Starmer was challenged in the Commons over his ‘brush-by‘ with Chinese Premier Li Qiang at the G20 – not revealed to journalists at the time. LibDem deputy leader Daisy Cooper raised the meeting in the context of Labour’s supposed imminent approval of the Chinese mega-embassy in London. Starmer said:
“Let me just be clear. I said hello and shook the hand of the Chinese Premier at the G20. We were in the leaders’ lounge together and it would have been a little bizarre and discourteous not to have done so but we didn’t actually engage in any substantive discussion. She raises the question of the embassy. That’s obviously a quasi-judicial decision that we taken in accordance with those processes.”
‘I only said hello, guv’…
