Why Starmer’s great China reset risks disaster for Britain

The UK’s market share in China rose to the second highest level in at least eight years in 2022, when the then prime minister Rishi Sunak said that the so-called “golden era” with China was “over”. By contrast, the UK experienced year-on-year drops in its market share in China in both 2016 and 2018 during the so-called golden era. “It’s not dependent on politics. You sell because you have got the right goods at the right price,” says Charlie Parton, who spent 22 years working as a diplomat in China and is now a senior associate fellow at the Royal United Services Institute (Rusi).