Does Andy Burnham have a plan? The new Prime Minister may have announced his intention to unveil a ten-year programme for the country, but beyond domestic politics, both he and his inexperienced Foreign Secretary, Ed Miliband, have said little when it comes to the elephant in the room: foreign policy. This silence can only last for so long. The question of what Britain ought to do about the increasingly acute threat from Beijing cannot be pushed to one side forever.
The Starmer government’s policy on China was not just disastrous; it was non-existent. The China audit, due to happen after Sir Keir took office in July 2024, was swept under the carpet, never to be seen or heard of again. Instead, Starmer’s approach was tantamount to appeasement. In succumbing to the middle kingdom’s economic coercion, Britain shied away from criticising its fourth-largest trading partner. As Beijing gained more and more get-out-of-jail-free cards, it gleefully continued to undermine global security.
There is no more urgent time than the present for Britain to take the China threat seriously
As we wait for the new government’s foreign policy agenda, we must remember that in politics, continuity over change is not always a good thing. Jonathan Powell, Starmer’s geopolitically illiterate National Security Adviser who spearheaded the campaign to give Britain’s strategic asset of the Chagos Islands to Mauritius, has asserted his ‘duty’ to stay on. This is a man who suppressed the China audit, which would have seen a significant investigation into Chinese espionage. An unholy cabal of government and legal officials was all-too willing to trade away sovereignty and geopolitical security, not least for financial gain.
