Prime Minister’s Questions today asked the same question that Katy raised in her magazine cover piece last week: what is the new government’s stance towards China? Oddly, the man asking that question never really answered it himself. Rishi Sunak spent much of his premiership in a semantic quandary over what kind of challenge or threat Beijing posed. Today, he opened by asking whether David Lammy would use his meetings in China this week ‘to condemn China’s dangerous escalatory acts’ in the Taiwan Strait.
Keir Starmer’s response was that the continued military activity in the strait was ‘not conducive to peace and stability’ and that the UK planned to:
cooperate where we can as permanent members of the UN Security Council, issues like net zero, health and trade, compete where we have different interests, but challenge, the point he makes is absolutely right, where it’s needed to protect national security, human rights and our values and we will put that challenge in.
Sunak then demanded that Lammy ‘condemn’ the military escalation, before moving onto Jimmy Lai, who has been imprisoned in Hong Kong for four years. He then called China a ‘decisive enabler of Russia’s war against Ukraine’ and asked Starmer to confirm that he was ‘prepared to sanction any Chinese business or individual involved in aiding Russia’s invasion of Ukraine’. Starmer replied that his party had called for that in the past and ‘I hope this is an issue where we can have unity across the House’. When the Prime Minister makes that kind of plea, it is always in a slightly stern, disapproving, tone, as though he shouldn’t receive questions on this matter because the other side should be backing him.
Being in opposition is much easier
There was then a curious exchange with Sunak where the Tory leader said the Prime Minister had closed the ‘foreign influence registration scheme’, and Starmer insisted ‘that is not correct’. Sunak stood by that assertion, and later Alicia Kearns complained in a point of order that the Prime Minister was wrong. Starmer was again disapproving of Sunak’s questions when the leader of the opposition asked about the freedom of speech act and ‘how without this tool the government will prevent Chinese influence over our universities’. The Prime Minister replied curtly: ‘I really don’t think party political points on national security are at all appropriate.’
It’s almost as though Starmer has become so convinced of his righteousness that anyone probing his actions and arguments is automatically being partisan, rather than just doing their job of scrutiny. This is not an unusual affliction amongst Labourites, and might also explain why Starmer continues to insist he is in some way less self-motivated than his Conservative opponents while also enjoying quite a lot of nice suits and concert tickets. Mind you, Sunak seemed to have unusual clarity on a topic he struggled over when in power. Being in opposition is much easier.
Starmer gave a significant answer to Liberal Democrat leader Ed Davey, who asked about sanctions on two Israeli ministers. Lord Cameron yesterday revealed that as foreign secretary, he had been considering sanctioning finance minister Bezalel Smotrich and national security minister Itamar Ben-Gvir after the pair made comments suggesting aid should be stopped into Gaza and encouraging violence from settlers in the West Bank towards Palestinians. The Prime Minister said the government was ‘looking at that because they’re obviously abhorrent comments’, and urged Israel more widely to ‘take all possible steps to avoid civilian casualties, to allow aid into Gaza in much greater volumes and provide the UN humanitarian partners the ability to operate effectively.’ As ever, though, the question is whether this action or indeed Starmer’s calls on Israel to target strikes and allow more aid through will get any kind of a hearing from the Israeli government when thus far they haven’t – and neither were the calls from Sunak and Cameron any more effective.
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