Rishi Sunak seeks to maintain dialogue with China but will have to be clear about the threat
There’s a run on a bank, meltdown at the BBC about its proximity to government and Rishi Sunak needs to prove on Wednesday’s Budget that he has not abandoned growth.
Yet on Sunday the prime minister flew 5,000 miles to the US west coast to deal with a threat that may one day eclipse them all: China.
Mr Sunak will stand alongside US President Joe Biden and Australian PM Anthony Albanese and declare that China poses the biggest threat to the UK economy of any country, and what they plan to do about it.
This stops short of what Mr Sunak said during the leadership contest – that China poses the biggest long-term threat to Britain overall, implying some form of military danger.
Some analysts think that war over Taiwan could come in the second half of this decade, and no one knows how incendiary such a battle would be.
Nevertheless, the PM emphatically walked back from that on the plane with journalists on Sunday, saying it was neither “smart nor sophisticated” to use that language.
Some think that war over Taiwan could come in the second half of this decade
However what’s clear is that all three leaders have co-ordinated their language and approach to be unveiled on Monday, and that the mildly more moderate tone – which also saw Mr Sunak refuse to endorse the laboratory leak as the most likely cause of the pandemic – part of an approach to try and maintain a dialogue with China and not tip into unnecessary confrontation.
Leaving the door ajar, Mr Sunak said on the plane to the US that isolation was not the right approach, as it is effectively with Russia, suggesting he strongly believes future conflict is not yet inevitable.
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“The size of their economy, it is necessary and right to engage with them in order to try and make a difference on things that we care about, whether that is for example, tackling climate change, global health, macroeconomic stability- that’s what all our allies think,” he said.
“Whether it’s Chancellor Scholz or President Macron going next month… President Biden, Albanese, I think everyone shares exactly the same approach which is not to ignore China [but] to engage, be robust about defending things that we care about, and engage with what is a very large and influential player on the global scene on the areas where there’s common interest or we can shape things in a positive direction.”
None of this means the government isn’t clear-eyed about the potential Chinese threat. They see China able to mobilise any part of its economy to advance the goals of the state – hence the ban on TikTok on government phones over the weekend.
The UK banned TikTok on government phones over the weekend
There is recognition that half of the world’s shipping containers go through the straits of Taiwan, meaning that the economic disruption of war there would outweigh the impact of the invasion of Ukraine or the pandemic.
They saw what happened to free speech in Hong Kong and listened to the public pronouncements of President Xi Jinping, who just last week said the US and other “Western countries” were leading the “suppression” of China.
That is perhaps why the language might seem more moderate, but the actions in San Diego will not. Three of the biggest military powers in the world uniting to share intelligence and equipment to contain a threat in the Pacific is likely to be taken by China as a hostile act in itself.
In the latest update to the Integrated Review, Mr Sunak is effectively seeking to learn the lessons from Ukraine, creating new structures to speed up sanctions and ensure they are more effective. Meanwhile, building nuclear-powered submarines for Australia, at sites like the already-stretched Barrow in Furness site, is also likely to be greeted with concern by China.
The government believes that China is not yet at a tipping point where confrontation is inevitable. Whether the actions – if not the words spoken – of the next 36 hours make it more likely, however, remains to be seen.
The Donald Trump peace plan is nothing of the sort. It takes Russian demands and presents them as peace proposals, in what is effectively for Ukraine a surrender ultimatum.
If accepted, it would reward armed aggression. The principle, sacrosanct since the Second World War, for obvious and very good reasons, that even de facto borders cannot be changed by force, will have been trampled on at the behest of the leader of the free world.
The Kremlin will have imposed terms via negotiators on a country it has violated, and whose people its troops have butchered, massacred and raped. It is without doubt the biggest crisis in Trans-Atlantic relations since the war began, if not since the inception of NATO.
The question now is: are Europe’s leaders up to meeting the daunting challenges that will follow. On past form, we cannot be sure.
Vladimir Putin, President of Russia. Pic: Sputnik/Gavriil Grigorov via Reuters
The plan proposes the following:
• Land seized by Vladimir Putin’s unwarranted and unprovoked invasion would be ceded by Kyiv.
• Territory his forces have fought but failed to take with colossal loss of life will be thrown into the bargain for good measure.
• Ukraine will be barred from NATO, from having long-range weapons, from hosting foreign troops, from allowing foreign diplomatic planes to land, and its military neutered, reduced in size by more than half.
Donald Trump meeting Vladimir Putin in Alaska in August, File pic: Reuters
And most worryingly for Western leaders, the plan proposes NATO and Russia negotiate with America acting as mediator.
Lest we forget, America is meant to be the strongest partner in NATO, not an outside arbitrator. In one clause, Mr Trump’s lack of commitment to the Western alliance is laid bare in chilling clarity.
And even for all that, the plan will not bring peace. Mr Putin has made it abundantly clear he wants all of Ukraine.
He has a proven track record of retiring, rallying his forces, then returning for more. Reward a bully as they say, and he will only come back for more. Why wouldn’t he, if he is handed the fortress cities of Donetsk and a clear run over open tank country to Kyiv in a few years?
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US draft Russia peace plan
Since the beginning of Trump’s presidency, Europe has tried to keep the maverick president onside when his true sympathies have repeatedly reverted to Moscow.
It has been a demeaning and sycophantic spectacle, NATO’s secretary general stooping even to calling the US president ‘Daddy’. And it hasn’t worked. It may have made matters worse.
A choir sing in front of an apartment building destroyed in a Russian missile strike in Ternopil, Ukraine. Pic: Reuters
The parade of world leaders trooping through Sharm el-Sheikh, Egypt, lavishing praise on his Gaza ceasefire plan, only encouraged him to believe he is capable of solving the world’s most complex conflicts with the minimum of effort.
The Gaza plan is mired in deepening difficulty, and it never came near addressing the underlying causes of the war.
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Most importantly, principles the West has held inviolable for eight decades cannot be torn up for the sake of a quick and uncertain peace.
With a partner as unreliable, the challenge to Europe cannot be clearer.
In the words of one former Baltic foreign minister: “There is a glaringly obvious message for Europe in the 28-point plan: This is the end of the end.
“We have been told repeatedly and unambiguously that Ukraine’s security, and therefore Europe’s security, will be Europe’s responsibility. And now it is. Entirely.”
If Europe does not step up to the plate and guarantee Ukraine’s security in the face of this American betrayal, we could all pay the consequences.
World
Ukraine and Europe cannot reject Trump’s plan – they will play for time and hope he can still be persuaded to desert the Kremlin
“Terrible”, “weird”, “peculiar” and “baffling” – some of the adjectives being levelled by observers at the Donald Trump administration’s peace plan for Ukraine.
The 28-point proposal was cooked up between Trump negotiator Steve Witkoff and Kremlin official Kirill Dmitriev without European and Ukrainian involvement.
It effectively dresses up Russian demands as a peace proposal. Demands first made by Russia at the high watermark of its invasion in 2022, before defeats forced it to retreat from much of Ukraine.
Ukraine war latest: Kyiv receives US peace plan
(l-r) Kirill Dmitriev and special envoy Steve Witkoff in St Petersburg in April 2025. Pic: Kremlin Pool Photo/AP
Its proposals are non-starters for Ukrainians.
It would hand over the rest of Donbas, territory they have spent almost four years and lost tens of thousands of men defending.
Analysts estimate at the current rate of advance, it would take Russia four more years to take the land it is proposing simply to give them instead.
It proposes more than halving the size of the Ukrainian military and depriving them of some of their most effective long-range weapons.
And it would bar any foreign forces acting as peacekeepers in Ukraine after any peace deal is done.
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Is Moscow back in Washington’s good books?
The plan comes at an excruciating time for the Ukrainians.
They are being pounded with devastating drone attacks, killing dozens in the last few nights alone.
They are on the verge of losing a key stronghold city, Pokrovsk.
And Volodymyr Zelenskyy is embroiled in the gravest political crisis since the war began, with key officials facing damaging corruption allegations.
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Ukrainian support for peace plan ‘very much in doubt’
The suspicion is Mr Witkoff and Mr Dmitriev conspired together to choose this moment to put even more pressure on the Ukrainian president.
Perversely, though, it may help him.
There has been universal condemnation and outrage in Kyiv at the Witkoff-Dmitriev plan. Rivals have little choice but to rally around the wartime Ukrainian leader as he faces such unreasonable demands.
The genesis of this plan is unclear.
Was it born from Donald Trump’s overinflated belief in his peacemaking abilities? His overrated Gaza ceasefire plan attracted lavish praise from world leaders, but now seems mired in deepening difficulty.
The fear is Mr Trump’s team are finding ways to allow him to walk away from this conflict altogether, blaming Ukrainian intransigence for the failure of his diplomacy.
Mr Trump has already ended financial support for Ukraine, acting as an arms dealer instead, selling weapons to Europe to pass on to the invaded democracy.
If he were to take away military intelligence support too, Ukraine would be blind to the kind of attacks that in recent days have killed scores of civilians.
Europe and Ukraine cannot reject the plan entirely and risk alienating Mr Trump.
They will play for time and hope against all the evidence he can still be persuaded to desert the Kremlin and put pressure on Vladimir Putin to end the war, rather than force Ukraine to surrender instead.
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