I t seems an eternity ago that David Cameron was prime minister, talking up the prospect of a “golden era” for Britain’s relations with China, and enjoying a pint of bitter with his friend Xi Jinping in the boozer next to Chequers, not so very far from where his successor is recuperating from a disease that originated in the east of the people’s republic.

The Tory party’s divisions over China are opening up, and posing some substantial questions for the UK in the 2020s. The coronavirus crisis has laid bare the extent to which the west, including the UK, is reliant on China industrially and technologically. From the very earliest stages of the pandemic it was apparent that long “just in time” global supply chains ended up more often than not in China. Everything from components for a Nissan car made in Sunderland to a face mask used by a doctor in Belfast originated in China, and was suddenly in short supply.