China spying-case collapse: cock-up or conspiracy?

With fingers being pointed all over the place, the Battle of Ideas festival discussions on our dysfunctional state and China's place in the world seem all too timely.

Oct 14, 2025

In April 2024, Christopher Cash and Christopher Berry were charged with offences under the Official Secrets Act. They were accused of passing sensitive information to China. In October that year, Cash and Berry pleaded ‘not guilty’ and the case was due to come to trial this month. However, in September, the Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) dropped the charges, on the grounds that the evidence did not meet the criteria for a successful prosecution.

Allegations have been swirling around ever since. In order to get a conviction, the CPS needed to show that China is a ‘threat to national security’. Now the row is why that case wasn’t made. Was it the previous Conservative government’s assessment to blame for the ruling? Claims that the national security adviser, Jonathan Powell, is implicated are vigorously denied. His deputy, Matthew Collins, has now been named, with murmurings a civil servant has been thrown under the bus.

In short, the accusation is that a spy case was scuttled because Britain is too determined to cosy up to China for economic reasons. Meanwhile, China’s plans for a new mega-embassy in central London have been thrown into doubt amid mounting national-security concerns that the proposed site sits directly above critical fibre-optic cables linked to the UK’s financial networks.

Whatever the truth turns out to be, it seems like the latest example of the failings of the British state – and the lack of accountability for those failings. We’ll be discussing the problem in the opening keynote at the Battle of Ideas festival, Can we fix the dysfunctional state? We also have a session looking in depth at three recent controversies that have left most of us tearing our hair out at the ineptitude of those who govern us, Rape gangs, Post Office and Scottish self-ID: an anatomy of three scandals. But it also raises questions about the West’s relationship with China – two sessions will explore related issues: The fragile foundations of China’s rise and China’s trump card? Rare earths and geopolitics.

Details of these sessions can be found below.

Please join us this coming weekend. Tickets are still available via the festival tickets page.

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Can we fix the dysfunctional state?

Saturday 18 October, 10.15am-11.45am

Is the British state broken? Voters increasingly seem to think so. From seemingly out-of-control rents, taxes, mortgages and bills to a dysfunctional health service, few of the building blocks of modern life seem to work well in contemporary Britain.

On the face of it, the extreme disfunction of the country is odd. Britain is not just home to the so-called ‘Rolls Royce civil service’ but also dominated by elites whose claim to their position is that they have unique technical and managerial skills that ordinary people lack. British institutions are dominated by targets, performance reviews, experts and managers. Yet each government seems less able than the last to deliver on its promises.

Some argue that the rot is deeper than mere dysfunction. The state seems to view the nation with unbridled suspicion, relying on propaganda, secrecy and cover-ups. The recent Afghanistan scandal – where it emerged that successive governments had engaged in a comprehensive cover-up to avoid scrutiny of a massive data leak and a top-secret plan to fly thousands of Afghans to the UK – seems a case in point. Other scandals, like the grooming gangs or the miscarriage of justice for sub-postmasters, point to a similar level of deep, institutional complicity. But it not just scandals. The so-called ‘Boriswave’ – the enormous surge in migration, post-Brexit, presided over by Boris Johnson – seems to confirm ordinary people’s suspicions that, no matter how they vote, the elites respond time and again with the same policies.

Is it less a case, then, of how to reform the state than how to totally re-imagine it? A number of new initiatives, from Fix Britain to Dominic Cummings’s plan to reshape government, argue for systematic changes to make the state respond to political priorities. The Civil Service regularly comes in for particular scrutiny. When civil servants are not being accused of laziness for preferring to work from home, they are described as actively hostile to national political priorities – a kind of deep state, a behind-the-scenes government, unaccountable to anyone. This was summed up by the remarks of Gus O’Donnell, formerly the UK’s most senior civil servant, who claimed: ‘I think it’s my job to maximise global welfare not national welfare.’

Certainly, not all civil servants think in such hostile terms. Many of them point to a lack of leadership, not just inside the Civil Service, but politically as well. Indeed, the whole culture of targets, reviews, DEI and other elements of managerialism seem to actively frustrate anyone who wants to actually get things done. In response, Reform UK has proposed bringing into government more individuals with business experience to totally change the culture. But is this a question of technocratic skills or something deeper?

So, what’s behind the crisis of the British state? Is it a question of incompetence, or leadership? Do we need better incentives, managers and experts, or something more far-reaching? In fact, is the failure of the state more a failure of politics – an absence of political vision, will and, above all, a drive to actually represent the concerns of the wider nation at the heart of government?

SPEAKERS
Lord David Frost
member of the House of Lords

Munira Mirza
chief executive, Civic Future

Jacob Reynolds
head of policy, MCC Brussels; associate fellow, Academy of Ideas

Andreas Wesemann
partner, Ashcombe Advisers LLP

CHAIR
Claire Fox
director, Academy of Ideas; independent peer, House of Lords; author, I STILL Find That Offensive!

Rape gangs, Post Office and Scottish self-ID: an anatomy of three scandals

Saturday 18 October, 4.45pm-6.15pm

In recent years, Britain has been rocked by several scandals where the public has been kept in the dark. Politicians and the authorities have indulged in obfuscation, denial, cover-ups and even possible collusion – all to avoid accountability or admit responsibility. As with previous scandals, it’s often been grassroots campaigners, victims’ groups and courageous journalists who have brought these issues to public attention.

What was it like being a key player on the frontline of history in three of these recent scandals: rape gangs, the Post Office miscarriages of justice and gender self-ID in Scotland? Journalists Charlie Peters and Nick Wallis, and Susan Smith from campaign group For Women Scotland, tell their stories of activism, investigation and holding truth to power.

These scandals are only three of the many that have shocked our nation, alongside the Grenfell Tower fire, the Hillsborough tragedy, the infected-blood scandal and more. Are such scandals simply a feature of modern Britain? Do they, as many argue, implicate the state itself as negligent, incompetent and mired in the tendency to cover-up and collude? What can we learn from these brave journalists and campaigners who have stood at the frontline, challenged politicians and the authorities, and held them to account?

SPEAKERS
Charlie Peters
GB News national reporter

Susan Smith
co-director, For Women Scotland; director, Beira’s Place; contributor, The Women Who Wouldn’t Wheesht

Nick Wallis
journalist, presenter, BBC Radio 4 series The Great Post Office Trial

CHAIR
Claire Fox
director, Academy of Ideas; independent peer, House of Lords; author, I STILL Find That Offensive!

The fragile foundations of China’s rise

Sunday 19 October, 5.15pm-6.30pm

China, as they say, is riddled with contradictions. While the Financial Times recently pointed to a decline in China’s economic momentum, claiming that the ‘economy remains fragile’, The Diplomat magazine described China as still ‘the world’s manufacturing powerhouse’. While China is said to be facing chronic industrial overcapacity and deflationary pressures, its GDP growth is still around 5.3 per cent. But is all well in the Middle Kingdom?

For decades, Western commentators looked on enviously at China’s growth figures, its relentless urbanisation and infrastructure provision, its social transformation and poverty reduction, and its emergence onto the world’s stage. Indeed, as late as April 2025, US political commentator Thomas Friedman wrote an article in the New York Times about his recent visit to China titled: ‘I Just Saw the Future. It Was Not in America.’

But what’s the reality on the ground? Is this still China’s century? For example, how has China coped with the post-Covid recovery, the recent collapse of the housing sector, the rise of online surveillance, soaring personal debt, a shrinking jobs market, an aging population, and increasing social disquiet?

SPEAKERS
Kerry Brown
director, Lau China Institute, King’s College; author, The Great Reversal: Britain, China and the 400 Contest for Power; professor of Chinese Studies

Professor Hugo de Burgh
director, China UK creative industries; recent chair professor of Media, Schwarzman College, Tsinghua University; author, WHO ARE WE, and how will we survive in the Age of Asia (2024) and China’s Media in the Emerging World Order (2021)

Dr Linda Yueh
fellow in economics, St Edmund Hall, University of Oxford; adjunct professor of economics, London Business School; associate fellow, Chatham House

CHAIR
Austin Williams
director, Future Cities Project; honorary research fellow, XJTLU, Suzhou, China; author, China’s Urban Revolution

China’s trump card? Rare earths and geopolitics

Saturday 18 October, 1.45pm-2.30pm

One consequence of Donald Trump’s trade war with China has been increasing attention to a group of minerals called ‘rare earths’. Rare earths are vital to the production of everything from smartphones and electric vehicles to wind turbines and advanced weapons.

Despite the name, rare earths are not particularly rare. For example, cerium is more abundant in the earth’s crust than copper. But they are spread thinly as trace impurities, so to obtain usable rare earths requires processing enormous amounts of raw ore at great expense – and with considerable environmental impacts. China has been willing to massively subsidise this process to support its own industries while keeping the price low, making the processing of ore uneconomic elsewhere in the world.

What should the rest of the world do about China’s monopoly? Is it feasible to create alternative sources of supply – and what would it cost? Can innovation reduce the need for rare earths – or can recycling save the day? What does it all mean for the direction of geopolitics?

SPEAKERS
Robert Fig
partner, the metals risk team

Animesh Jha
professor, applied material science

Henry Sanderson
journalist; author, Volt Rush, the Winners and Losers in the Race to Go Green