Not so much Chinese Whispers as Apocalyptic Klaxons.
What is Labour doing cosying up to China? Are they reckless, naive, or deliberately frogmarching Britain to the cliff edge? These facts will chill your bones.
What should be the response to a country that has spied on you, hacked you, undercut your economy, armed your enemies, created and covered up a global pandemic and is regarded as one of the world’s greatest existential threats by your closest allies?
Send them David Lammy.
If only this was just a joke.
Alarmingly, this is all part of Sir Keir Starmer’s reset with China. What he describes as a ‘pragmatic’ review of the relationship. What the hell does he think he’s playing at? Anyone with even a seed of common sense would realise the pragmatic assessment would be to lean into America’s extreme caution.
Of course, Starmer’s ideological zealotry for Net Zero will essentially require scraping in front of President Xi for turbines and solar panels (he may as well just write a giant charity cheque to Beijing with our nuclear code scrawled on the back and throw the lot of us back into celebratory lockdown), but is it so outlandish to assume that actually, a man of quite Maoist bent (the difference between Maoism and Marxism is the use of a united front of so-called ‘progressive’ forces) would relish the idea of a revamped West-East Leftist love in?
Even more disconcertingly, there have been no announcements about what a trade agreement nor what cooperation on policy might look like. Zilch. Zero. Zip. Why all the secrecy?
Read on to learn quite how harrowing China’s global positioning is, and ask what is Starmer thinking?