The UK’s nuclear deal with China makes no sense, writes Jeffrey Henderson – unless you factor in the simultaneous agreement to forge lucrative links between UK and Chinese financial markets. Lucrative, that is, for the City institutions whose interests the British government so assiduously represents. As for the rest of us, our task is simple: to bear the ever-growing cost.
At first glance, it seems an almost inexplicable paradox.
A right-wing British government has invited companies controlled by the Chinese Communist Party – and in one case, the Chinese military – into the heart of the UK’s strategically vital energy infrastructure.
The nuclear deal between Britain and China goes against the advice of the security services, the military and the US government.
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Fast forward to November 2015 and we are still living with this legacy. In 2012, estimates of the wealth of Cabinet members suggested that 62% were very wealthy individuals whose family fortunes were largely wrapped up in financial and real estate speculation.
In the current Cabinet, that is likely to be even more the case. And they belong to a Conservative Party that obtains a significant part of its funding from hedge funds and other City institutions.
Whatever one’s political persuasion, it is hard not to conclude that there are material interests in place that encourage government policy towards the expansion of opportunities for financial speculation. This is now so much the case, it seems, that it is allowed to override some of the Conservative Party’s most deeply held ideological positions.
Read more at UK’s nuclear deal with China is a boon for bankers – and no one else
