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Priti Patel, the shadow foreign secretary and a cabinet minister when the last Tory government was cutting back on engagement with China, has hit back at Keir Starmer for what he said in his speech last night. (See 9.52am.) She has described the speech as a “love letter to the Chinese Communist party” and Starmer as “Beijing’s useful idiot”.

In a statement she said:

From China’s continued flouting of economic rules to transnational repression of Hong Kongers in Britain, Stamer’s‘reset’ with Beijing is a naïve one way street, which puts Britian at risk while Beijing gets everything it wants.

Starmer continues to kowtow to China and is captivated by half-baked promises of trade. Coming just days after the latest Chinese plot to interfere in our democracy was exposed, his love letter to the Chinese Communist party is a desperate ploy to generate economic growth following his budget of lies and is completely ill-judged.

For years the narrative ran that China was the coming power.

Well now it has arrived. And the UK needs a China policy that recognises this reality.

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Source: www.theguardian.com

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