The senior Government adviser at the heart of the Chinese spying row was a member of a secretive network used by Beijing to cultivate Britain’s elites.
Jonathan Powell, Keir Starmer’s national security adviser, was a fellow of the 48 Group, a lobby club founded by British communists which allegedly ‘grooms’ British politicians and business leaders to fall under the sway of China’s Communist Party.
Sources have pointed the finger at Mr Powell for the Government’s failure to state that China represented a threat to national security – an omission which the Director of Public Prosecutions has said led to last month’s collapse of the trial of Chris Cash and Christopher Berry on charges of passing secrets to China between 2021 and 2023. Both men were formally declared not guilty and deny any wrongdoing.
The Tories have accused ministers of causing the collapse of a major spying trial because they feared that calling China a national security threat might jeopardise trade relations.
The Government has denied interfering with the case.
The 48 Group, which is one of the most prominent pro-China lobbying organisations in Britain, says its aim is to improve trade relations between the two nations – but has been accused of furthering the Beijing regime’s wider causes in Britain, as this newspaper first reported in 2020.
Its patrons have included Labour grandee Peter Mandelson, who was recently sacked as Britain’s Ambassador to the US over his links to paedophile Jeffrey Epstein.
Both Tony Blair and former Tory Chancellor George Osborne have attended events hosted by the 48 Group in London.
Hellbound and Down 