Tory bust-up over Beijing
Osborne hails Boris ‘seeing off hotheads’ but Cummings says it left us ‘vulnerable’
GEORGE Osborne yesterday hailed Boris Johnson for ‘seeing off the hotheads’ on the Tory benches who want to sever links with China.
The former chancellor, who cosied up to Beijing during his time in government, said there was ‘a lot of continuity’ in the plans unveiled this week in the Prime Minister’s integrated review of foreign and defence policy.
Mr Johnson faced a backlash from Tory MPs this week after pledging to strengthen economic ties with China despite acknowledging the superpower posed a ‘systemic threat’ to the UK.
Julian Lewis, chairman of Parliament’s intelligence and security committee, said the desire of Mr Osborne and David Cameron to forge a ‘golden era’ of relations with China appeared to be alive and well. Dr Lewis sad the push for deeper trade links ‘unfortunately demonstrates that the grasping naivety of the CameronOsborne years still lingers on in some departments of state’.
Dominic Cummings, Mr Johnson’s former chief adviser, also criticised the Cameron-Osborne approach yesterday, saying they had left the UK ‘vulnerable’ to Chinese and Russian attempts to steal commercial secrets.
Mr Cummings told MPs on the Commons science committee: ‘These countries take it deadly serious and Cameron and Osborne did not take it deadly seriously, and in all sorts of ways they left the country vulnerable.’
But Mr Osborne insisted ministers were right to keep the door open to China’s communist dictaMr torship, arguing engagement is better than a containment policy.
He noted that during a ‘very successful’ 2013 visit to China alongside Mr Johnson, then London mayor, they were aware China was an authoritarian state that threatened democracy in Hong Kong.
‘China is changing and becoming more assertive. The question of how you deal with it has not changed,’ Osborne told a Lords committee. ‘That is why I think Boris Johnson should be congratulated for seeing off the hotheads who want to launch some new Cold War with China and instead promoting an approach that is realistic about the threat China poses but also wants to engage with the opportunity, talks about increasing trade, talks about increasing investment from China and essentially tries to co-opt China rather than confront China.’
In the wake of Foreign Secretary Dominic Raab’s leaked comments suggesting the UK should strike trade deals with nations that do not meet European standards on human rights, Mr Osborne was asked if it was ‘legitimate to trade with a genocidal state’.
‘I think the Foreign Secretary put it rather well in what was supposed to be a private call,’ he said. ‘If you only deal with countries that share all your values we’re going to have a pretty limited, sadly, range of countries we’re going to engage with.’
In a reference to Brexit, he added: ‘Last time I checked we just left our big alliance with most of them.’
Mr Raab, whose allies claim that he was quoted selectively, was also backed by the Business Secretary Kwasi Kwarteng.
Mr Kwarteng said that the UK should always speak up on human rights but had to be ‘flexible’ on trade issues.
Britain kowtows to China