The case of Christine Lee shot to national attention when news broke that the Speaker of the House of Commons had warned MPs that there was a Chinese agent operating in parliament. But why is Lee perhaps just the tip of the iceberg when it comes to Chinese interference in the UK political system and how can the UK better defend itself against such threats?

Chris Cash is joined by Martin Thorley, a Postdoctoral Research Fellow at the University of Exeter whose research has uncovered Chinese party-state activity in the UK and evidence of compromised actors within the British establishment. They discuss the activities of the United Front and the groups it has targeted, the UK's approach to foreign interference, and how East Asian diaspora communities can be protected amid wider geopolitical struggles.

You can read Martin's now famous Twitter explainer thread on the Christine Lee case here.

Martin also penned an article for The Guardian in which he described how the UK and China find their relationship in a current state of 'phoney peace'. You can read that article here.