Sir Keir Starmer rightly declares that ‘the world as we knew it has gone’. But does he really mean what he says – or is he a lawyer who has merely mastered a brief?

For it is wrong-headed to suppose that the advent of Donald Trump in itself constitutes the seismic change the PM invokes. Trump is a catalyst, whose reckless policies highlight dangers that already existed, and tell us that we are more on our own than we had assumed.

One danger we already knew about is Russia. Its armed forces may not yet threaten Britain directly but they menace our continent and cast a shadow over our future security.

There is another danger, though, which may well be greater. It is more insidious because it does not, as yet, take the form of weapons and armaments. This threat is already among us. It comes from China.

Russia has a sclerotic economy and a declining population. It is probably a power on the wane. China’s economy is at least ten times as big, and still growing fast. China is arming itself with technologies that are light years ahead of Russia’s.

Yet whereas we have kept Vladimir Putin and his vile regime at arm’s length, we have welcomed the Chinese into our midst, and encouraged them to invest in our nuclear power stations and energy infrastructure. And, of course, in what remained of our steel industry.

When Nigel Farage says he is ‘100 per cent certain’ that the Chinese Communist Party ‘bought British Steel to close British Steel’, who can say that the leader of Reform is wrong?

Its Chinese owner, Jingye, abandoned two blast furnaces at Scunthorpe so abruptly as to threaten their viability. The Government says it is ‘confident’ that it will get enough raw materials – principally coking coal and iron ore – to keep what is now a nationalised plant going. Let’s hope it’s right.

Sir Keir Starmer speaks during a visit with British Steel workers in Appleby Village Hall near Scunthorpe

Sir Keir Starmer speaks during a visit with British Steel workers in Appleby Village Hall near Scunthorpe

Chinese company Jingye, which bought the plant in 2020, abandoned two blast furnaces at Scunthorpe so abruptly as to threaten their viability

Chinese company Jingye, which bought the plant in 2020, abandoned two blast furnaces at Scunthorpe so abruptly as to threaten their viability

What is clear is that Jingye took no account of British interests. It’s also obvious that it is beholden to its own government. Business Secretary Jonathan Reynolds conceded on Saturday that even privately owned companies have ‘direct links to the Chinese Communist Party’.

Let’s agree that at the very least Beijing was relaxed about Jingye’s decision to kill off Britain’s last remaining steel manufacturer so that the company could force us to rely on imported Chinese steel.

What folly our politicians have shown. The chief culprits were the Tories, who in 2019 let Jingye buy the Scunthorpe plant. That was after David Cameron and George Osborne had grovelled to President Xi Jinping. In 2014 China was allowed to acquire a third of the new Hinkley nuclear power station, which is still under construction.

Admittedly, the Tory government did agree in 2020 to ban telecom firms from installing Chinese-made Huawei equipment in the UK’s 5G network, but that was only after a tremendous hullabaloo.

Is Labour, despite its belated decision to take over the Scunthorpe plant, any more robust than the Tories? One might – just might – argue that, when Cameron and Osborne were sucking up to President Xi, it was not absolutely clear what a ruthless, brutal and mendacious regime he led.

The worst police crackdown in Hong Kong hadn’t yet happened, nor had the complete abrogation of the Anglo-Chinese agreement to keep the former colony free of Chinese control for 50 years.

When Cameron hosted Xi in a Buckinghamshire pub, the full horror of Beijing’s persecution of Uighur Muslims was not known. Nor could we have guessed that as a result of an unpardonable blunder in a laboratory (this now seems almost certain) China would soon unleash Covid on the world.

Sir Keir can therefore have no illusions. The true nature of the Chinese Communist Party is plain for all to see. And yet notwithstanding the Government’s last minute intervention in Scunthorpe, it doesn’t seem alarmed that Beijing’s baleful influence has proliferated like bind weed throughout our economy.

Why is the China General Nuclear Power Group – a state-owned energy company – permitted to retain a supposedly passive one third stake in the new nuclear power station at Hinkley, and how on earth can its role as the lead investor in the planned Bradwell B nuclear plant in Essex be justified?

According to one analysis, China has funded or provided parts for at least 14 of 50 British offshore wind projects. It supplies the great majority of the solar panels with which Climate Secretary Ed Miliband plans to carpet swathes of our countryside.

Only last month the Government – with Mr Miliband as its energetic ringleader – whipped its MPs to allow the import of Chinese solar panels believed to have been made with slave labour.

Is the PM happy for this Chinese infiltration of our energy infrastructure to continue? Can he really think it is right for a Chinese state company to be the driving force behind the nuclear power station planned in Essex?

No less serious, there is the Chinese infiltration of our leading universities. There are about 150,000 Chinese students here. Of course they bring in billions of pounds, and some universities couldn’t survive without them. But should we be relaxed about educating the future leaders of a potential enemy?

In particular, many Chinese students specialise in scientific or technical subjects. There are 2,600 of them at Imperial College London alone, one of our leading research universities.

Some of its academics have, according to the Financial Times, worked on research that has potential military applications with scientists at Chinese institutions who were linked to Beijing’s armed forces and defence sector.

Why are we allowing this to happen? After all, nearly all British universities are partially dependent on public money. It’s likely, too, that some Chinese students are engaged in spying. In 2022 the head of MI5 reported that 50 Chinese students connected to the People’s Liberation Army had been removed from the UK.

There’s little evidence that the Government is taking Chinese subversion seriously. Rather the opposite. The Mail on Sunday reported over the weekend that the new Chinese embassy in the heart of the City includes, according to planning documents, ‘two suites of anonymous unlabelled basement rooms and a tunnel’ with the exact purpose ‘redacted for security reasons’.

The previous government had enough sense to block the plans for a new embassy because of fears by police and intelligence agencies that sensitive data cables running nearby could be vulnerable to attack by Chinese spies. Sir Keir has dismissed such concerns.

Meanwhile Douglas Alexander, the minister for trade policy and economic security, is in Beijing for talks with his Chinese counterparts. This follows a visit by the Chancellor, Rachel Reeves, in January. The Government’s aim is to drum up more Chinese investment.

Will our politicians ever learn? China doesn’t want to invest in Britain because it likes us. It plans to suborn and control us. Despite what happened in Scunthorpe, we still haven’t learnt the lesson.

Sir Keir is right that ‘the world as we knew it has gone’. But what is the point of saying this if the Government continues to treat the sinister entity that is the Chinese Communist Party in the same old trusting way?

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