The suspect has been arrested but not charged yet. He’s in his 20s and before his arrest he was pretty well connected in the House of Commons where he worked as a parliamentary researcher.

Counterterrorism police swooped on the researcher and another man in his thirties on suspicion of espionage-related offences in March…

He previously spent time living and working in China, where security officials fear he may have been recruited as a sleeper agent and sent back to Britain with the intention of infiltrating political networks critical of the Beijing regime…

Paddy McGuinness, the government’s former deputy national security adviser, described China’s alleged actions as both “reckless” and a “serious escalation” of espionage activities. He said: “The mask has truly slipped. This isn’t about China objecting to interference in their internal affairs as they so often claim. Rather they are messing in ours, with a casual disregard for our democracy and our sovereignty.”…

“This won’t be a one-off but part of a wider strategy and there may be others to find,” he said.

British PM Rishi Sunak spoke directly to Chinese premiere Li Qiang about it at the recent G20 Summit.

At the same time, Britain appears hesitant to label China a threat. This reads like the Biden administration’s handling of the border crisis.

U.K. Business Secretary Kemi Badenoch said Britain should avoid calling China a “foe” or using language that could “escalate” tensions.

“China is a country that we do a lot of business with,” Badenoch told Sky News. “China is a country that is significant in terms of world economics. It sits on the U.N. Security Council. We certainly should not be describing China as a foe, but we can describe it as a challenge.”…

Under Britain’s new National Security Act, if China were officially labeled a threat, anyone working “at the direction” of Beijing or for a state-linked firm would have to register and disclose their activities or risk jail.

It looks to me like the conservatives are split between those (including former PM Liz Truss) who want to label China a threat and those like current PM Sunak who wants to avoid escalating this argument. As for the researcher, who is currently out on bail, he has denied everything and claimed to be “completely innocent.”

In a statement released through lawyers, the man said he felt “forced to respond” to accusations in the media…

Lawyers for the researcher quoted him as saying: “It is wrong that I should be obliged to make any form of public comment on the misreporting that has taken place.

“However, given what has been reported, it is vital that it is known that I am completely innocent.

“I have spent my career to date trying to educate others about the challenge and threats presented by the Chinese Communist Party.

“To do what has been claimed against me in extravagant news reporting would be against everything I stand for.”

But the claims that he was warning MPs about the dangers of the CCP don’t match up with the reporting which claims he was undermining opposition to China. A source told the Times, “I’m pretty sure he [the researcher] turned some backbenchers from China hawks into being apathetic about Beijing.” So either the source has things absolutely backwards or the suspect is lying about what he stands for.

My own guess, based on watching how China has been behaving everywhere else in the world lately, is that the UK is going to wind up regretting not taking a tougher stance. This incident is a warning and they should be heeding it. China will not stop aggressively inserting itself into UK politics until the UK makes that painful.