Grenville Cross says Britain’s new shadow foreign secretary will do all he can to poison progress between the two countries

When the United Kingdom’s Conservative Party leader, Kemi Badenoch, reshuffled her shadow Cabinet on Monday, she appointed Tom Tugendhat as her shadow foreign secretary (replacing Dame Priti Patel). The former security minister had earlier signaled his appointment from Taiwan, where he was on his second visit of the year. According to The Daily Telegraph, he was in Taipei “meeting officials about the threat posed by China”.

It is no exaggeration to say that Taiwan has almost become Tugendhat’s second home. When he visited in January, the local government described him as “a long-standing and steadfast friend of Taiwan”, and it will be gratified that its investment in him is starting to pay off. He has always disregarded Taiwan’s status as an inalienable part of China’s territory, and stoking cross-Strait tensions has almost become second nature. He never tires of urging Western nations to strengthen their security and defense cooperation with the island, knowing this will embolden his hosts and incense Beijing.

When Tugendhat visited Taiwan’s front-line Kinmen Island on a coast guard vessel in January as part of an “inspection” by the Inter-Parliamentary Alliance on China (which spreads Beijing-hostile propaganda in national parliaments), he was bent on mischief-making. Although on Chinese soil, he lambasted what he called China’s maritime “incursions” and condemned its construction of a nearby airport. He even claimed the inspection had “nothing to do with Beijing”, bizarrely suggesting he was “simply defending the international rules-based system”.

By any yardstick, Tugendhat is one of the most fanatical Sinophobes in the British Parliament, outflanking even the ex-Conservative Party leader Sir Iain Duncan Smith and former Hong Kong governor Chris Patten. In 2021, he cofounded the China Research Group, which whipped up illusory concerns about China (including Huawei), and whose activities led to its being sanctioned by Beijing.

His appointment, therefore, can only be seen as a retrograde step, which Badenoch may come to regret.

Her party is currently lagging behind the governing Labour Party and Reform UK in the opinion polls, and she is desperate to shore up support. With a possible general election looming, she presumably considers that Tugendhat’s appointment will widen her party’s appeal. However, he has built his career around demonizing China, and his appointment would undoubtedly backfire were Badenoch ever to become prime minister.

It is certainly true that the electorate will pay little attention to Tugendhat’s views on China at the next general election. However, he brings nothing positive to the table in terms of global outreach, and his baggage would harm a future government. His visceral animosity toward Beijing would not only reverse recent improvements in Anglo-Chinese relations but also alienate a country that has so much to offer the UK in the post-Brexit era.

Moreover, as a patron of Hong Kong Watch (together with Patten), the anti-China hate machine founded by the serial fantasist Benedict Rogers, Tugendhat is no friend of the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region. In 2019, when the legal system needed every support at the height of the insurrection, he sought to undermine its Judiciary. Even as they were courageously holding the line in perilous circumstances, he became the first Westminster parliamentarian to target the SAR’s overseas judges.

Instead of providing them with the backing to which they were entitled, Tugendhat called for a review of the British judges' positions on the Hong Kong Court of Final Appeal. He even claimed their presence suggested British complicity “in a system that is undermining the rule of law”, which could not have been further from the truth. Although, like all the CFA’s judges, the British jurists were helping to sustain the rule of law at a critical juncture, his attempt to stab the Judiciary in the back can never be forgotten.

It was, therefore, unsurprising that after the Hong Kong SAR National Security Law (2020) had ensured the survival of the “one country, two systems” policy, Tugendhat’s response was to claim the SAR was becoming “the tool of tyrants” (a slogan lifted out of the Hong Kong Watch playbook).

He has also seized every opportunity to throw cold water on the current Labour government’s attempts to forge closer economic (and other) relations with Beijing (he accuses it of “kowtowing”). He was highly critical of the recent ministerial visits to China, and his bigotry is all-embracing. In line, for example, with Hong Kong Watch policy, he drummed up opposition to China’s new London embassy, branding its approval “a grave mistake”.

Always eager to place China in a bad light, it often seems he cannot help himself. The latest example is his Daily Telegraph op-ed (Sept 1) titled Time Is Running Out to Rescue Europe’s Car Industry from Its “Made in China” Folly. Its flavor can be gleaned from the subheading, “Britain and its neighbors risk becoming victims of corporate colonialism driven by Beijing.”

Nobody was more delighted at Tugendhat’s appointment than Rogers, who said he was “thrilled”. He was clearly ecstatic that a Hong Kong Watch patron had managed to insinuate himself into the top echelons of the Conservative Party. He claimed “no one is better qualified”, gleefully adding, “I look forward to working with him in his new role”.

In other words, Tugendhat will be Hong Kong Watch’s man in Badenoch’s inner sanctum, doing all he can to poison the UK’s relations with China. Although it may delight Rogers, this is not in the British national interest. If Badenoch cannot see that, she does not deserve to win the next general election.

The author is a senior counsel and law professor and was previously the director of public prosecutions of the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region.

The views do not necessarily reflect those of China Daily.