Labour want closer links to China, with Beijing visit planned within months of election

Matthew Savill, Director of Military Sciences at the Rusi think-tank, said: “The next government is going to have to start implementing a more security-heavy approach and actually take hard decisions on investment, anticipating cyber activity, and how to handle more assertive Chinese activity (for example in the Indo-Pacific, given we became an Asean Dialogue Partner). “There is a lot of speculation around whether China in the next few years will attempt some sort of action around Taiwan to force reunification. That is going to suck up an increasing amount of US materiel and engagement and people and time. So the European part of Nato – the UK and France in particular – is going to need to think about what this US tilt means for us. It doesn’t matter whether it is Trump or Biden in the White House, they will both take this approach. There will be a challenge over the US’s future role in Nato. It is not unreasonable for the US to expect Europe to play a much bigger role and have a much bigger stake in its own security.”