What is Dominic Raab not telling us about Hong Kong?

The government’s promised ‘pathway to citizenship’ to Hong Kong people is wonderful, but has the Foreign Office arranged a get-out clause? Last week, Dominic Raab told parliament that ‘if China enacts the [proposed new security] law, we will change the arrangements for British National (Overseas) passport holders in Hong Kong’. He added, however, that ‘We do not oppose Hong Kong passing its own national security law’. Behind this lies the fact that the Basic Law of Hong Kong, arising from the Sino-British Agreement of 1984, prescribes that Hong Kong ‘shall enact its own laws to prohibit any act of treason, secession, sedition or subversion against the Central People’s Government’. So far, it has not done so. Hence Beijing’s recent threat. But if, thus threatened, the Hong Kong Legislative Council (LegCo) does pass the security law demanded, the outward form will have been observed and Beijing’s wish will have become Hong Kong’s ‘own laws’. Then Britain’s promise of citizenship would appear to be void. Since only half the seats in LegCo are directly elected, Beijing-backers will surely maintain control even if the democrats triumph in September’s elections. Is this what Mr Raab is not quite telling us?

Sonita Alleyne, the Master of Jesus College, Cambridge, issued a passionate ‘personal message’ about the killing of George Floyd on her college’s website: ‘The message posted on the College Twitter account “If one man can’t breathe, we all can’t breathe” were my words,’ she revealed. ‘Be angry at this moment.’ Ms Alleyne’s message was published on 5 June — the day, in 1989, when the world watched the famous pictures of a young man confronting a line of tanks in Tiananmen Square. Soon 10,000 Chinese could not breathe, being dead. I have recently drawn attention to the adulatory approach of the college’s China Centre to the regime of the Chinese Communist party, which this year banned commemorations of the killings.