Keir Starmer started the third and final day of his official visit to China by telling the UK-China Business Forum that he and President Xi had (the day before) “warmly engaged and made some real progress because the UK has got a huge amount to offer.”
Progress?
A deal to halve China’s tariffs on Scotch whisky, to permit British tourists for up to 30 days without an advance visa (in line with most countries, including France and even Japan), and to overturn China’s sanctions on five (critical) British politicians.
For these trivial gains, Starmer’s government had already transferred to Mauritius (an ally of China) the Chagos Islands (hosting the greatest UK and US base in the Indian Ocean, at Diego Garcia), authorized China’s plan to build a super-embassy atop the City of London’s telecommunications (after previous administrations had twice rejected China’s proposal), downgraded China from “threat” to “geostrategic challenge,” scuppered the prosecution of two Britons who allegedly spied on British Parliamentarians, and chose not to expel any diplomats for China’s hacking of Parliament’s and Downing Street’s networks. (On the trip itself, the Britons reportedly travelled with disposable phones and laptops.)
That third day (Friday) was spent in Shanghai, after two days in Beijing, where the optics were even more embarrassing than the flaccid “deals.”
Starmer was received in Beijing not by China’s President, but by its premier (third-ranking politician). Li Qiang escorted Starmer up a short red carpet to review a military guard, to whom Qiang bowed from the waist, after which Starmer, awkwardly, uncertainly, bowed his head just as he would honour the King.
He did not need to bow. He just needed to “inspect” the guard, and move on.
Could he mess it up even more? Why, yes he could! Having bowed his head like a vassal kow-towing to the Chinese emperor centuries ago, he still did not know what to do. He should have stepped forward, turned right, and walked down the line. Qiang even pointed forward. Instead, Starmer swayed, turned right, and started walking smilingly towards the photojournalists, as if he were on a catwalk. Qiang rushed from Starmer’s rear and left to Starmer’s right, and physically pushed Starmer towards the guards.
Starmer again looked like either a moron or a vassal – or both.
President Xi Jinping allocated little time for talks (Starmer claims nearly 3 hours, but Chinese officials suggest Xi was present for less than an hour), and eschewed any joint press conference.
From there, Starmer was sent to Tiananmen Square to be photographed alone with a translator. By contrast, in 2017 US President Donald Trump was photographed on the same spot with President Xi and their wives.
Here’s another optical contrast: in 2026, Starmer was just one of many tourists perusing the Square, but in 2017 the Square was cleared for Trump.
How could Starmer look so unprepared and so unrewarded?
Starmer had been planning this visit since the general election campaign in Summer 2024. Labour’s manifesto pledged to end “14 years of damaging Conservative inconsistency over China,” and to substitute a “long-term and strategic approach to managing our relations.”
As soon as Starmer was elected, he declared his intent to achieve the first official visit to China by a British premier since Theresa May in 2018.
Starmer promised that he would come back with Chinese investment, to restart Britain’s economic growth and to substitute for supposedly lost investment from the EU since Brexit.
In 2018, May claimed £9 billion in Chinese investment. Starmer seems to have achieved £200 million.
A UK government press release claims “billions in exports and investment deals,” but the only Chinese investment it specifies is “HiTHIUM’s investment…[of] £200 million and 300 high-quality jobs in energy storage.”
So the “billions” must refer to exports — mostly Chinese exports that would have happened anyway!
The government claims “around £2.3 billion in market access wins over five years,” which seems to mean anticipated growth in exports. Additionally, “the PM welcomed £2.2 billion in export deals.” How are“market access wins” different from “export deals”? The page doesn’t define either category.
I suspect the spin doctors are conflating both Chinese and UK exports, of which the UK exports are the tiny part. The sum value of all the prospected British exports on the page is about £450 million. The government claims that China’s lowering of tariffs on whiskey is worth £50 million per year. Only the growth in whiskey exports can be attributed to Starmer’s visit.
Starmer’s team is now spinning the visit as “groundwork“ for future economic deals! No, the groundwork had been going on since at least December 2024, when Starmer appointed Jonathan Powell, a Blairite blowhard, as National Security Adviser and chief diplomat 2024, in which capacity Powell started almost monthly visits to Beijing.
And in December 2025, Starmer signaled, in the prime minister’s most important annual speech on foreign policy, at the Lord Mayor’s Banquet in London, that Britain would prioritize China’s pleasure at the expense of Britain’s security, even as he prattled the nonsense he had prattled all year about not sacrificing security for trade.
A month later, he achieved no significant gain in trade.
A “prominent figure who has done a lot of business with China” told a journalist: “None of it really matters. The volume of trade is not that high. The Chinese will talk to us when they want something, and they will throw us a few crumbs which matter a bit to us but don’t matter to them.”
Starmer’s government cannot claim any diplomatic deals either.
