Cleverly’s Not So Clever Speech
Watch a video of this article here: https://youtu.be/dPkH2YdS1No
It is traditional for the Foreign Secretary, to speak at the Lord Mayor of London’s Easter banquet on a broad range of international affairs. This year, however, James Cleverly decided to focus on only one.
Britain is watching its economy shrink, in fact, according to the IMF, Britain is likely to be the worst performing of all advanced AND emerging economies. Even heavily sanctioned Russia is expected to perform better.
The Foreign Secretary might well suggest that it’s the job of Chancellor of the Exchequer to worry about that but, without their empire and no longer part of the EU, it’s the foreign secretary who is responsible for, as they say in the UK, bringing home the bacon, coincidently, 60% of which is imported, mostly from Denmark.
In 2017, Britain hoped to strike deals with China and the USA. Obama had made it clear that a post-Brexit UK would need to wait its turn for a free trade agreement but in 2021, the USA let the UK down badly, when Biden met with PM Johnston and played down the idea of UK joining the North American trade pact, the USMCA.
This left Britain in a dire position, it doesn’t have the deal it wants with its special relationship partner and it doesn’t have the trade it once had with the EU, exports to the EU were 55% of UK’s total have now reduced to 42%. China is probably the only answer for them.
Under PM, David Cameron, in 2015, China and UK had a “golden age” and later reports suggested that “Brexit Britain looks to China”. All that changed; 2015 may only be 8 years ago but in British politics that’s a very long time. So long in fact, that we’ve seen five PMs and five foreign secretaries since.
The UK has been mired in scandals, allegations of corruption and mismanagement and with a declining economy while China has shown remarkable stability and steady growth, has also retained its position as the world’s strongest economy and has been led through these tumultuous times by a stable government with changes made only when they were expected.
So, it was no surprise that Cleverly wanted to focus on China for most of this speech. Unfortunately, he did little more than insult the very friends he wants to cultivate.
The speech started well with one exception; Cleverly referred to the Great Famine as “Mao’s famine”. Some of Mao’s policies may very well have contributed but let’s leave that to the historians, Western embargoes which lasted from 1949 to 1972, surely contributed. China was accused of inefficient policies but it must also be remembered that the country was only 10 years old, still reeling from a devastating civil war and years of KMT corruption and mismanagement.
The worst flooding in a generation in the Yellow River needed over 2 million labourers to save lives but, while they were doing this, they weren’t tending farms, two years of drought also contributed. Cleverly, either doesn’t understand, or perhaps does, and if he does, this was a deliberate insult to Mao’s memory and China generally.
Not all was insulting, he went on to state: “a stable, peaceful and prosperous China is good for Britain and good for the world. But immediately went off the good stuff and onto the headline generating rhetoric of China’s declining and ageing population, suggesting it could impact future growth.
Again, demonstrating a lack of understanding of China’s strategy to overcome these issues. Huge investments in education, infrastructure and long-term planning as set out in a 2019 plan; one wonders if Cleverly’s researchers have even bothered to look beyond headlines at what China is doing.
Giving up on dialogue with China would equate to giving up on addressing humanities greatest problems, he quite rightly asserts but then goes on to insult China again for being the world’s worst polluter, without a nod to the fact that the developed world, including the UK, has, for 50 years outsourced its carbon emitting manufacturing to China, a country with 26 times more people than UK and creating 28% of all the world’s goods compared to UK’s 1.8%. Nor does he mention all that China continues to do to alleviate this problem.
Insult follows insult as he states: “we have already learnt to our cost how China’s handling of a pandemic can affect the entire world”.
Cleverly’s advisors have misinformed him that China’s government represents a “ruthless authoritarian tradition” one wonders if this is coming from his Ambassador on the ground in China or from advisors in Whitehall who have never set foot in China but have read Washington sponsored academic and media reports. But, to use Cleverly’s own words, it’s “utterly at odds” with the truth on the ground.
He uses the word abhorrence to describe “Beijing’s abuses” but then goes on to state that “history teaches us that repression at home, often translates to aggression abroad”, giving no example of this history lesson but it’s clearly not China he refers to as there’s no such history of aggression abroad, or even proven repression at home.
He insults China once again by saying they dismantled freedoms in HK, which has been well-proven by no less than the British Barrister, Grenville Cross who was Director of Public Prosecutions in HK and still resides there.
Britain’s approach to China, Cleverly says has three pillars: first Britain will strengthen its national security protections.
Second, the UK will deepen cooperation and strengthen alignment with friends and partners in the Indo-Pacific and across the world with an aim to bolster collective security and deepen commercial links.
On this topic Cleverly asks why is China making colossal investments in defence? And, if he doesn’t know the answer to that, then he’s displaying a gross ignorance of history and current reality, e’s not that ignorant… is he!
The third pillar is to engage directly with China to preserve and to create open, constructive and stable relations reflecting China’s global importance, but we don’t want the long arm of the Chinese Communist Party reaching towards the central nervous system of our country.
These three pillars seem more adversarial than conciliatory and even imperial as Cleverly suggested several times that Britain needs to influence decisions made in China. It’s possible the elites of London still believe they wield that sort of influence but it’s clear globally that Britain does not.
Cleverly’s approach to handling China may sit well with the London establishment but if he’s hoping for an invite to Beijing, then he needs to gain a better understanding of both China and the meaning of the word diplomacy.
