DAN HODGES: Keir Starmer lied through his teeth to the House of Commons to appease a foreign enemy. He may have no option but to resign
Today Keir Starmer lied to the House of Commons. He didn’t obfuscate. He didn’t deflect. He wasn’t, to use that immortal phrase of the late Alan Clark, ‘economical with the actualite’.
He knowingly told a deliberate, conscious, calculating untruth.
It came in response to Kemi Badenoch, who – in one of her most focused and forensic Prime Minister’s Questions performances – finally pinned down the Prime Minister over the collapse of the China spy case.
She demanded: ‘Is the Government seriously saying that only one man, the deputy national security adviser, had anything to do with this failure? Is he seriously saying the deputy did not discuss [the subject] with the national security adviser... with the Home Secretary, or with anyone in Downing Street? Is the Prime Minister seriously saying that?’
‘Yes,’ Keir Starmer replied.
Some political scandals are complex. Others interest Westminster, but have little resonance outside. Some are just banal, such as the consumption of birthday cake.
But Chinagate is politically lethal in both its simplicity and its significance. And despite Sir Keir’s increasingly desperate efforts to throw his pursuers off the scent, the facts of the case have now broadly been established.
As readers now know, the Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) determined it had enough evidence to bring to trial two agents the security services believed had been spying upon ministers and MPs on behalf of the Chinese state. This would have been one of the most significant foreign-espionage prosecutions since the end of the Cold War.
Sir Keir Starmer lied to the House of Commons over the China spy scandal, Dan Hodges writes
To cement those prosecutions, the CPS decided it needed a statement from the Government formally stating that China represented a threat to UK national security. It repeatedly requested – via a series of witness statements – this document.
But the Government steadfastly refused to provide it. Eventually, the head of the CPS, Stephen Parkinson, decided he had no option but to drop the case. In a letter to MPs, he confirmed: ‘By late August 2025 it was realised that this evidence would not be forthcoming. When this became apparent, the case could not proceed. This was a professional assessment made by CPS lawyers experienced in prosecuting national security and espionage cases, applying the Code for Crown Prosecutors.’
The reason for the collapse of the case was obvious. The Government was – and still is – desperate to appease China. We have seen it with their craven acquiescence in allowing the construction of a ‘Super Embassy’, replete with a ‘dungeon’ and covert listening post, in the heart of London. We have seen it with the constant caravan of ministers, envoys and officials trekking out to Beijing. We saw it only this week with the decision not to include China in the Enhanced Tier of the Foreign Influence Registration Scheme, following threats of Chinese economic retaliation, and heavy lobbying from Chancellor Rachel Reeves.
So the Government was caught bang to rights. All that was required was for Sir Keir to hold up his hands, mouth some vacuous platitudes about protecting jobs and balancing strategic global relationships and, after a bit of a squall, the political circus would have moved on.
But he couldn’t do it. The man who, in opposition, delivered one self-righteous lecture after another about transparency and probity and the need to clean up our national governance instead opted to embark on a cover-up that would have made Richard Nixon blush.
The first major lie was that the Government hadn’t collapsed the case at all – that it was, as Downing Street claimed, solely a decision taken by the CPS. This line promptly fell apart when Stephen Parkinson published his letter, in which he pointedly stated: ‘Government briefings have been provided commenting on the evidential situation. Given this unusual circumstance, I consider that I am now able to provide further information to contextualise the position.’
The next major lie followed a report that a meeting had taken place to discuss the spy trial involving Jonathan Powell, the National Security Adviser, and Olly Robbins, the Permanent Secretary at the Foreign Office. The Government’s response to this report was to dismiss it, and others, as ‘wholly inaccurate’. But today the Prime Minister was forced to confirm the meeting did in fact take place.
The third major lie followed demands by Kemi Badenoch for the Government to release the China witness statements, to allow MPs, the Press and public to judge for themselves whether ministers were being truthful. Downing Street claimed that it could not release them because the CPS had instructed it not to. That lie lasted about half an hour before the CPS stated that, in fact, it had no objection to their release.
Each of these untruths would have been serious enough in isolation. But they were about to be collectively dwarfed by the complete, utter, bare-faced fabrication proffered by Sir Keir at PMQs.
According to the Prime Minister, he was aware of the ongoing China spy case and being briefed about it. He was aware that the CPS was requesting additional evidence to enable that case to proceed. He was aware that his deputy national security adviser, Matthew Collins, was tasked with providing that evidence.
But, supposedly, at no stage in that process was he informed by Collins of what that evidence was, or why it had been requested, or why it was important, or that it could potentially lead to the collapse of the case.
Even more fantastically, when Sir Keir was informed the case was about to collapse, his position is he didn’t even bother to ask why – or what, if anything, could be done to prevent the prosecution imploding. The whole process was, he claimed to the House of Commons, left to the Deputy National Security Adviser to sort out. Even the National Security Adviser was supposedly kept in the dark.
The problem isn’t just that the Prime Minister is clearly lying through his teeth with this self-serving fantasy. It’s that his lying is so ludicrous, cack-handed and manifestly transparent.
Not for the first time, he’s taking Parliament, the Press and the British people for fools. He literally wants us all to believe that on being told of the impending breakdown of an espionage prosecution of vital importance to the defence of the realm, he simply shrugged, said ‘thanks guys’, and toddled off for his regular game of five-a-side.
Earlier in the week I observed there were only two logical explanations for how the Government had become enveloped in its China crisis. One was that the Prime Minister did not have a sufficient grip of events, and took his eye off the ball. The other was that he had been fully in charge, and was now trying to hide his complicity. Either way, he was skating on thin ice.
Today he crashed though it into the frozen waters. Sir Keir has appeased a foreign enemy. He has acquiesced to the collapse of a major criminal investigation. And he has now stood up at the Despatch Box and deliberately misled the House of Commons.
Soon after he was elected Labour leader, Sir Keir promised Britain that he would offer ‘selflessness, integrity, objectivity, accountability, openness, honesty, leadership’.
We now know that, too, was all a lie.
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