China spy case gives MPs the opportunity to discuss their favourite topic: themselves | John Crace

There are few things that MPs take more seriously than themselves. Their desire to put themselves front and centre of world events. Their need to imagine that everything they do makes a difference. No greater self-love hath any person than this. If they were to have a therapist, I am sure they would be having a field day. The triumph of ego over ever-diminishing quantities of self-worth.

So the collapse of the Chinese spy trial has been a godsend to almost every opposition MP. Now, you might have thought the key components of the case were two blokes called Christopher being accused of doing the espionage. Albeit fairly basic stuff like leaking diary engagements that weren’t exactly state secrets in the first place.

But how wrong you would be. Because what elevates this case to a matter of national security is that the people allegedly spied on were two Tory MPs. Nothing could be of greater importance than this. Had the Chinese been trying to access our nuclear codes then this would have been an everyday matter of indifference. After all, we are almost certainly doing the same to the Chinese. Or if we aren’t, then we ought to be. But an attack on two parliamentarians is an attack on what it means to be British.

All this explains why on Monday we were on to our third urgent question on the decision by the Crown Prosecution Service to drop the charges inside a week. Ordinarily we would have had to make do with one at best, but this being about something as mission critical as MPs themselves, we can clearly never have enough.

Don’t bet against a fourth on Wednesday if a newspaper comes up with yet another unimportant detail that no one outside Westminster is much bothered about. This one could run and run.

It would be less self-indulgent if we were actually getting somewhere with this. As it is we are going round and round in circles, with the Tories desperate to pin the collapse of the trial on the government. First, by claiming that Keir Starmer had nobbled the director of public prosecutions into dropping the case. Then, when it became clear the prime minister had not been leaning on the DPP, the Tories did a reverse ferret and accused Starmer of influencing the case by failing to intervene. It’s not often you feel sorry for Keir these days, but in this instance he really can’t win.

For Monday’s UQ, the shadow home secretary, Chris Philp, had seized on a small detail in a Sunday Times article which suggested the home secretary had got wind of the fact that the trial was going to collapse and had wondered what she could do about it.

For the Philpster, this was the smoking gun: the key to unlocking a major conspiracy at the heart of government. As ever, this was Chris at his most delusional. He only ever sees what he wants to see. At moments like this, you can’t help wondering if this bear with very little brain has too much time on his hands.

In PhilpWorld, the home secretary should have been allowed to tamper with the evidence. If deputy national security adviser Matt Collins couldn’t come up with enough dirt on China, the home secretary should have just added some more. No matter that Collins went out of his way on several occasions to describe China as posing multiple threats. No matter that the Labour government’s position on China – “it’s a threat, but hey it’s the world’s second biggest economy” – was identical to that of previous Tory governments.

Dan Jarvis, the security minister, is usually the most even-tempered and good natured of men. But even he was clearly narked at being dragged out to the Commons to answer the Philpster’s half-arsed questions. Time and again he had to labour the point that the government was as disappointed as everyone else at the decision to drop the case and the Tories would do well to show some humility. The spying had taken place on their watch and if they hadn’t taken so long to update the Official Secrets Act, then the case might have gone to trial. All this rather went over the Philpster’s head. Most things do.

The rest of the session was largely taken up by the usual Tories also desperate to believe that this was a conspiracy rather than a cock-up by the DPP. Iain Duncan Smith wanted to know if he could call China a threat. Increasingly Desperate Dan suggested he could make his own mind up and call it what he liked.

Others got hooked on Jarvis saying China posed multiple threats to security rather than a threat to national security. They seemed to think it was a gotcha moment. It really wasn’t. The SNP’s Graham Leadbitter went so far as to quote Dominic Cummings as a reliable source. Even though Dom hadn’t been there. It was only recently that Dom remembered he had forgotten to warn us about the Chinese five years ago.

It all ended rather bad-temperedly. Jarvis clearly fed up at not being believed and the Tories believing what they wanted to believe. Much more fun for them that way. Not to say, self-indulgent. Still, the frontbenches did find something they could agree on during the next UQ on the decision by the West Midlands police and Birmingham city council to ban Maccabi Tel Aviv fans from next month’s match at Villa Park.

The culture secretary, Lisa Nandy – along with her shadow, Nigel Huddleston – were adamant that this was all about antisemitism. That the fans were being banned because they were Israeli and not because the club was world famous for having a hardcore of travelling fans who made Millwall fans c1980 look like angels. That it wasn’t the safety of local people that was the issue but the safety of the Maccabi Ultras. Really, they were all sweethearts. We should just learn to live with their lovable violence and racist chants.

Cue more bad faith from some of those who had supported the ban. Ayoub Khan tried to claim his opposition had always been on the grounds of Maccabi hooliganism. When he had already supported Zara Sultana’s suggestion that all Israeli teams should be banned from European competition.

Labour’s Paula Barker was the one coherent voice. She suggested it was a bad idea to overrule operational safety decisions. That had happened prior to Hillsborough and 97 people had lost their lives unnecessarily. But no one was listening to her. Then, no one had been listening to anyone much all day.

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