Keir Starmer has this morning arrived in Shanghai after two days in Beijing. He is expected to spend much of today talking up the ‘wins’ he has secured from his China trip. Yet it is striking how much of the briefing from ministers is around future deals to come, rather than actual deals secured to date, with only a ‘feasibility study’ in place for a potential agreement on financial services.

Currently, he is set to return without a single signed deal

So far, Starmer’s main achievements seem to be halving the tariffs on Scotch whisky and 30-days visa-free travel to China. Both are welcome liberalisations – but it is a very different scale to the £9 billion secured by Theresa May, the last British PM to go to Beijing. That is less a reflection on the efforts of HMG this time around and more an indication of the scaling back........

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