The winner of the National League Championship Series could determine if Major League Baseball is played in 2027.

This might sound far-fetched. It is not. What looks like a best-of-seven baseball series, which starts Monday as the Milwaukee Brewers host the Los Angeles Dodgers in Game 1, will play out as a proxy of the coming labor war between MLB and the MLB Players Association.

Owners across the game want a salary cap — and if the Dodgers, with their record $500 million-plus payroll, win back-to-back World Series, it would only embolden the league’s push to regulate salaries. The Brewers, consistently a bottom-third payroll team, emerging triumphant would serve as the latest evidence that winners can germinate even in the game’s smallest markets and that the failures of other low-revenue teams have less to do with spending than execution.

The truth, of course, exists somewhere in between. But in between is not where the two parties stake out their negotiating positions in what many expect to be a brutal fight to determine the future of the game’s economics. And that is why whoever comes out victorious likely will be used as a cudgel when formal negotiations begin next spring for a collective bargaining agreement that expires Dec. 1, 2026.

If it’s the Dodgers, MLB owners — who already were vocal publicly and even more so privately about Los Angeles spending as much as the bottom six teams in payroll combined this year — will likely cry foul even louder. Already, MLB is expected to lock out players upon the agreement’s expiration. Back-to-back championships by the Dodgers could embolden MLB and add to a chorus of fans who see a cap as a panacea for the plague of big-money teams monopolizing championships over the past decade.

Such a scenario would not scare the union off its half-century-old anti-cap stance. The MLBPA has no intention of negotiating if a cap remains on the table, and considering MLB was on the cusp of losing games in 2022 because of a negotiation that didn’t include a cap, players already have spoken among themselves about how to weather missing time in 2027. Certainly, the Brewers winning wouldn’t ensure avoiding that, but if in any argument about the necessity of a cap, the union can counter that the juggernaut Dodgers lost to a team of self-proclaimed Average Joes with a payroll a quarter of the size, it reinforces the point that team-building acumen can exist regardless of financial might.

The Brewers have joined the Tampa Bay Rays and Cleveland Guardians as vanguards of low-revenue success in this decade. Over the past eight years, Milwaukee has won five NL Central titles and made the playoffs seven times. At 97-65 this year, the Brewers owned the best record in baseball. And they did so with a unique blend of players.

Of the 26 players on Milwaukee’s NLCS roster, 15 came via trade, according to ESPN Research, including a majority of its best players (slugger Christian Yelich, catcher William Contreras, ace Freddy Peralta and Trevor Megill, the closer for most of the season). The Brewers drafted four (Brice Turang, Jacob Misiorowski, Sal Frelick and Aaron Ashby, all major contributors), signed three as minor league free agents, brought in two via international amateur free agency (their best player, Jackson Chourio, and closer Abner Uribe) and snagged one in the minor league portion of the offseason Rule 5 draft.

That leaves one major league free agent. One. And it was left-hander Jose Quintana, who signed a one-year, $4 million deal in March.

Think about that: The MLBPA, which has fought for free agency since its inception, would be heralding a team that does not spend on free agents. Strange bedfellows, yes, but it strengthens the union’s position: If the current system is beyond repair because of money, how did a team that doesn’t spend win a championship?

The Dodgers, on the other hand, are not nearly as free-agent-heavy as might be assumed. They’ve acquired the most players via trade, too, though it’s only nine, and several of them — from Mookie Betts to Tyler Glasnow to Tommy Edman to Alex Vesia — play a significant role on the team. Los Angeles signed five major league free agents (including Shohei Ohtani, Freddie Freeman and Blake Snell), plus two professional international free agents (Yoshinobu Yamamoto and Hyeseong Kim), two amateur international free agents (Roki Sasaki and Andy Pages) and two minor league free agents (Max Muncy and Justin Dean). They drafted five of their players — one more than the Brewers, whose development system is regarded as one of baseball’s best — and rounded out their roster with Jack Dreyer, an undrafted free agent.

Dreyer highlights what the Dodgers and Brewers do exceptionally well: extract talent from players through systems that value a combination of scouting, analytics and superior coaching. It doesn’t matter whether you spend half a billion dollars or the $115 million or so currently on the Brewers’ books. If you can become an organization that gets the best out of players, winning will follow.

Perhaps if they weren’t so terminally parked at opposite ends of the continuum, the league and union could agree that staking an argument around one playoff series is foolhardy. Both sides should understand that, in the grand scheme, a seven-game series says very little, particularly when it comes to the complicated economic system of 30 billion-dollar corporations competing in the same space.

But this battle is as much about narrative as it is reality, and if MLB is going to push for a salary cap, it needs as much evidence as possible, and the Dodgers becoming the first team in a quarter-century to win back-to-back World Series would provide another nugget on top of the reams the league already cites. The last team to do that was the New York Yankees — and the competitive-balance tax, the proto-cap that currently penalizes high-spending teams, came into existence specifically to check what other owners believed the Yankees’ runaway spending.

The Dodgers are the new Yankees, more moneyed and willing to spend than anyone. They’ve won the NL West 12 of the past 13 years and captured championships in 2020 and 2024. And despite their seeming inevitability, baseball is not suffering in most areas important to the league. Television ratings are up. Attendance has increased. The implementation of the pitch clock before the 2024 season modernized the game and is now almost universally beloved. The addition of an automated ball-strike challenge system next year will only add to the game’s appeal.

This NLCS is baseball at its best. A well-oiled machine of superstars, peaking at the right time, looking to become baseball’s first back-to-back champions since 2000, against a team that plays a delightful brand of baseball, is wildly likable and always seems to succeed, too. The Brewers haven’t won a championship yet — not just in this recent run of excellence but in their 57-year history — and derailing the Dodgers en route to doing so would make the tale of triumph that much greater.

And, yes, despite the higher win total, the Brewers enter this series as the underdog, and it’s a fair designation. Even if they swept the Dodgers in the six games they played in July. Even if their bullpen is filled with fireballing nastiness. Even if they have whacked as many home runs this postseason as Los Angeles, despite the Dodgers hitting 78 more during the regular season.

There will be a lot of great baseball played in Milwaukee and Los Angeles over the next week-plus, fans’ cups running over with the sorts of matchups that make October the most special month of the year. Ohtani, Betts and Freeman trying to catch up to Misiorowski’s fastball and read his slider. Chourio, Contreras and Turang trying to solve Snell, Yamamoto, Glasnow and Ohtani. The Brewers’ terrifying bullpen, with five relievers throwing 97 mph-plus, against the team that hit high-octane fastballs better than anyone this year. The Dodgers trying to figure out if they can rely on any reliever other than Sasaki, and the Brewers, who were the fifth-toughest team to strike out this season, trying to get to Los Angeles’ bullpen with a barrage of balls in play.

While the baseball itself will be indisputable, this NLCS is bigger than the game. Its tentacles will reach into the future, with an unwitting but undeniable place in something far more consequential. It’s just one series, yes. But it’s so much more.

Kemi Badenoch has accused the government of a “cover-up” over the collapse of a China spy trial.

The Tory leader said there were a “lot of questions to answer” as to why the trial involving two men did not proceed.

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It is expected that ministers will have to answer questions about the case today, as parliament returns from recess.

In particular, there are questions around the role played by Jonathan Powell, the prime minister’s national security adviser, in the trial not going ahead.

Ministers have repeatedly said Mr Powell played no role in the decisions that led to the collapse of the trial – but Ms Badenoch said she was “worried that there is a cover up taking place”.

Speaking to broadcasters in Grantham today, Ms Badenoch said: “We will be making sure that we ask questions in parliament about exactly who knew what, where and when, but Jonathan Powell certainly has questions to answer.”

She refuted suggestions from ministers that Mr Powell had had no involvement in the collapse of the trial, saying: “We are seeing information that contradicts that.

“That is why it is very important that the government come clean about who knew what, where, when, and why this has happened.”

Former parliamentary researcher Christopher Cash, 30, of Whitechapel, east London, and teacher Christopher Berry, 33, of Witney, Oxfordshire, were charged with passing politically sensitive information to a Chinese intelligence agent between December 2021 and February 2023. They have both denied the allegations.

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Over the past week, Sir Keir Starmer, his ministers and Mr Powell have faced accusations they were involved in the trial being dropped.

Last week Stephen Parkinson, the director of public prosecutions and the head of the Crown Prosecution Service, took the unusual step of sending MPs a letter to claim that the government repeatedly refused to provide evidence that China represented a national security threat at the time of the allegations.

Mr Parkinson said the CPS had tried “over many months” to get the evidence it needed to carry out the prosecution, but it had not been forthcoming from the government.

Downing Street also said today it was “entirely false” to suggest the government influenced the collapse of the case because of concerns Beijing could withdraw investment in the UK.

Asked about reports in the Sunday Times which suggested a decision was taken high up in government to abandon the case, the prime minister’s official spokesman told reporters: “It is entirely false. The CPS (Crown Prosecution Service) decision to drop the case was entirely a matter for the CPS.

“There was no role for any member of this government, no minister, or special adviser, to take any decision in relation to this case. That is entirely for the CPS.”

The government had argued that China needed to have been branded an “enemy” during the period it was accused of spying for the prosecution to go ahead – effectively blaming the previous Conservative government.

The Conservatives claim the government’s rationale is an excuse because it had said many times Beijing was a national security threat while it was in government.

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The prime minister has said he wanted to be “absolutely clear no ministers were involved” in any decisions relating to the case, but notably sidestepped answering whether Mr Powell was involved.

Bridget Phillipson, the education secretary, yesterday gave the government’s most definitive answer yet about whether Mr Powell was part of the reason the case was dropped weeks before they were set to go on trial.

Asked on Sunday Morning with Trevor Phillips if she could assure him that the national security adviser played no role in the decision, Ms Phillipson said: “Yes, I can give that assurance.

“We’re very disappointed that the CPS were not able to take forward the prosecution.”

The Liberal Democrats have called on the government to hold an inquiry into the collapse of the case.

Calum Miller, the party’s foreign affairs spokesman, said the case had “exposed appalling gaps in our government’s ability and willingness to challenge China’s espionage efforts”.

“We cannot let the government sweep this case under the rug in its efforts to cosy up to President Xi. An inquiry – preceded by rigorous scrutiny through parliament – would provide the answers the public deserves.”