As the anglosphere fractures, Starmer’s China visit could be historic

SCMP | Jan. 26, 2026, 7:30 a.m. | Original

British Prime Minister Keir Starmer meets Chinese President Xi Jinping at the Sheraton Hotel, as he attends the G20 summit in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, on November 18, 2024. Photo: Pool via Reuters

Winston Churchill wrote his four-volume masterpiece, A History of the English-Speaking Peoples , at the very moment a new era of world history was taking shape: victory over the Nazis, the birth of the United Nations, the Bretton Woods institutions. All signalled continuity of Anglo-Saxon leadership in world affairs, the baton passing fairly peacefully from Britain to America.

But 80 years on from the end of the second world war, the world is reconfiguring itself once more. And what it means for the UK remains to be seen.

That is why Keir Starmer’s visit to China this week – reportedly scheduled for January 29-31 – is potentially historic. It would be the first by a British prime minister since Theresa May in 2018, coming as the anglosphere’s traditional alignment is fracturing before our eyes.
Mark Carney said it plainly at Davos last week. The Canadian prime minister, a figure for whom no one is more establishment, declared that the rules-based international order was a “fiction” – one that only worked while America chose to provide public goods rather than exercise raw power. “We are in the midst of a rupture, not a transition,” he warned. Great powers now use “economic integration as weapons, tariffs as leverage, financial infrastructure as coercion,” he said.

Several military misadventures later, the rise of China, and the election of Donald Trump for a second presidential term – along with the mood he represents within the United States – mean we are not going back to whence we came.

So what are middle powers doing? They are hedging.

WATCH: Chinese President Xi Jinping meets with Canadian PM Mark Carney

WATCH: Chinese President Xi Jinping meets with Canadian PM Mark Carney

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