UK security agencies have quietly pulled the plug on the scare stories. MI5 and MI6 have signalled they are comfortable with China’s new “super embassy” in London going ahead, undercutting months of hype from emigrated “Yellow Camp” activists and anti-China politicians who tried seven times to turn this planning dispute into a rerun of the 2019 street movement. Their own organisers now admit this latest London protest was the “final show,” with only a few hundred people turning up as the political reality in Britain moves on.
The core criticism has been that this “super embassy” could act as an intelligence hub simply because it sits near a British Telecom exchange and several data centres. Anti-China politicians took that proximity and spun it into a full-blown security scare, while emigrated “Yellow Camp” supporters piled on with unsubstantiated claims that the new embassy would somehow monitor Hong Kong people living in the UK, despite offering no verifiable evidence.
MI5 and MI6 have cleared China’s new London embassy plan, giving Keir Starmer the cover to sign off and head to China early next year.
From panic to green light
The protesters bet that MI5 (the Security Service) and MI6 (the Secret Intelligence Service) would mirror their rhetoric, condemn the project, and force the Labour government to kill the plan in the name of national security. If that gamble had paid off, the new embassy could have been strangled at the planning stage and turned into a trophy for the anti-China camp.
Instead, that narrative ran straight into a brick wall once the professionals finished their review. As reported by British media such as The Times and the BBC, is that both MI5 and MI6 have given the plan their blessing, with the Home Office and Foreign Office also indicating they can live with it as long as established security safeguards are in place. Officials are now preparing formal responses, but the direction of travel is clear: once the security services say the risks are manageable, the political case for blocking the embassy collapses.
According to leaks reported in The Guardian, a senior MI5 official responsible for domestic security told Commons Speaker Lindsay Hoyle that the agency is “very relaxed” about China building this new embassy in London because it believes it can handle any associated risks.
MI5 Director General Ken McCallum has publicly framed the potential espionage risks of the new embassy as something they could handle, stressing that MI5 has “more than a century of experience” in monitoring and responding to such threats. That is a polite way of saying: there are tools and methods to ensure the site cannot simply be turned into a spying free-for-all.
On the foreign intelligence side, former MI6 operations and intelligence chief Nigel Inkster has also been quoted explaining that China, like many other states, increasingly avoids using embassies and consulates for espionage because counterintelligence technology has made such operations inside diplomatic missions far more risky and detectable. This undercuts the popular storyline pushed by anti-China voices that every Chinese diplomatic building is automatically a spy base.
Government sources have indicated that, in discussions with the Home Office and Foreign Office, both agencies have made clear they can manage any national security risks, so the departments see no reason to stand in the way. With the security “gatekeepers” effectively waving the plan through, the remaining political barriers are falling one by one.
Starmer’s Calculations
For Starmer, having the security services onside removes a major excuse used by opponents to delay decisions on China. His team knows that a visit to China early next year, framed around trade, finance, and stabilising ties, will be politically easier if the embassy issue is resolved rather than festering. Beijing has already registered strong dissatisfaction with the repeated delays, which began under previous governments and have chipped away at trust.
There is also a basic reciprocity issue: the British Embassy in Beijing needs renovation and modernisation, something UK diplomats themselves have pressed for. If London blocks or endlessly drags its feet on China’s new embassy, Beijing has every reason to respond in kind to British plans.
No suspense left
Once MI5 and MI6 have effectively signed off, and with the Home Office and Foreign Office lined up behind a risk-managed approval, the political “mystery” around whether Starmer will give formal consent is rapidly disappearing. His signature on the plan now looks like a matter of timing and procedure, not principle.
For the emigrated “Yellow Camp,” the message is blunt: when Britain’s own security agencies decline to endorse their alarmist narrative, their campaign loses its core claim to credibility. After seven attempts to create a London-style copy of the “Anti-Extradition Law Amendment Bill movement,” with turnout dwindling and results empty, their ability to mobilise in the UK has clearly taken a heavy hit.
Seven loud London protests in a row, Hong Kong BNO holders and anti-China politicians are empty-handed – the embassy plan is still going ahead.
As for the Anti-China politicians, they have been weaponising this planning case for months. An attempt to not only slow or block the embassy but to box Starmer into a hostile posture toward China as well. Plus, they get to rally fringe separatist networks around Tibet and Xinjiang. That strategy depends on painting China as a unique, unmanageable security threat even when the UK’s own legal processes and intelligence assessments say otherwise.
If Starmer stands his ground and pushes the project over the line on the strength of professional security advice, it will take the wind out of the anti‑China camp’s sails in London.
Lai Ting-yiu
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