The British Prime Minister, Sir Keir Starmer—a man whose public persona possesses the vibrant charisma of a damp sheet of drywall—is preparing for a pilgrimage to Beijing. This isn't a diplomatic mission in the traditional sense; it is a corporate fire sale disguised as statesmanship. Fresh off the back of green-lighting a massive new Chinese embassy in London, a structure that will undoubtedly serve as a shining beacon of surveillance in the heart of the capital, Starmer is now taking his act on the road. He isn't going alone, of course. He’s traveling with a retinue of blue-chip vultures, the kind of corporate titans who would outsource their own mothers if it meant a 2% bump in quarterly dividends. We are told this is about 'growth' and 'stability,' the two favorite linguistic narcotics of the modern political class, used to dull the senses while the actual mechanics of national sovereignty are dismantled and sold for scrap.

The optics are, as always, spectacularly grim. Following the UK government’s approval of the vast new embassy—a move that local residents and anyone with a functioning sense of geopolitical irony find abhorrent—Starmer is leading a delegation that includes the usual suspects of British industrial decline. We have BP, the petroleum giant currently engaged in a frantic rebranding exercise to look like a meadow while it continues to squeeze the planet dry. We have HSBC, a banking institution that has never met a global autocracy it didn’t want to provide with a high-interest savings account. Joining them are the remains of Rolls-Royce, Jaguar Land Rover, and the Intercontinental Hotels Group. It’s a veritable 'Who’s Who' of entities that have spent the last thirty years ensuring that the word 'British' is merely a branding flourish on products manufactured elsewhere. This is the 'UK-China CEO Council,' a fancy title for a room where the wealthy gather to discuss how best to ignore human rights concerns in favor of market access.

Starmer’s predecessor, the various iterations of Tory failure, at least had the decency to be transparently greedy. Starmer, however, brings the nauseating veneer of 'Labour values' to the table. It is a peculiar kind of intellectual dishonesty to watch a party that prides itself on being the vanguard of progressive morality hand over the keys to the city to a regime that views the concept of a labor union as a clerical error. But this is the reality of 'Global Britain'—a term that remains the most successful joke in the history of English satire. Britain is not a global power; it is a high-end valet service for actual superpowers. Starmer is simply the latest head concierge, making sure the towels are fluffed and the embassy permits are signed before the real masters of the global economy arrive to claim their suites.

The cynicism here is absolute. On one side, we have the British political establishment, desperate for any influx of capital to plug the holes in a sinking domestic economy that they have spent decades sabotaging. On the other, we have a Chinese state that understands perfectly that Western democratic principles are entirely transactional. If you give a British Prime Minister enough 'investment' opportunities for his corporate donors, he will quite happily overlook almost anything. The 'special relationship' with the United States is a security blanket for the public; the real relationship is with whoever is currently holding the mortgage on the house. In this case, it’s Beijing, and they’ve just been given permission to build a very large extension on the property.

Let us not be fooled by the inevitable press releases about 'strengthening ties' or 'meaningful dialogue.' There will be no meaningful dialogue. There will be a series of stiff-collared luncheons where Starmer tries to look like a world leader while the CEOs of BP and HSBC check their watches, wondering when they can get back to the real business of making money. The British public, meanwhile, is expected to cheer for this as a victory for 'British business,' oblivious to the fact that these businesses have long since evolved into post-national entities with no loyalty to anything but the bottom line. It is a performance of profound national humiliation, conducted in the hushed tones of a boardroom meeting. Starmer isn't building a bridge to the future; he’s building a gift shop in the ruins of a once-relevant nation, and he’s making sure the embassy is large enough to house the staff who will eventually run the place. It’s not just a trip; it’s a surrender with a very expensive catering budget.