Who will be the Democrats’ Gorbachev?

As this paper has argued since the time of the Tiananmen Square massacres, this country should offer Hong Kong people a way out via immigration. We made the 1984 Hong Kong agreement with China: we owe some protection to the victims when it goes wrong which, thanks to Xi Jinping, it has. He has torn up the famous ‘One Country: Two Systems’ rule upon which the agreement was founded. Our government has now commendably acted on this principle of protection, allowing holders of British National Overseas (BNO) passports a ‘pathway to citizenship’ via a visa scheme. The problem, however, is that the current proposals exclude a small but significant part of those affected. You have BNO status only if you were born by 1997, the year of the handover. By extension, you are entitled to BNO status if you are a dependent of a parent with that status, but this leaves out young people aged 18-25 who, being adults, are not dependents and cannot be let in when travelling alone to the United Kingdom.