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Keir Starmer’s January has been the stuff of nightmares.
It kicked off with the crisis over Greenland and rift with Donald Trump – and was followed by a dose of psychodrama over the Labour leadership courtesy of Andy Burnham and that unwanted by-election.
This week will be another high-stakes one for the prime minister as he heads to China to look for deeper trade ties against the backdrop of a volatile US and domestic resistance to Beijing at home.
This visit has been a year in planning and will be a big symbolic moment, if rather ill-timed, given the troubles he’s facing in his own backyard. Starmer will be the first UK prime minister to visit China since Baroness Theresa May in 2018.
His goal is to try to drum up trade with the world’s second-biggest economy. He hopes this will help spur the economy and help Labour make an impact on the cost of living – now his number one priority for government.
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His challenge is to navigate that while not triggering Trump. Just days ago, the US president threatened a 100% tariff on Canada if PM Mark Carney did a trade deal with Beijing.
He will also have to face down criticism at home as the political consensus hardens against China due to concerns over national security threats and human rights.
It’s been over a decade since David Cameron hailed a “golden era” of close economic relations with China, as the UK hosted President Xi Jinping on a state visit.
Since that period, relations between the two nations cooled amid concerns over national security and Chinese espionage, China’s alliance with Russia, human rights abuses of the Uyghur population, and the crackdown on democracy in Hong Kong.
The controversy around the government’s approval of a Chinese mega-embassy last week – after years of…
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