Juliet Samuel

China stance is Sunak’s undoing

Oh he’s so clever, isn’t he? And yet, it’s not charming.

In fact, it’s a bit annoying and, in some cases, downright slimy.

There were moments early in last night’s debate when Rishi Sunak had Liz Truss on the ropes. But far from showing her up with his talk of interest rates that would “tip millions of people into misery”, Sunak was trying very hard not to smile. He talked, she tried to talk; she stumbled, he tried not to smirk.

The vigorous economic debate had no winner.

But it was on China that his attacks were harder to take.

We must remember that Sunak pushed hell-for-leather to reopen trade talks with China when Beijing had stuck his own fellow Tory MPS on a sanctions list for daring to care about freedom in Hong Kong.

It was his Treasury that watered down language on China in a major review of national security last year. Yet he had the gall to say that Truss, the Cabinet’s foremost Beijing hawk, had “been on a journey” on China, like him.

I’m not sure I trust Truss’s judgment, but I find it hard to trust Sunak at all.