Tory hawks aren’t happy with Sunak’s China stance

The tougher language on China in today’s refreshed Integrated Review hasn’t been enough for a number of Conservative MPs, who used the Commons statement on the matter to complain. When Foreign Secretary James Cleverly unveiled the updated security and foreign policy strategy to MPs, he described the ‘increasingly aggressive military and economic behaviour of the Chinese Community party’.

The MPs who raised concerns were all well-known China hawks who were never going to be satisfied by the position Rishi Sunak has tried to take. Alicia Kearns, the chair of the Foreign Affairs Select Committee, told Cleverly that China should not just be seen as an economic rival. Iain Duncan Smith – not a fan of Sunak’s approach either – mocked the way the Prime Minister had gone from describing China as a ‘systemic threat’ to the milder ‘systemic challenge’ and again onto a relationship of ‘robust pragmatism’. Today’s line was even milder, Duncan Smith said:

But I now understand that it is an epoch-defining challenge.