9:51In fact, this is an element of the story. I'm surprised that actually they don't have memories, our journalists these days. But he was a member of our legal team in the Hutton Inquiry. He was around then. And he's a very good, very good legal brain, a very good legal mind. But whether there's something within this that he just felt didn't take it to that place where he could be guaranteed or where they felt there was a really good chance of a conviction. I don't know. I don't know. One thing we haven't talked about much is that in the past, of course, there was an attempt to prosecute a parliamentary aide with Russian links who worked for Mike Hancock, who was a Lib Dem MP that didn't manage to get through despite the CPS getting the evidence.

10:32And of course, what China's doing here, which is exactly the same as every other major country, including the United Kingdom and the United States and France is doing, is operating in this ambiguous territory of consultancy reports. and what they're doing is they're allowing people like Barry and Cash to half know that they're spying because they're taking cash to provide reports for a senior Politburo member on what's happening in parliament and half convince themselves they're just providing open source reporting. That ambiguous thing is part of the trick of modern spying. It's very tempting.

11:12instead of the classic thing, which is you suborn a member of your enemy intelligence agency and actually get them carrying out classified documents. What's happening here is they're not quite getting classified documents. They're reporting sometimes gossip from Tom Tugendhat's office. Some of that's unreliable. He's not actually an employee of the government. So maybe that's also feeding into the CPS's calculation. And that, of course, helps intelligence agencies to use these ambiguities. Yeah, but if you look at, we've talked a lot about, for example, Russia and China and the way that they're operating in Africa.

11:49I mean, you know, when we talked about Prigozhin, it's almost like privatized national security and privatized diplomacy and privatized espionage. And of course, that allows you to sort of just put it at arm's length and it not to be so clear cut. Now, I don't know anything beyond what I've read in the newspapers and heard on the radio and TV about these two guys. But I've read enough to make me think that it would have been a very fascinating and from their perspective, very, very dangerous court case. And of course, the other thing we shouldn't step away from, as you said, all countries do it.

12:29Some do it bigger and better than others. And China are absolutely right out there. As I think I've said to you before, that somebody told me that there are roughly over a million people working for Chinese, essentially for the Chinese security services. I mean, that's a lot of people. So you said when we first discussed this, you know, why do they care what these Tory backbenchers are thinking? Well, because that's their job. They probably analyze our discussions, Roy, to see whether they think we've been talking to anybody who knows what's going on. This is your opportunity, Alistair, to come.

13:02You know, have you at any moment taken money from the Chinese or Russian government to promote their cause on this show? That's what we want to know. Roy, I think that there are some things that we shouldn't discuss on this program. But the answer is no. Have I ever taken their hospitality in the way that lots of the Brexit people did in the run-up to the Brexit referendum? No. Well, there was this famous thing called caviar diplomas. When the Azerbaijanis were trying to get people to support them in the Council of Europe, there were these amazing scenes where people would travel back and forth with huge tins of caviar, including this man, Mike Hancock, who, as I said, almost got caught up with his aide working for the Russians, who couldn't tell anyone how many times he'd been, I think, to Russia because he dropped his passport conveniently in the sea.

13:50wow i do think though rory that we shouldn't move away from the the bigger picture on this that you know we are uh whether we call them an enemy or not they are seriously trying to disrupt our economics our politics our way of life they are there's no doubt about that china is doing it russia is doing it iran is doing it and of course this has now got into this really acute diplomatic issue, which we discussed with your very good friend, Mike Pompeo, when you were sort of losing your temper with him on our excellent episode of Leading. But this is the subject of the embassy. When you remember, he said, you know, you people really going to be so stupid as to give the Chinese this massive new super embassy where every single person in there is going to be working for Chinese intelligence.

14:36And so this has already been delayed once. It looks like it's being delayed again. So the Chinese, they've already paid a quarter of a billion for the premises. And now this sort of within this context, Keir Starmer said that he's very open to the embassy being open there. Others are suggesting that even the application is unlawful if any guarantees were given about not spying on the spies or whatever it might be. This is entirely insane. Every embassy in the world of every major power is a spy base. All of them. It doesn't matter where it's put. It doesn't matter how big it is. They're all spy bases.

15:14We've got to grow up. I mean, it would be true for, I'm afraid, everybody's embassies. So you would say, just go ahead with the plans. Just go ahead and build it. Yeah, absolutely. The security service needs to make sure there isn't sensitive fiber optic infrastructure passing under the embassy and needs to work out how to run proper counterintelligence operations to protect us from operations run from that embassy. But it's absurd to suggest the Chinese shouldn't have an embassy because they might be spying from it. That's what the Chinese do and the Russians do. And I dare say quite a lot of our allies do too.

15:46And it's what we do, including on our, I mean, I don't think I'm giving any secrets away here, including on our allies. So there we are. Here's a question coming in from Charlie from Sheffield. The Maccabee Tel Aviv furore is interesting from a left versus right media perspective. The divided framing is as predictable as it is stark. Goodness gracious me, it's like an amazing postmodern analysis. It's like one of your columns in the West Milan Gazette. Exactly, exactly. In one telling, it's about Jewish football fans, violent Brummie Islamists, and anti-Semitic policing banning the Jews. In the other, it's violently racist Israeli hooligans, and the government and media are betting them.

16:21Each relies on a whole different set of evidence, or the same set of evidence interpreted in the opposite way. It's got me thinking that much of what we know of the world must be based on trust. And honestly, when you dive into such diametrically opposite stories about the same story, it does have me doubting whether I can trust those who I'm inclined to trust. and it's one occasion which I'd like to listen to the rest is politics. That means that Charlie trusts us, I think. Well, and I'm trusting you because I mean famously I'm a great expert on football but try to talk us through this. Firstly, just for listeners who aren't familiar with this, give us the two sides of this story and then tell us roughly where you come down.

16:59Okay, well this is about a football match that is due to take place. Israel, despite not being in Europe, takes part in UEFA tournaments. and they've been drawn to play against Aston Villa. Now, as it happens, Burnley played Aston Villa a few weeks ago and I was talking to some of the people at Aston Villa who said they were really, really worried about this game. It was going to be very, very difficult to police. There were lots of questions around it. And this was just, we were just chatting, okay? And they were basically saying, God, I wish this wasn't happening. Also, we should not run away with the idea that Maccabi Tel Aviv are a bunch of angels.

17:37Their fans have got quite a reputation. I suspect that some of them were at that Tommy Robinson event that I talked about. They were also involved in some really serious violence when they played in Amsterdam in this same tournament. And where Charlie is absolutely right is that that was framed within the Dutch context of Dutch pro-Palestinians went out to attack the Israeli football fans. The Dutch were more inclined to say this was a bunch of hooligans who were singing songs about killing Arab children, burning Palestinian flags, beating up Muslim taxi drivers and so on and so forth. So you've got a football violence situation with a political dimension layered onto it.

18:20You then have this group that is the group that has the job, the public safety group that has the job of deciding whether events are publicly safe. and this group made the decision that they felt that for this game to be publicly safe no Maccabi Tel Aviv fans should be allowed to come to the game now there's lots of people including I think Lisa Nandy yesterday in the Commons saying that this is kind of unprecedented there have been cases before of fans not being allowed to to travel and not being allowed to go Rangers and Celtic have had periods where there have been no away fans actually Aston Villa played against Legia Warsaw, a Polish team, and they've got a real reputation.

19:06And because there'd been some trouble at a previous game, that was called off. Rangers against Napoli was another one that I remember a few years ago where there were no fans allowed to travel. When Paris play Marseille, when Paris Saint-Germain play Marseille, there is no way fans are allowed to travel. So it's not unique, but what is unique, of course, is the extra political context. The minute this announcement came out, all three of the major parties, Labour, Tory, Lib Dems, all three came out straight away and said, this is the wrong decision. Now, I have to say my reaction was, stay out of it.

19:42Stay out of it. You're making it worse because now as it happens, Maccabi have now come out and said that even if the decision is reversed, they are not going to accept any tickets. And they say it's because of the toxic atmosphere that has now been built around this game. They might also add that Tel Aviv were involved, Maccabi Tel Aviv were involved in a game in Israel at the weekend, which the police abandoned because of the violence in advance of the game. So I think we're probably going to end up in the right place. But we've ended there in the wrong way, in my view. Can I just question you?

20:23I mean, is it really possible for the Prime Minister to stay out of this because if it becomes the big social media issue about anti-Semitism and the Tories are out and Lib Dems are out saying this is the wrong decision and Keir Starmer's remaining po-faced and saying you know this is a decision for someone else it's something to do with me is he not going to be portrayed by the conservatives and Lib Dems as weak out of touch? But listen this goes with the job you're damned if you do and you're damned if you don't it's one of those but I think that if we have these you know we talked on earlier about this this thing about you know judgments in court cases well let's get let's take another example we're going to talk about prince andrew in a minute lisa nandy was interviewed about prince andrew and said you know the government doesn't get involved in affairs and related to the royal family well point one the government does from time to time when it has to but point two what that is doing there is making the point the government is an actor not a commentator okay now i would say in relation to this it would be perfectly feasible not necessarily for the prime minister unless he asked about it but for the home secretary to say there are big concerns around this match we have a process that process has been played out i want to satisfy myself that the right decision has been taken in the right way but subject to that i will trust the judgment of the people who have made this decision because and otherwise i think there is a risk that we just inflamed this thing even worse.

21:49Eventually, what's going to happen with this? This game's going to happen. We'll probably move on. I suspect if the fans had come, I think maybe for the wrong reasons, but Tel Aviv had probably made the right decision. If there had been a substantial turnout of Maccabi fans, I think there would have been a lot of trouble because lots of football hooligans, there was already on social media, football hooligans who are not really, as they would put it, we're not able to have as many fights as we used to have because these things are now pretty well policed. They'd all have turned up. Tommy Robinson would have worked his crowd up.

22:22He was already doing it in Israel. He's walking around with a Tel Aviv, a Maccabi Tel Aviv shirt, you know, in Israel. So I just think that we've ended up in the right place, but I think we made a few missteps on the way. Thank you for that, Alistair. Time for a break. And after the break, we'll be back to talk about Prince Andrew and the new Japanese prime minister.

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