Keir Starmer’s Labour government will not treat China as a “top tier foreign influencer” under new national security legislation which has now gone live, two years after its initial passage through Parliament.
Starting from Tuesday, July 1st new foreign influence registration scheme (‘Firs’) legislation will come into effect. Bizarrely—unlike Russia and Iran—Beijing will be treated as merely employing ‘lobbying’ worthy of publicity in the form of official tracking.
The kid gloves treatment of China owes much to the use of its technology in Britain’s crumbling Net Zero plans. Similar motives may explain the memory-holing of the government’s ‘China Audit,’ a government document mysteriously yanked from its publishing schedule last week.
