In the House of Commons today, following discussion of the collapsed China spy case, the Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer and shadow housing secretary James Cleverly clashed over comments Mr Starmer attributed to Mr Cleverly during his tenure as foreign secretary in 2023.
At Prime Minister's Questions, Mr Starmer said: "The then-foreign secretary [...] gave a speech at Mansion House. It was called 'Our Position on China', setting out the government's policy. He said in that speech, summing up China as a threat in one word would be -- his words -- impossible, impractical and most importantly unwise."
In a Point of Order just after PMQs concluded, Mr Cleverly suggested that Mr Starmer had misquoted his remarks.
He said: "It has been said that I, in a speech at Mansion House, said that describing China as a threat was impossible, impractical and most importantly unwise. The quote was that describing China as one word, or our policy in one word, is impossible, impractical and most importantly unwise. And [...] in that speech I went on to say that our policy first: 'We will strengthen our national security protections wherever Beijing's actions pose a threat to our people or prosperity', and I finished by saying 'And when there are tensions with other objectives we will always put our national security first'."
In April 2023, Mr Cleverly made a speech at Mansion House, the official residence of the Lord Mayor of London.
In it, he said: "I'm often asked to express that policy in a single phrase, or sum up China itself in one word, whether 'threat', or 'partner', or 'adversary'. And I want to start by explaining why that is impossible, impractical and -- most importantly -- unwise."
He also went on to say, as he repeated during today's Point of Order: "We will strengthen our national security protections wherever Beijing's actions pose a threat to our people or prosperity", and "when there are tensions with other objectives, we will always put our national security first".
The full transcript of the Mansion House speech, therefore, does suggest the specific remarks from Mr Cleverly referred to by Mr Starmer were more generally about the difficulty of summing up China in one word -- Mr Cleverly suggested the word in question could be "threat" or "partner", not just "threat", as Mr Starmer implied.
We've contacted Number 10 for comment, and will update this blog post if we receive a reply.