cross-posted from: https://scribe.disroot.org/post/5377713
The latest findings on the Westminster espionage scandal that has sent shockwaves through British politics — and this podcast (75 min) draws the lines connecting that case to Canada’s own national-security crisis.
In the case, President Xi Jinping’s powerful ally and reported spymaster, Cai Qi, is alleged to have overseen a covert Ministry of State Security operation inside the U.K. Parliament. According to British parliamentary records and corroborating media leaks, Cai’s network cultivated a young British teacher while he was living in China, recruiting him through a front company run by the MSS. The recruit allegedly secured access to Westminster through another young Brit — a researcher and adviser who was reportedly tasked with gathering real-time intelligence on Conservative MPs critical of Beijing’s human-rights abuses in Hong Kong, Xinjiang, and Taiwan.
The explosive Cash and Berry prosecution was pursued under Rishi Sunak’s Conservative government, but was later quietly abandoned by Prime Minister Keir Starmer’s Labour government. Documents and sources cited in London suggest that senior political advisers close to Starmer, including a former banker known for pro-China trade advocacy, may have influenced the decision to collapse the case — raising profound questions about ethical interference in Britain’s judicial process.
The transnational case is not just a scandal but a systemic warning: the same dynamic of political suppression, elite capture, and economic dependency that has compromised the United Kingdom’s response to CCP [Chinese Communist Party] influence has already unfolded in Ottawa.
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Similar patterns that troubled Justin Trudeau’s government on Chinese election interference could persist under Mark Carney’s leadership. And in the case of Starmer, the powerful U.S. House Select Committee on the CCP has directly lodged concerns with the British Ambassador, questioning whether the Cash and Berry case was cancelled due to pressure from China or trade and development considerations between Beijing and London.
[The podcast also discusses] the Bureau’s reporting from Vancouver and Toronto, where Chinese and Mexican cartel networks have built a global hub for synthetic-opioid production and shipment. These networks, operating through Canadian ports and logistics channels, are now targeting Australia and New Zealand, demonstrating how the same state-linked criminal and intelligence systems driving espionage in Westminster are simultaneously fueling a deadly global trade in fentanyl and methamphetamine.