Let’s build a new Hong Kong
The Sunday Telegraph
The Government has rightly proposed a route to UK residency for 300,000 Hong Kong Chinese holding British overseas passports, says Liam Halligan. We should now go further. Let’s invite “a wave” of Hong Kong residents to spur the creation of “a New Hong Kong” (NHK) – a low-tax, outward-looking coastal city much like the original – right here in Britain, perhaps populated half with Hongkongers and half with “locals”. The idea that “Britain is full” is nonsense (residential homes cover less than 2% of England’s landmass), and these, after all, are among the most industrious and entrepreneurial English-speaking people in the world. We can only benefit from their “drive and know-how”. If NHK was based in northern England, it could form a major part of Britain’s drive to “level up” regional development – and could road test new regulations designed to encourage housebuilding. We must act fast: this “talented, asset-rich diaspora” will be much in demand from other nations. Does the plan sound far-fetched? Well, “extraordinary times call for extraordinary ideas”.
“My view is a bit like that of John Maynard Keynes,” said Browne. “When the facts change, so too do my opinions.” However, the grandee’s flit to his “canalside apartment in Venice” has dismayed some colleagues on the UK board, who say they’ve been left in the lurch, said The Sunday Times. As one observed: “It’s gone down like a cup of cold sick with the rest of us.” Browne’s supporters have long viewed him as a “visionary”, said the FT: “charming and gracious, if a little high-handed for some”. These days, he “seems most excited” about The Francis Crick Institute – the medical research charity he chairs; and a glamorous new role on the board of the Royal Opera House also beckons. Sadly, geopolitical problems continue to gnaw. Another company Browne chairs – the Russian-Israeli billionaire Mikhail Fridman’s L1 Energy – has just been “indirectly blasted” by the US for its role in Russia’s Nord Stream 2 gas pipeline. It seems there’ll be no rest any time soon for his lordship.