Is Britain heading for war over Taiwan?

It is billed as a once-in-a-generation review of Britain’s foreign policy and defence strategies. ‘Global Britain in a Competitive Age’, Boris Johnson’s ‘new chapter’ for Britain, identifies two main adversaries: Russia — an ‘acute threat’ — and China — a ‘systemic competitor’. And while it nods at a geopolitical ‘tilt’ towards the Indo-Pacific, the more hawkish Tory MPs are disappointed, thinking Beijing should have also counted as a threat. They should perhaps be careful what they wish for.

The Prime Minister is sending more than harsh words in China’s direction. In two months’ time, the Royal Navy will send a battle fleet to Asia for the first time since the start of the Korean War in 1950. One of the navy’s two new £6 billion aircraft carriers, HMS Queen Elizabeth, will head up an allied task force in what’s described as a British ‘pivot’ to the Indo-Pacific with ‘a greater and more persistent presence’ there ‘than any other European country’.