TAIPEI (Taiwan News) - Taiwan’s government has said it looks forward to working with new U.K. Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer, whose foreign minister has previously committed to a “complete audit” of the country’s relationship with China in its first 100 days.
Starmer returned the U.K.’s Labour Party to power after 14 years in opposition on Friday (July 5) in a landslide election result. Following the victory, Taiwan’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MOFA) posted congratulations to Starmer on X, and said Taiwan “looks forward to further strengthening partnership with the new British administration in areas our interests and values align.”
Starmer has visited Taiwan twice, most recently in 2018 to campaign against the death penalty.
China issued a similar response to the election. “China hopes to work with the U.K. to advance China-U.K. relations along the right track based on mutual respect and win-win cooperation,” China’s foreign ministry spokesperson Mao Ning (毛寧) said during a press conference after the election result was announced.
Meanwhile, in June, Starmer's newly appointed foreign secretary David Lammy wrote that if elected, his government will adopt a “more consistent strategy” in its relations with China. “Such an approach would recognize that Beijing poses a systemic challenge for British interests and… also recognize China’s importance to the British economy,” Lammy wrote in Foreign Affairs.
Lammy said the U.K. would need to work with Beijing to address the “global threats” posed by the climate crisis, pandemics, and artificial intelligence. “There is a crucial difference between “de-risking” and decoupling, and it is in everyone’s interest that China’s relationship with the West endure and evolve,” he wrote.
However, the South China Morning Post quoted experts who believed the chances of “high-level” exchanges between China and the U.K. in the future are low, because of ongoing disagreements over Hong Kong, Taiwan, and Xinjiang.
"If Labour continues to advocate for Hong Kong's autonomy, or to voice challenges in enforcing compliance with the Sino-British Joint Declaration (on the handover), it could complicate the Chinese leadership's willingness to accept a visit," Sebastian Contin Trillo-Figueroa, a geopolitics analyst at the University of Hong Kong said.
Trillo-Figueroa also said that the U.K. is likely to maintain its commitment to AUKUS, a security pact between Australia, Britain, and the U.S. A senior U.S. State Department official suggested in April that an AUKUS submarine project could be used to deter a possible Chinese invasion of Taiwan.