It appears the Liberal Democrats have fallen foul of the Trade Descriptions Act. During the Brexit years, the party did its best to eschew the ‘democratic’ part of their name by promising to nullify the largest democratic mandate the UK has ever seen. And now Mr Steerpike is intrigued to see that party grandees don’t seem too keen on their ‘liberal’ roots either.
Former party leader Vince Cable has this week written a piece for the Independent arguing that there is no point in the West criticising China for its policies towards the Uighur Muslims. Cable denies that ethnic cleansing is going on in Xinjiang, despite reports of forced sterilisations and abortion, justifying measures against the Uighurs as counterterrorism ‘crackdowns’. He writes that China’s ‘current actions in Xinjiang are motivated by’ its ‘War on Terror’ which is ‘Nasty: yes. Counterproductive: probably. Genocide: hardly’ and adding that the ‘evidence base for ‘genocide’ consists largely of a handful of reports by plausible academic researchers.’
The comments are merely an extension of Cable’s previous statements on China, such as when he told the Institute of Economic Affairs in April 2020 ‘I think we just have to accept that for the next 20, 30 years China will be the dominant economic power in the world economy… it would be sensible for us and the rest of the western world to accommodate to that and to operate within it.’
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