Can new UK foreign secretary David Cameron put China ‘golden era’ behind him to keep with modern British policy?

Name: Aukus will ‘get done’, Biden tells Australia’s Albanese during visit to Washington
Uploaded: 2023-11-14T06:12:41.000Z
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Cameron’s six years as prime minister coincided with a remarkable thaw in Sino-British relations but times have changed, say geopolitics analysts

His appointment is a retrograde step say activists who do not want the UK to soften its approach to Beijing

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On October 22, 2015 then British PM David Cameron, right, drinks a pint of beer with Chinese President Xi Jinping at the Plough pub in Princess Risborough near Chequers. Photo: AFP

Finbarr Berminghamin Brussels

Published: 2:12pm, 14 Nov 2023Updated: 3:57pm, 14 Nov 2023

The appointment of David Cameron, the former British prime minister and architect of a “golden era” of relations with China, as foreign secretary has shocked Westminster.

But experts say while he may have experience and a record of Beijing-friendly foreign policy, Cameron faces an immensely different geopolitical environment around the bilateral ties he left in 2016, and he would need to prove he is up to date on London’s strategy.

On Monday, Cameron replaced James Cleverly, who is now home secretary, with the outgoing Suella Braverman a high-profile casualty of a dramatic cabinet reshuffle on Monday morning. Braverman stoked controversy by criticising a Metropolitan Police decision to permit a pro-Palestinian march on Armistice Day on November 11.

But it is the return of Cameron to frontbench politics – seven years after he left Downing Street when the Brexit referendum took the country out of the European Union – that has caught international attention.

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His six years as prime minister coincided with a remarkable thaw in Sino-British relations. Along with former chancellor George Osborne, Cameron championed Chinese investments in the country and brokered closer political ties with China following Xi Jinping’s ascendancy to the presidency in 2013.

Can new UK foreign secretary David Cameron put China ‘golden era’ behind him to keep with modern British policy?

Cameron’s six years as prime minister coincided with a remarkable thaw in Sino-British relations but times have changed, say geopolitics analysts His appointment is a retrograde step say activists who do not want the UK to soften its approach to Beijing

Cameron’s six years as prime minister coincided with a remarkable thaw in Sino-British relations but times have changed, say geopolitics analysts

His appointment is a retrograde step say activists who do not want the UK to soften its approach to Beijing