Another day, another speech on China. Tonight it’s the turn of Foreign Secretary James Cleverly, speaking in all his finery at the Lord Mayor’s Easter Banquet at Mansion House. Clad in his best glad rags, Cleverly is expected to argue that isolating China would be against the UK’s national interest. The two nations instead ought to work together to solve ‘humanity’s biggest problems’, with Cleverly arguing it would be ‘wrong’ to ‘declare a new Cold War’ but urging Beijing to honest about the ‘biggest military build-up in peacetime history’. Jolly good luck convincing Xi Jinping’s jingoistic goons on that…
One aspect of Sino-British relations which trailed versions of Cleverly’s speech does not address is Hong Kong. The UK still, technically, has legal obligations to the former British colony – even if Beijing’s ruthless crackdown on civil liberties has made that a sick joke.
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