Keir Starmer said the UK’s approach to relations with China should be guided by “sober realism” in a wide-ranging foreign policy speech at Guildhall in London.
At the Lady Mayor’s Banquet, Starmer said the UK had to reject a “binary choice” in being too hawkish or dovish in relations with China.
After weeks of diplomatic tensions around the collapsed prosecution case of alleged Chinese spies, the Prime Minister insisted that the UK could maintain ties with China despite it posing “national security threats”.
“For years we have blown hot and cold,” Starmer said.
“We had the golden age, which then flipped to an Ice Age. We reject that binary choice.
“So our response will not be driven by fear, nor softened by illusion. It will be grounded in strength, clarity and sober realism.”
He added that avoiding relations with China would be a “dereliction of duty” given the world’s second biggest economy had become a “defining force in technology, trade and global governance”.
China embassy due for approval
His speech came just a week before the government is expected to approve the country’s new “mega embassy” near the Tower of London.
The matter has become contentious in the fallout of the collapsed spy case involving Christopher Berry and Christopher Cash, who both denied all allegations of wrongdoing.
The proposed embassy has worried some City officials given the historic Royal Mint Court site in Tower Hamlets is positioned near key data cables connecting the City of London with other parts of the capital, including Canary Wharf.
Security experts have told City AM that concerns about the embassy site were “legitimate” while a number of elected officials at the City of London Corporation have also voiced their concerns about the new embassy.
One source at the Corporation said they were “nervous about the threat from the Chinese in general”, adding that they also found it “very odd that they clearly want this particular site”.
Senior MPs and local councillors have also expressed their opposition to the site, which is widely expected to gain approval on 10 December.
Today several senior figures including Andrew Boff, Conservative member at the London Assembly, former parliamentarian David Alton, Rear Admiral Dr Chris Parry, financier Edmund ‘Edi’ Truell, Air Marshal Andrew Turner CB CBE, Mark Wheatley, Common Councillor at the City of London Corporation, Rebecca Nadin, Susan Walton and the foreign affairs writer Edward Lucas have raised alarm bells on the “critical national risk” of the embassy in a open letter.
“We welcome fair trade with China – it is vital for the UK economy – but that trade should not be at the expense of the security of our nation,” the letter said.
“The site is home to around 300 residents of Tower Hamlets who, if construction proceeds, will either become tenants of the Chinese Embassy or be evicted.
“It is also the site of the Medieval Cistercian abbey, access to which will be controlled by Chinese officials and visitors will be subject to security checks and searches.”
A spokesperson for the Chinese embassy in the UK has said that the claim that China’s new embassy project posed a potential security risk to the UK was “completely groundless” and represented “malicious slander”.