Britain’s Foreign Office has been accused of peddling “Orwellian political speak” after it told government officials to refrain from labelling countries such as North Korea, Russia, and Communist China as “hostile states”.
The globalist-minded government of Prime Minister Rishi Sunak is said to have urged its underlings to tamp down criticisms of rouge states and instead lay the focus on “hostile actors” rather than “hostile states”.
According to a report from The Times, guidance from the Foreign Office said that “states aren’t inherently hostile themselves, they just do hostile things.”
This comes despite persistent threats from top-level Kremlin figures such as Dmitry Medvedev threatening to use nuclear weapons against the UK and Communist China trampling on the Sino-British Joint Declaration on Hong Kong and reportedly threatening exiled freedom fighters on British soil.
Responding to the mealy-mouthed guidance from the government, former Conservative Party leader Sir Iain Duncan Smith said: “Our position towards China is that we’ll deal with it with robust pragmatism but often you can’t be robust and pragmatic at the same time.
“This is Orwellian political speak in which you invent terms that are themselves meaningless to describe genuine dangerous and difficult circumstances because you have an ulterior motive such as not frightening your own people or not to upset those you are dealing with.
“The idea that China is not a hostile state is absurd.”
Cold War with China Would Betray Britain’s National Interest, Claims Foreign Secretary https://t.co/uYfL6X2roH
— Breitbart London (@BreitbartLondon) April 27, 2023
The soft stance towards China has been a hallmark of the administration of Prime Minister Rishi Sunak, who has long been a proponent of forging “deeper trade ties” with Communist China.
It is perhaps unsurprising, therefore, that one of Beijing’s top propaganda outlets, The Global Times, essentially endorsed his candidacy to replace Boris Johnson in Downing Street last year, hailing Sunak as the candidade with the most “pragmatic view of developing balanced ties with China.”
After ascending to the top role in Downing Street, Mr Sunak said that while the so-called “Golden Era” of Sino-British relations hailed by former Tory PM David Cameron and his ex-banker wingman George Osbourne had come to an end, Sunak refused to label China as a threat. In May, the PM once again refused to label the communist country a threat but did say that it poses a “systemic challenge” to the world order.
Some have suggested that Sunak may have a conflict of interest in dealing with China, given that he married into the family behind the Indian tech giant Infosys, which operates two branches within China, reportedly netting the company £134 million in 2021, alone.
Defending the Foreign Office’s guidance on how to refer to countries like China, a government spokesman said: ‘The integrated review refresh uses a range of terms to describe the activities of state and non-state actors, including ‘state threats”.
“This terminology is agreed across government and is widely used by our allies. The government continues to take strong action to counter state threats against the UK, including measures to protect our supply chains from China’s coercive economic activity and the announcement last week of a new sanctions regime targeting Iran.”
Communist China Backs World Economic Forum Acolyte Rishi Sunak to Replace Boris Johnson https://t.co/eTBGkVthXd
— Breitbart London (@BreitbartLondon) July 17, 2022
