Jimmy Lai

Home Morgan McSweeney, the helmsman of Labour, walked the plank by resigning as chief of staff to Sir Keir Starmer, the Prime Minister, whom he had advised in 2024 to appoint Lord Mandelson as ambassador to Washington. Mr McSweeney’s resignation statement began: ‘After careful reflection, I have decided to resign from the government,’ as though he had been a member of the government. In a speech meant to be about funding for local communities, Sir Keir said he was ‘sorry for having believed Mandelson’s lies and appointed him’. But he added: ‘I had no reason to believe he was telling anything other than the truth’, even though the Financial Times

Forty years ago this Christmas I visited Hong Kong for the first time – a few days after the signing in Beijing of the Sino-British Joint Declaration that sealed the former colony’s transfer to mainland rule in 1997. It was a moment of apprehension, but at least the timetable had been set. And how lucky I was to have experienced that extraordinary outpost as it was then, in such contrast to what China’s masters have made it now. The Christmas Day service in St John’s Cathedral, overhead fans stirring the turbid air, was a poignant glimpse of Hong Kong’s past. Norman Foster’s Hongkong Bank building, the most expensive in the

As I write, the Foreign Secretary, David Lammy, is flying to China. So I am only guessing when I say that I expect he will ‘raise’ the case of Jimmy Lai, the newspaper publisher, businessman and Democratic party supporter, a British citizen. Mr Lai has now been imprisoned in Hong Kong for four years with his numerous trials not yet completed. ‘Raise’, yes, but not as in ‘do anything about’ the situation. So far, the best the Foreign Office has done is to ‘request consular access’ to Mr Lai. China has refused this on the grounds that it does not recognise dual citizenship (which is irrelevant since Mr Lai has never