China's 'useful idiots' keep their honours

Ministers like to talk a good game on China. But, as the Commons witnessed just two weeks ago, all too often there’s a very different reality when it comes to calling out Beijing’s abuses. After the Foreign Office declined to describe China’s atrocities in Xinjiang as ‘genocide,’ now it’s time for the Department for Education to turn the other cheek. For universities minister Michelle Donelan has ducked the chance to call on Britain’s seats of learning to cut their ties with apparatchiks of the communist regime.

Steerpike spotted last week that Tory grandee Sir Iain Duncan Smith had tabled a question, inviting universities minister Michelle Donelan to tell the House what representations to UK universities have been made about the honorary doctorates and awards given to members of the Hong Kong government. This is in light of the ongoing democracy clampdown and the repeated breaches of the Sino-British Declaration there.