Keir Starmer revives Golden Era China policy
The UK Labour Leader wants to deepen trade with Beijing as Brussels derisks.
Keir Starmer’s China policy was always an enigma, but at the G20 he finally showed his hand.
Immediately after the Brexit vote Sir Keir spent years campaigning for a second referendum wanting the UK to rejoin the European Union.
Ironically, if the Labour leader had succeeded, he would have been forced by Brussels into adopting a far tougher China policy than the one he is overseeing as Prime Minister
This week, the UK Leader met China’s Xi Jinping for the UK and China’s first leader bilateral meeting since 2018.
Much has changed since Theresa May was prime minister. The pandemic exposed China’s willingness and ability to infect the world with a virus it knew was contagious yet allowed to escape its borders.
That decision killed millions and caused incalculable economic, mental and social damage which governments and citizens are still paying for to this day. At the same time, China brazenly seeks to fashion itself as the leader of the Global South and developed countries bleat meaningless soundbites about wanting to cooperate with Beijing on global health issues.
The crackdown on Hong Kong, which culminated in the jailing of 45 Hong Kong democracy activists on Tuesday, showed that Beijing’s assurances made in international agreements could not be trusted, just as China’s buildup of military outposts in the South China Sea showed Xi’s 2015 Rose Garden pledge that ‘China does not intend to pursue militarisation’ of the Spratley Islands to be a lie.
Further, the CCP’s economic coercion of Australia demonstrated that the Chinese government was willing to use its trading dominance to punish the citizens of countries with governments who voiced political positions it did not like.
And the United States flexed its muscle to force the British into banning Huawei technology from its telecommunications networks.
Finally, China has been an active supporter of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and has supplied it with dual-use goods to prop up its war effort and economy.
As a result, the G7, of which the UK is a member has vowed to follow Brussels’ path of ‘derisking’ its critical supply lines from Beijing.
For the European Union, this has meant imposing tariffs on Chinese state-subsidised electric vehicles to enable European carmakers to try and compete, raiding the European offices of baggage-scanning company Nuchtech as part of investigations into whether the company benefits from Chinese state subsidies, using a new regulation to investigate Chinese-subsidised medical devices and designating the fast fashion retailer Shein as a Very Large Online Platform exposing it to tougher regulation, including the requirement to rid its platform of counterfeit goods.
It has investigations open into Chinese-subsidised wind turbine parks in Spain, Greece, France, Romania and Bulgaria, solar panels in Romania and has forced a Chinese state-owned company to withdraw from bidding to build trains for Bulgaria.
So what did Keir Starmer do when he met Xi by comparison?
‘A strong UK-China relationship is important for both our countries,’ Starmer told Xi.
According to the official readout from Downing Street, Sir Keir told Xi that he wanted to deepen trade and investment and work together more on health, education and other areas of mutual interest.
‘The Prime Minister set out that our approach would be consistent, respectful and pragmatic in order to advance these shared goals,’ a Downing Street spokesman said.
When it came to the serious human rights violations and upending of global security norms, Sir Keir said he ‘wanted to engage honestly and frankly on those areas where we have different perspectives, including on Hong Kong, human rights and Russia’s war in Ukraine.’
Clear-cut examples of violations of international agreements and the UN Charter have been reduced by the UK to ‘different perspectives’.
Sir Keir said his approach would be ‘rooted in the national interests of the UK’ but reassured Xi that he would be a ‘predictable and pragmatic partner.’
Chinese officials removed the two British journalists from the room as soon as Starmer began raising the case of the Hong Kong editor Jimmy Lai who is in prison and likely to die in jail for standing up for democracy.
Australians will know how predictable that behaviour is, just look at how the freed Australian-Chinese journalist Cheng Lei was treated when she attended a media event with Chinese Premier Li Qiang and Prime Minister Anthony Albanese in Canberra earlier this year.
British Labour had all these experiences to learn from and craft a China policy accordingly.
But because of the Conservative’s spectacular implosions before the last election and the bewildering disinterest in China from most of the UK political reporters, they did neither and they successfully evaded being obliged to set out a China strategy.
By the time of the July election, Labour was no clearer about its approach to China, despite all polls showing it was going to take Downing Street in a landslide.
Speaking to foreign press in the days before the July election, Foreign Secretary David Lammy said he would have a three cs policy.
‘There are very important areas where we would seek to cooperate, of course, with China, the climate issues, the world health issues particularly.
‘Our trading relationship, there are areas where we must compete, understandably and there are areas where we challenge particularly, on areas of acute national security concerns.’
It’s all eerily familiar.
Lammy’s pre-election schtick could have come straight from Australian Labor’s playbook of ‘cooperate where we can, disagree where we must’.
When asked by Latika Takes what he would do on Taiwan and what message he’d take to Beijing on China’s grey zone tactics, Lammy said: ‘Our position – the UK position on Taiwan remains the same, it’s been consistent for many, many years.’
Notice that he did not state what that position was.
The ambiguity left even Lammy’s colleagues mystified about their party’s approach.
Labour MP Sarah Champion and Chair of the House of Commons International Development Select Committee told the Inter-Parliamentary Alliance’s annual gathering in Taipei just after Labour’s election that: ‘We do not yet know what the new UK Government will do to support Taiwan.’
‘However, my government has promised to ‘audit’ Sino-British relations, seeking to, I quote; “co-operate where we can compete where we need to, and challenge where we must.’”
‘That might not sound encouraging, but, I want to emphasise that there is a lot of support for Taiwan across all UK parties.
‘Let’s be honest; UK governments of all colours have failed to get to grips with Cross-Strait tensions, preferring ambiguity to clarity, and allowing that ambiguity to be exploited by Beijing.’
When asked for details on that audit, including who is conducting it, when it began, what its terms of reference are and when it will be finished no one in government, from Downing Street to the Foreign Office can tell you.
Starmer’s words reinforce the actions his government has taken in office, including asking the ex-Taiwanese president not to visit the UK, something not denied by Mr Lammy’s office, reconsidering a previously blocked proposal for the Chinese to build a super embassy in London’s east - something Starmer told Xi he'd done after the
Chinese President raised it during their first phone call - and paving the way for a flurry of net zero infrastructure from China such as solar panels and wind turbines made by Uyghur slaves in Xinjiang.
It’s no wonder no one can answer any questions about the audit. It’s already redundant, Starmer, with his words and his actions has already written the answers. He is taking Britain back to its Golden Era days in open denial of the changed threat landscape.
How he will square this with the incoming Trump Administration remains to be seen.
This is an updated version of a piece published by The Nightly.