All Is Not Well In The World

Last week you were no doubt surprised to find me confessing common cause with John McDonnell. As an aside I do note that McDonnell is a fellow alumnus of God's own University of London, though not, of course, of King's - we didn't really do lefties. Anyway my inner political correctness is nagging away at me once again. Surely I can't be the only died in the wool capitalist who is queasy about this undignified toadying up to the Chinese that our esteemed government deems fitting - Where is the morality?

The tiger who came to tea

I am considering inviting the Dalai Lama round for tea so that he can be assured that we're not all like George Osborne.

I wouldn't mind our creeping to the Chinese if I felt we were on the upside of a cunning plan to exploit the one party statists and their loathsome fellow travellers and thereby precipitate their downfall. But I am left with the unpalatable conviction that our new found mates will simply shit on us again and again, much as they have already shat on our steel industry. Nobody sane is an absolutist about foreign policy but you do have to draw the line somewhere. Don't you?

At times like this I read my tattered volume of Bernard Levin's journalism (a thrift shop find) and wonder what the great man would make of it all. He was close to a lone public voice predicting that the Soviet 'evil empire' would collapse under its own odious weight. I hope the same is true of China's project but it will occur all the more slowly if we underpin the superstructure.

As another aside, Levin was another London graduate - LSE in his case, a place that really did produce lefties of heft. It was with a little sigh of regret that I read last week that the LSE is these days one of the country's most conservative colleges. Bloody hell, where will I be without my cultural stereotypes?