Is Sunak tough enough on China?

When it comes to policy, the area where the least is known about Rishi Sunak’s views is foreign affairs. As chancellor, the bulk of his time was spent focussing on the domestic front. During the (first) Tory leadership contest over the summer, Liz Truss’s campaign accused Sunak of being soft on Russia and China. Last night, Sunak began setting out his vision for the UK’s relationship with China at the Lord Mayor’s banquet, in his first major speech on foreign policy since entering 10 Downing Street.

Sunak defined his approach in part through the differences between himself and his predecessors. In a move away from the Osborne/Cameron era, he said the ‘so-called golden era’ of diplomacy was over. He also said that it was clear that the idea that closer trade ties with China would spark reform in the country was ‘naïve’ at best. However, on the flip side, he appeared to take a thinly veiled swipe at his most recent predecessors – Boris Johnson and Liz Truss – when he declared that his own approach would not be one of ‘grand rhetoric’ but ‘robust pragmatism’:

So we will make an evolutionary leap in our approach.