Winning here: the Lib Dems' links with China

Earlier this week Mr S brought you news of the latest interminable row splitting the Lib Dems: what to do about Vince Cable? The ex-leader has alienated his party’s youth wing with his comments about the Chinese Communist party and Beijing’s treatment of Uyghur Muslims. Cable has denied that genocide is taking place in Xinjiang and also defended the Hong Kong government’s crackdown on protesters on the grounds that ‘there’s got to be order.’ Bull in the China shop stuff indeed.

Now Mr S has been delving into the links of some of Cable’s colleagues from the Coalition government. Back then, it was the so-called ‘golden era’ of UK-China relations with Sinophilia all the rage in SW1 – a phenomena from which the Lib Dems were by no means exempt. After being dumped out of Parliament at the 2015 election, Cable’s fellow Cabinet minister Danny Alexander went to work as the number two man at the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank based in Beijing – an institution used to front the country’s ‘Belt and Road Initiative.’