Rishi Sunak has called last orders on the UK government’s cosy relationship with China.
The UK needs to “evolve our approach” to China, he declared at the sumptuous Lord Mayor’s Banquet at the Guildhall in the City of London.
The so-called “golden era” is over, he said, “along with the naive idea that trade would lead to social and political reform”.
Naive? That sounded like a pretty scathing attack on David Cameron and George Osborne. It was Mr Cameron, after all, who took President Xi to a country pub near Chequers during a state visit in 2015.
Not long after the two leaders supped pints in The Plough at Cadsden in Buckinghamshire the pub was bought by a Chinese firm. Presumably not what Mr Cameron had in mind for boosting UK-Chinese trade.
A bitter irony, one might say.
The term “golden era” was…
