James Cleverly defends first China trip by foreign secretary in five years as MPs call for openness on policy

Published

2 years ago

August 30, 2023

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The foreign secretary has insisted “diplomacy makes a difference” as he meets senior members of the Chinese government in Beijing – despite questions back home over his party’s approach to the country.

The officials James Cleverly is meeting include foreign affairs minister Wang Yi and vice president Han Zheng and he is expected to discuss issues ranging from climate change to international security in what is the first visit to China by a UK foreign secretary in more than five years.

Politics live: Cleverly meets top Chinese officials in landmark trip

But it comes amid a rift in the Conservatives over whether the government should take a tougher stance on Beijing, with former party leader Sir Iain Duncan Smith going as far as comparing the current approach to the appeasement of Nazi Germany in the 1930s.

After meeting Mr Zheng early on Wednesday morning, Mr Cleverly told reporters his visit was about “making sure we are able to speak regularly about bilateral issues – both the areas where we disagree but also areas where we need to cooperate [such as] the fight against climate change”, as well as making sure China understands the UK’s core positions.

“[China] is an important country, it is a large country, an influential country, and a complicated country, and therefore our relationship with China will necessarily be just as complicated and sophisticated,” added the foreign secretary.

“We are clear-eyed about the areas where we have fundamental disagreements with China and I raise those issues when we meet, but I think it is important we also recognise that we have to have a pragmatic sensible working relationship with China because of the issues that affect us all around the globe.

“So, of course, we will pursue a pragmatic working relationship, but that does of course mean raising the issues where we disagree when we have the opportunity to do so.”

Asked if words in meetings would be enough to spark change, Mr Cleverly replied: “Diplomacy makes a difference, that’s why it exists, that is why it is a function of international relations that has endured for centuries.

“Regular face-to-face discussions, where you can raise those issues where we disagree directly, unambiguously, without being filtered through media, are incredibly important.

“I am clear-eyed… that we are not going to change China overnight and we are certainly not going to do it in one individual meeting. But it is important that we maintain regular dialogue.”

‘Confusion across Whitehall’ on China

Mr Cleverly’s trip comes on the same day MPs on the Foreign Affairs Committee called for an unclassified strategy on China that does not just deal with trade and security, but also diplomatic engagement, human rights and technological cooperation.

The committee’s 87-page report is in response to the “Tilt to the Indo-Pacific” announced in the Integrated Review of 2021, in which the government identified Russia as an “active threat” and China as a “systemic challenge”.

But the committee’s report said there was “confusion across Whitehall” about the new policy focus, arising from a “failure to explain” it.

Alicia Kearns, the Conservative chair of the committee, told Sky News the government’s current China strategy was “at the highest possible security level”.

“That means that some government ministers have not even seen it,” she added. “So I question how you can have a comprehensive cross-government strategy where ministers themselves don’t know what they’re working towards.”

Ms Kearns said there was “big uncertainty” for the business community and academics, leaving them “unsure of the boundaries between caution and collaboration” with China.

“Now, the Chinese Communist Party are very explicit on what they’re seeking to achieve, and they are therefore exploiting this uncertainty, which is why we have to end it for the publication of an unclassified China strategy,” she said.

In the report, the chair also described Taiwan – which fears an invasion by China – as an “important ally and partner of the UK” and urged the government to “stand shoulder to shoulder” with the island and make clear that attempts to undermine its self-determination were “unacceptable”.

‘China cannot be ignored’

Responding to the report, a government spokesperson said the Integrated Review refresh “outlines clearly and in detail our commitment to a free and open Indo-Pacific”.

They said Mr Cleverly had set out the China strategy too, “including strengthening our national security protections and engaging where it is in the UK’s interests to do so – that is what he is now doing during his trip to China”.

The spokesperson added: “We are reviewing the report’s findings in detail and will respond in due course.”

The visit signals a further move in government policy to engage with Beijing, despite ongoing calls from Tory MPs – some of whom have been sanctioned by China – to take a harder line on the country’s activities, especially when it comes to human rights violations.

Prime Minister Rishi Sunak has already softened his language – moving from calling China “the biggest long-term threat to Britain” in his leadership campaign last summer, to instead saying the UK should stand up to China “with robust pragmatism”.

But his predecessor in Number 10, Liz Truss, has criticised the direction of travel and called for a more robust approach, saying in a speech earlier this year that French President Emmanuel Macron’s own visit to China was “a sign of weakness”, and Western governments had been “appeasing” the autocratic regime.

Ms Kearns didn’t criticise the foreign secretary’s trip, saying it was “more important James Cleverly is in the room vociferously disagreeing with them” and backed the idea of Mr Sunak meeting with Chinese President Xi at the upcoming G20 summit.

‘Chop and change’ should end

Labour Party chair Anneliese Dodds said the UK needed “a far more strategic approach towards China”, telling Sky News: “The Chinese leadership always takes a long-term approach when it comes to their interests, but as a country over the last 13 years, we’ve really not had a strategic approach towards China… We need to have that longer term approach.”

Asked if she would be happy for Labour’s shadow foreign secretary David Lammy to make the trip to Beijing, Ms Dodds said: “There needs to be engagement, but it can’t be ad hoc.”

Politics

Stablecoin bill won’t target Trump as Senate aims to pass it next week

Published

6 hours ago

May 15, 2025

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Stablecoin bill won’t target Trump as Senate aims to pass it next week

The US Senate could pass a key bipartisan stablecoin bill as soon as next week after removing language targeting President Donald Trump and his family’s sprawling crypto interests.

Republican Senator Cynthia Lummis said onstage at an event by Coinbase’s lobbying arm, Stand With Crypto, that she thinks it’s a “fair target” to have the Guiding and Establishing National Innovation for US Stablecoins Act, or GENIUS Act, passed by May 26 — Memorial Day in the US.

Joining her onstage was Democratic Senator Kirsten Gillibrand, who hinted that the bill’s language was changed to scrap provisions that targeted Trump’s various crypto projects, which include memecoins, a crypto platform, a stablecoin, and a crypto mining company that plans to go public, among others.

“When this language comes out, people will see really good refinement, a lot of progress, on things like consumer protection, and bankruptcy protection, and ethics,” Gillibrand said. “Things beyond just ‘what’s the structure?’ and ‘what’s required for an issuer?’”

Congress, Stablecoin — *Source:* *Brian Armstrong*

Senate Democrats pulled support for the bill on May 8 and stalled its momentum, airing concerns that it wouldn’t help address multiple crypto-tied deals that will personally enrich Trump.

“A lot of what President Trump is engaged in is already illegal,” Gillibrand said. “I also think his issuance of a memecoin is illegal based on current law.”

“It’s literally offering anyone who wants to curry favor with the administration to just send him money — that’s about as illegal as it gets.”

“I’m not so worried about this bill having to deal with all President Trump’s ethics problems. What this bill is really intended to do is regulate the entire space of stablecoins,” she added.

Gillibrand said the revised bill includes “some ethics requirements,” but it was “not an ethics bill.”

“If we were dealing with all President Trump’s ethics problems, it would be a very long and detailed bill,” she added.

Coinbase CEO Brian Armstrong, also on stage, was hopeful the Senate would vote on the stablecoin bill “early next week.”

Armstrong, whose company cozied up to Trump by donating $1 million to his inauguration fund, declined to comment when asked if the President’s memecoin could impact the passage of bipartisan crypto bills.

“It’s not my place to really comment on President Trump’s activity,” he said. “What I do think is important is that this bill remains focused on stablecoins.”

Crypto bills “absolutely critical” to pass before midterms

The crypto industry is pushing for Congress to pass the GENIUS Act and a Republican-drafted crypto market structure bill before the midterm elections on Nov. 3, 2026, where all 435 House seats and a third of the 100 Senate seats are up for election.

“We have a very narrow window to get legislation through between now and the midterms,” Marta Belcher, the president of the crypto lobby group the Blockchain Association, told Cointelegraph at the Consensus conference in Toronto.

“I strongly suspect that window is going to close very quickly. I don’t know if we’re going to get another window like this to get legislation through,” she added.

“It’s absolutely critical that we get it through now, especially because there really is a real possibility that in the future we end up with an administration that is hostile to crypto.”

The Association’s communications director, Chris Jonas, added that it’s critical the bills pass before Congress takes a recess for the month of August.

“Once you get into the calendar year of the midterms, historically not a lot of legislation moves, so that’s why it’s so critical,” he explained.

Trump should be on track to sign both crypto bills before the August break, according to Bo Hines, the executive director of the Presidential Council of Advisers for Digital Assets.

Hines noted on stage at Consensus on May 13 that negotiations on both bills are still ongoing, but it was “the President’s desire” to sign both “stablecoin legislation and market structure legislation before the August recess.”

Legal Panel: Crypto wanted to overthrow banks, now it’s becoming them in stablecoin fight

Politics

Dems seek suspicious activity reports linked to Trump crypto ventures

Published

9 hours ago

May 15, 2025

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Dems seek suspicious activity reports linked to Trump crypto ventures

US Democrat lawmakers have sent a letter to the US Treasury demanding access to suspicious activity reports (SARs) on several Trump-backed crypto projects as part of the latest probe into the president’s digital ventures.

Penned by representatives Gerald Connolly, Joseph Morelle, and Jamie Raskin, the May 14 letter asks Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent for all SARS filed since 2023 related to World Liberty Financial (WLF) and the Official Trump (TRUMP) token.

Financial institutions in the US must file SARs with the Financial Crimes Enforcement Network, a bureau within the Department of the Treasury, when they detect suspicious activity, including potential money laundering or fraud.

The sweeping probe asks for any SARs mentioning WinRed, America PAC, Elon Musk, political action committee, PAC, Trump, World Liberty Financial, WLF, TRUMP, MELANIA and Justin Sun, no later than May 30.

The Democratic lawmakers say their probe is to “determine whether legislation is necessary to prevent violations of campaign finance, consumer protection, bribery, securities fraud, and other anti-corruption laws” and to guard against “financial misconduct connected to prospective or current federal officials.”

Democrats argue WLF and Trump coin could be misused

As part of the letter, the lawmakers argue WLF could be misused as a “vehicle for foreign influence peddling” because it served part of its token sale for foreign investors, who are “generally subject to less stringent regulation than US investors.”

Justin Sun’s investment in WLF and the subsequent pause of the SEC’s lawsuit that alleged the crypto entrepreneur broke securities laws has also been flagged as a concern.

Trump’s token has come under fire as well because the lawmakers argue in their letter that the identities of the coin purchasers are not publicly disclosed, which could open the door for bad actors to “curry favor with Trump” by purchasing the coin.

At the same time, SARS related to Republican digital fundraising WinRed, Elon Musk’s super PAC, which poured $250 million into Trump’s election campaign, and two other PACs are being sought.

This effort is the latest Democrat-led salvo against Trump’s crypto ventures.

A group of Democratic senators reportedly sent a letter to leadership at the US Department of Justice and the Treasury Department expressing concerns about Trump’s ties to crypto exchange Binance and potential conflicts of interest in regulating the industry, according to a May 9 Bloomberg report.

US Democratic lawmakers also launched a multi-angle attack on May 6, targeting Trump’s ability to profit from his crypto initiatives with two bills and a subcommittee inquiry.

Magazine: Trump’s crypto ventures raise conflict of interest, insider trading questions

Politics

Top Tory caught admitting Brexit drawback in leaked clip

Published

15 hours ago

May 14, 2025

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Leaked recording reveals top Tory knew of flaws in post-Brexit plan to return illegal migrants

One of Kemi Badenoch’s top team has admitted there were flaws in the plan to return illegal migrants after Brexit, Sky News can reveal.

Boris Johnson repeatedly told the public that Brexit would mean taking back control of Britain’s borders and migration system.

Plans unveiled to ease prisons crisis – politics latest

But in a leaked recording obtained by Sky News, Chris Philp, now shadow home secretary, said Britain’s exit from the EU – and end of UK participation in the Dublin agreement which governs EU-wide asylum claims – meant they realised they “can’t any longer rely on sending people back to the place where they first claimed asylum”.

Mr Philp appeared to suggest the scale of the problem surprised those in the Johnson government.

“When we did check it out… (we) found that about half the people crossing the Channel had claimed asylum previously elsewhere in Europe.”

In response tonight, the Tories insisted that Mr Philp was not saying the Tories did not have a plan for how to handle asylum seekers post Brexit.

Mr Philp’s comments from last month are a very different tone to 2020 when as immigration minister he seemed to be suggesting EU membership and the Dublin rules hampered asylum removals.

In August that year, he said: “The Dublin regulations do have a number of constraints in them, which makes returning people who should be returned a little bit harder than we would like. Of course, come the 1st of January, we’ll be outside of those Dublin regulations and the United Kingdom can take a fresh approach.”

Mr Philp was also immigration minister in Mr Johnson’s government so would have been following the debate closely.

In public, members of the Johnson administration were claiming this would not be an issue since asylum claims would be “inadmissible”, but gave no details on how they would actually deal with people physically arriving in the country.

A Home Office source told journalists once the UK is “no longer bound by Dublin after the transition”, then “we will be able to negotiate our own bilateral returns agreement from the end of this year”.

This did not happen immediately.

In the summer of 2020, Mr Johnson’s spokesman criticised the “inflexible and rigid” Dublin regulations, suggesting the exit from this agreement would be a welcome post-Brexit freedom. Mr Philp’s comments suggest a different view in private.

The remarks were made in a Zoom call, part of a regular series with all the shadow cabinet on 28 April, just before the local election.

Mr Philp was asked by a member why countries like France continued to allow migrants to come to the UK.

He replied: “The migrants should claim asylum in the first safe place and that under European Union regulations, which is called the Dublin 3 regulation, the first country where they are playing asylum is the one that should process their application.

“Now, because we’re out of the European Union now, we are out of the Dublin 3 regulations, and so we can’t any longer rely on sending people back to the place where they first claimed asylum. When we did check it out, just before we exited the EU transitional arrangements on December the 31st, 2020, we did run some checks and found that about half the people crossing the channel had claimed asylum previously elsewhere in Europe.

“In Germany, France, Italy, Spain, somewhere like that, and therefore could have been returned. But now we’re out of Dublin, we can’t do that, and that’s why we need to have somewhere like Rwanda that we can send these people to as a deterrent.”

Mr Johnson announced the Rwanda plan in April 2022 – which Mr Philp casts as the successor plan – 16 months after Britain left the legal and regulatory regime of the EU, but the plan was blocked by the European Court of Human Rights.

Successive Tory prime ministers failed to get any mandatory removals to Rwanda, and Sir Keir Starmer cancelled the programme on entering Downing Street last year, leaving the issue of asylum seekers from France unresolved.

Speaking on Sky News last weekend, Home Secretary Yvette Cooper said there has been a 20% increase in migrant returns since Labour came to power, along with a 40% increase in illegal working raids and a 40% increase in arrests for illegal working.

Britain’s membership of the EU did not stop all asylum arrivals. Under the EU’s Dublin regulation, under which people should be processed for asylum in the country at which they first entered the bloc.

However, many EU countries where people first arrive, such as Italy, do not apply the Dublin rules.

The UK is not going to be able to participate again in the Dublin agreement since that is only open to full members of the EU.

Ministers have confirmed the Labour government is discussing a returns agreement with the French that would involve both countries exchanging people seeking asylum.

Asked on Sky News about how returns might work in future, the transport minister Lilian Greenwood said on Wednesday there were “discussions ongoing with the French government”, but did not say what a future deal could look like.

She told Sky News: “It’s not a short-term issue. This is going to take really hard work to tackle those organised gangs that are preying on people, putting their lives in danger as they try to cross the Channel to the UK.

“Of course, that’s going to involve conversations with our counterparts on the European continent.”

Pressed on the returns agreement, Ms Greenwood said: “I can confirm that there are discussions ongoing with the French government about how we stop this appalling and dangerous trade in people that’s happening across the English Channel.”

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A Conservative Party spokesman said: “The Conservative Party delivered on the democratic will of this country, and left the European Union.

“The last government did have a plan and no one – including Chris – has ever suggested otherwise.

“We created new deals with France to intercept migrants, signed returns agreements with many countries across Europe, including a landmark agreement with Albania that led to small boat crossings falling by a third in 2023, and developed the Rwanda deterrent – a deterrent that Labour scrapped, leading to 2025 so far being the worst year ever for illegal channel crossings.

“However, Kemi Badenoch and Chris Philp have been clear that the Conservatives must do a lot more to tackle illegal migration.

“It is why, under new leadership, we are developing g new policies that will put an end to this problem – including disapplying the Human Rights Act from immigration matters, establishing a removals deterrent and deporting all foreign criminals.”