Starmer denies being soft on China

Prime Minister’s Questions today asked the same question that Katy raised in her magazine cover piece last week: what is the new government’s stance towards China? Oddly, the man asking that question never really answered it himself. Rishi Sunak spent much of his premiership in a semantic quandary over what kind of challenge or threat Beijing posed. Today, he opened by asking whether David Lammy would use his meetings in China this week ‘to condemn China’s dangerous escalatory acts’ in the Taiwan Strait. 

Keir Starmer’s response was that the continued military activity in the strait was ‘not conducive to peace and stability’ and that the UK planned to:

cooperate where we can as permanent members of the UN Security Council, issues like net zero, health and trade, compete where we have different interests, but challenge, the point he makes is absolutely right, where it’s needed to protect national security, human rights and our values and we will put that challenge in.