Now Rishi Sunak wants to have his cake and eat it with China

Having flounced out of the EU, Britain is on the hunt for new friends and especially business partners.

Speaking before an audience of City folk at the Mansion House on Thursday, Rishi Sunak confirmed that the government has failed to secure an equivalence deal that would have granted them access to the EU financial services marketplace.

None too keen on being reliant on a third country, the bloc wants to boost its own financial centres. You can hardly blame it. It is clearly in its interests to do so.

So Sunak, while stressing that the UK will continue to be sensibly regulated, is turning his attention elsewhere.

Britain will, he said, press ahead with its “freedom to do things differently” (whatever that means) while seeking new opportunities with other partners such as the US. And China.

The chancellor called for “a mature and balanced relationship” with the latter, “one of the most important economies in the world”.

That presumably means one involving Britain selling lots of financial services, which will have done far more than the refreshments to get his audience drooling.

But wait. He also insisted that Britain would remain “eyes wide open about their [China’s] increasing international influence” and would continue “to take a principled stand on issues we judge to contravene our values”.

“We can pursue with confidence an economic relationship with China in a safe, mutually beneficial way without compromising our values or security,” he said.

Sunak’s words were carefully modulated, in part because he is aware that there are a sizeable number of China hawks on the Tory back benches.

Some of them are hopelessly nostalgic Brexity types who fondly imagine Britain can still tell the rest of the world what to do with the aid of a Royal Navy gunboat or two. Some of them have genuine concerns about China’s growing power, its willingness to use it, and its poor record on the subject of human rights.

They wouldn’t be prepared to countenance the sort of open-door policy operated by George Osborne, and Sunak wasn’t suggesting a reheat of that.

No, what he meant when he said, “too often, the debate on China lacks nuance”, was, “people, listen to me, we can have our cake and eat it with this one”. So deals, and money and jobs, but lots of finger wagging and firm words when the media reports on bad things happening to the Uighurs or events in Hong Kong take a turn for the worse.

It’s quite staggering that the belief that things can work like this apparently still exists in government despite all the evidence to the contrary. It didn’t work with the EU, which is why we’re here in the first place, and it sure as hell isn’t going to work with China.

How does Sunak think that country is going to react when he’s wined and dined its officials with promises of billions of dollars in multilateral trade, and enough financial services deals to keep the City propped up for a decade, and then tries to give them a stern lecture on human rights?

Were the chancellor and his speechwriters just not paying attention to the speech given by Xi Jinping before a crowd of 70,000 in Tiananmen Square, Beijing, to mark the centenary of the Chinese Communist Party?

The Chinese leader wasn’t mincing any words or carefully honing his message so as not to ruffle the feathers of sceptical Tory backbenchers.

China, he said, would not allow “sanctimonious preaching” or bullying from foreign forces. Anyone minded to try that “will find themselves on a collision course with a steel wall forged by 1.4 billion people”.

There isn’t a lot of nuance to be found there.

Red meat for the masses? I suppose that’s one way of looking at it. Another is to understand the clear message to people like Britain’s chancellor trying to have it both ways. You can’t do that. You can either sit down and talk deals. Or you can make a fuss about your human rights and security concerns.

Over to you, Mr Sunak.