In the UK, Keir Starmer has few fans. I learned that in China it’s a very different story | Martin Rowson

The prime minister’s meal in a Yunnan restaurant in Beijing has spawned a national menu. The man has, bizarrely, become a phenomenon

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t’s always heartening when people agree with you. I had Keir Starmer down as a non-ideological technocratic centrist dad the moment I first clocked him, with a tin ear for both simple human interaction and the darker subtleties of the political arts. So despite carrying his famous “Ming vase” over the line in the 2024 election, I’ve been wholly unsurprised by him flatfooting and pratfalling through jagged shards of porcelain ever since, living down to all my worst fears. Now absolutely everybody else thinks he’s crap too.

Or so I thought, until a family visit to China last month, when I established a connection beyond mythical Ming vases. The “Keir Starmer menu” has become a foodie phenomenon.

Let me explain. While in Beijing we thought we’d book a table at Yi Zuo Yi Wang, a popular Yunnan restaurant in Chaoyang, an area home to foreign embassies and international media organisations, galleries and happening night-spots. Yi Zuo Yi Wang translates as “In and Out”, but that’s just a coincidence.