Why is Starmer giving the green light to China’s ‘super embassy’?

So bad has Keir Starmer’s prime ministership been domestically that it is easy to forget how inept his efforts have been on the international stage, too. The giveaway of the Chagos Islands, the Brexit ‘reset’ with Brussels and the ‘one in, one out’ migrant deal with France have damaged Britain’s national interests and even national security.

Despite the uproar caused by those debacles, Starmer’s judgement on international relations does not seem to have improved very much since. Recent reports suggest that the PM will approve China’s plan to build a ‘super embassy’ in central London.

Describing China’s soon-to-be diplomatic base in Britain as a ‘super embassy’ is not a case of media hyperbole. In 2018, the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) paid £255million for the 200-year-old, heritage-listed Royal Mint, next to the Tower of London. At five acres, or more than 200,000 square metres, this once publicly owned landmark will become the biggest embassy in Europe, and a rather pleasant home for 225 loyal members of the Chinese Communist Party.

The UK government must surely be aware of the risks involved in granting a powerful, not exactly friendly foreign state such a prime piece of London real estate. In 2022, when China first submitted its plans for the embassy, the Met Police, Tower Hamlets Council and even London mayor Sadiq Khan all raised objections. While their reasoning varied, they all shared one clear concern – that China’s plans posed a clear threat to national security.

It’s not hard to see why. The proposed embassy will sit next to the Wapping Telephone Exchange, which runs fibre-optic cables to the City of London and Canary Wharf – the capital’s two financial centres. China’s insistence on a large basement in its embassy – whose precise details are redacted in the proposals for ‘security purposes’ – hardly eases suspicions that the embassy could be used for espionage.

Nevertheless, it now looks as if China has strong-armed the British government into getting its way. Last month, when Labour’s housing secretary, Steve Reed, announced that a ‘final’ decision on the embassy had been delayed until 10 December, the CCP’s response was vicious. It expressed its ‘strong dissatisfaction’, accused the UK government of acting in ‘bad faith and without integrity’, and demanded it ‘immediately fulfil its obligations and honour its commitments otherwise the British state shall bear the consequences’.

The CCP clearly sees Starmer as a pushover. Indeed, just weeks after Labour’s General Election victory last year, the CCP re-submitted the same embassy plans that had already been rejected three years ago. If weakness can be smelt, Xi’s eyes must have been watering the moment Starmer took up residence at No10.

What is surprising is that, according to The Times, the UK’s intelligence agencies, MI5 and MI6, are also preparing to ‘green light’ the embassy plans. This looks murkier still when one remembers that, back in September, the Crown Prosecution Service dropped charges against Chistopher Berry and Christopher Cash, who in April last year were both charged with espionage under the Official Secrets Act. The intelligence services alleged that Berry and Cash had been spying for China from December 2021 to February 2023 – Cash in his capacity as a researcher in the House of Commons, Berry as an academic. Incredibly, Starmer is still yet to respond to the criticism levelled at him by Stephen Parkinson, the director of public prosecutions, who in October told parliament that the UK government had failed to provide his department with the necessary evidence that China is an ‘enemy’ to Britain to take the matter to trial. As a result, the prosecution collapsed, spectacularly.

Why Starmer seems so keen to bend the knee to China is anyone’s guess. As a human-rights lawyer, he might have been expected to be wary of the CCP, given its willingness to violate the human rights of Uyghurs, Tibetans and Hong Kongers – not to mention its stated aim to subjugate Taiwan. Instead, he seems all too eager to placate Beijing.

There is a pattern emerging here. Time and again, he has caved in to the demands of a foreign power. His first significant foreign-policy decision was to hand sovereignty of the Chagos Islands – a British Overseas Territory in the Indian Ocean – to Mauritius. This move was seen as the ‘right’ thing to do among international lawyers, but in effect it handed a strategically vital British asset to a country that is entirely beholden to China. He also did so undemocratically, over the heads of the Chagossian people. More bizarre still, the ‘deal’ he agreed with Mauritius is speculated to cost the UK around £800million a year, over the course of a 99-year lease.

Starmer followed this in May with his Brexit ‘reset’, which reestablished Brussels’ control over swathes of the British economy. Then, in July, Starmer inked the ‘one in, one out’ migrant deal with France. Since it came into effect, several of the migrants that France agreed to repatriate have found their way back into Britain. Unsurprisingly, the deal has done nothing to deter the small boats crossing the English Channel.

What makes this all the more risible is that Starmer appears desperate to be hailed as some great global statesman. In the 17 months he has been in office, he has made a staggering 42 foreign trips and nearly 180,000 air miles. In the process, he has earned yet another disparaging nickname, ‘Never Here Keir’.

Sadly, the joke here is ultimately on the British people. This most feckless of prime ministers seems intent on putting the interests of other states above Britain’s own. He may think this makes him a statesman, but the world sees him as a sap.

Hugo Timms is an editorial assistant at spiked.