The timing could hardly be more exquisite in its irony. As Keir Starmer stood in Beijing’s Great Hall of the People this week, pledging a “long-term, consistent and comprehensive strategic partnership” with Xi Jinping, two voices from opposite sides of the Atlantic united in criticism—albeit for diametrically opposed reasons. Donald Trump called the visit “very dangerous.” Liz Truss declared Britain “a declining power.” Both are partially correct, and therein lies Britain’s predicament.

Starmer’s four-day China sojourn—the first by a British Prime Minister in eight years—represents a calculated bet that economic necessity can coexist with strategic caution. The harvest appears modest but symbolically significant: halved tariffs on Scotch whisky, thirty-day visa-free travel for British tourists, a joint commitment to tackle Channel crossing smugglers, and AstraZeneca’s $15 billion investment pledge through 2030. More consequentially, the two countries agreed to conduct a feasibility study on a services agreement—potentially opening the vast Chinese market to British financial and professional services firms. For the City of London, still searching for post-Brexit relevance, this matters far more than whisky.

The seriousness of the engagement was evident in the optics. The Starmer-Xi meeting ran eighty minutes—double the scheduled time. The British delegation read like a Who’s Who of UK plc: HSBC Group Chairman Brendan Nelson, AstraZeneca CEO Pascal Soriot, GSK Chair Sir Jonathan Symonds, Airbus general counsel John Harrison, and British Airways Chief Commercial Officer Colm Lacy. Starmer even brought a football from the Manchester United versus Arsenal match as a gift for Xi, reportedly an avid United supporter. The performative diplomacy was unmistakable, but so was the underlying commercial intent.

Trump’s intervention, delivered characteristically from the sidelines of his wife’s documentary premiere in Florida, reflects the emerging reality of America’s “with us or against us” posture on China. That he simultaneously warned Canada—where Mark Carney had just concluded a similar outreach to Beijing—suggests this is not personal pique but systematic policy. Washington is drawing bright lines, and America’s closest allies are being told which side they should stand on.

Yet there is delicious hypocrisy in Trump’s admonition. The same president warning Britain about the dangers of dealing with China is himself scheduled to visit Beijing in April. As one observer noted, the United States may be sanctioning and reprimanding other economies for doing deals with China, but America itself will likely do a deal with China this year. Washington’s objection, it seems, is not to engagement with Beijing per se, but to engagement that it does not control.

Starmer’s gamble is more nuanced than Trump’s blunt characterisation allows. Britain is not seeking a return to the “golden era” that David Cameron proclaimed a decade ago, when he took Xi to a Buckinghamshire pub for pints and fish and chips. That ship sailed when Beijing imposed its national security law on Hong Kong, when MI5 began publicly warning of Chinese espionage on British soil, and when Parliament sanctioned Chinese officials over Uyghur persecution—prompting Beijing’s retaliatory sanctions against British MPs. The relationship Starmer seeks is explicitly transactional: security concerns compartmentalised from economic engagement, human rights raised but not made preconditions.

Xi, for his part, used the occasion to position China as the defender of international order against American disruption. He called on Britain and China to “jointly advocate and practice true multilateralism,” asserting that “international law can only be truly effective when all countries abide by it” and that “major countries should take the lead in particular, otherwise, the world would risk regressing into the law of jungle.” The irony of Beijing—which dismisses international tribunal rulings on the South China Sea and maintains territorial claims rejected by its neighbours—lecturing on international law was apparently lost on no one except, perhaps, the diplomatic communiqué writers. But the message was clear: in a world destabilised by Trump’s unpredictability, China offers consistency.

This is where Truss’s critique gains traction, though perhaps not in the way she intends. Speaking to The Telegraph’s Daily T podcast, the former Prime Minister who lasted fifty days in office reiterated her familiar grievances about Bank of England sabotage while attacking Starmer’s approach to Beijing. But her observation about Britain’s declining power status—however self-servingly deployed—touches a genuine nerve.

Britain’s strategic options have narrowed considerably since Brexit. The EU trade relationship remains fraught. The much-vaunted US free trade agreement never materialised—Truss herself admitted during her brief premiership that no deal was forthcoming in the “short to medium term.” The Commonwealth offers sentiment but limited economic heft. In this context, China as the world’s second-largest economy and a manufacturing colossus embedded in global supply chains becomes an unavoidable interlocutor, not an optional partner.

From a financial economics perspective, Britain’s position resembles that of a firm with deteriorating bargaining power seeking to maintain optionality across multiple counterparties. Having exited its primary trading bloc, the UK now faces bilateral negotiations where its leverage is structurally diminished. The rational response—diversifying counterparty exposure while avoiding exclusive commitments—is precisely what Starmer is attempting. But optionality has costs. Maintaining relationships with both Washington and Beijing requires constant calibration, and the premium Britain pays for this flexibility may ultimately exceed its value if forced to choose.

What makes Starmer’s visit particularly significant is its timing within a broader pattern. He is the fourth leader of a US ally to visit Beijing this month, following South Korea, Canada, and Finland, with Germany’s chancellor expected shortly. This parade of Western leaders suggests that despite Washington’s preferences, the gravitational pull of Chinese economic engagement remains powerful. Trump may fulminate, but the procession continues. The collective hedging by American allies reveals a shared assessment: Trump’s America is too unreliable a partner to warrant exclusive dependence.

There is also irony in Truss criticising engagement with China. As Trade Secretary, she pursued trade deals with considerable enthusiasm for market access wherever it could be found. As Foreign Secretary, her record on China was hawkish in rhetoric but her government never actually designated China a “threat” as she had promised during her leadership campaign. The gap between Truss’s words and her government’s actions anticipated the very pragmatism she now condemns in Starmer.

The deeper question is whether Starmer’s “sophisticated relationship”—his preferred formulation—can actually be sustained. Beijing plays a long game, and its definition of partnership tends toward the comprehensive. China’s interest in Britain extends beyond Scotch whisky to financial services, artificial intelligence collaboration, and strategic investments that inevitably raise security concerns. The mega-embassy now approved for London will provide expanded operational capacity for Chinese diplomatic activities of all kinds. Each transactional success creates appetite for more.

Meanwhile, the issues Starmer claims to have raised—Jimmy Lai’s imprisonment, the Uyghur genocide, Beijing’s Russia support—remain fundamentally unaddressed. Xi’s response to such concerns has historically been to nod politely and change nothing. Starmer described their exchange as a “respectful discussion”—diplomatic code for agreeing to disagree. Britain gains economic access; China gains legitimacy and the fracturing of Western unity on its terms.

Trump’s warning, crude as it was, contains a kernel of strategic logic that Britain ignores at its peril. The United States is restructuring its alliance relationships around the China challenge. Countries that seek to maintain equidistance may find themselves with less influence in Washington precisely when such influence matters most. If Taiwan tensions escalate, if South China Sea confrontations intensify, if technological decoupling accelerates, Britain will need to choose. The question is whether Starmer’s engagement now preserves or forecloses options later.

Perhaps the most telling aspect of this episode is what it reveals about post-Brexit Britain’s strategic positioning. Having left the European Union in pursuit of sovereign flexibility, Britain now finds that flexibility constrained by the very power dynamics it sought to escape. Europe offered collective weight; standing alone, Britain discovers its leverage is rather less than its self-image suggested. Starmer’s Beijing visit is less an act of strategic boldness than an acknowledgment of diminished circumstances.

Truss is right that Britain is a declining power, though her own brief, catastrophic tenure accelerated that decline more dramatically than any diplomatic outreach to Beijing. Trump is right that deeper business ties with China carry dangers, though his administration’s own planned engagement with Beijing reveals the limits of his conviction. Starmer is right that ignoring the world’s second-largest economy is not a viable policy, though his ability to maintain clear-eyed realism about Chinese intentions remains to be tested.

In the end, Britain’s China dilemma is a symptom of a larger condition: a middle power struggling to define its role in a world being reshaped by great power competition. The “Global Britain” rhetoric of the Brexit era has given way to something more modest—a Britain seeking growth wherever it can be found, managing relationships rather than shaping them, and hoping that pragmatic engagement can substitute for strategic clarity.

Xi Jinping told Starmer their partnership could “stand the test of history” if they “rise above differences.” It was the sort of elevated language Chinese leaders deploy when they sense advantage. History’s tests are rarely so accommodating as diplomatic communiqués suggest. Britain may find that the sophisticated relationship it seeks with China is rather more complicated than either the enthusiasts or the critics currently imagine.

© The Times of Israel (Blogs)