China Owes Us? Er, No

The increasingly wayward newspaper calling itself the Mail on Sunday, not content with the usual diet of contrarian hokum, has today decided to up the ante in its not-at-all-racist campaign against anything and everything to do with China by recycling alt-right propaganda as if it were research of the greatest significance.

Wake up Harry, you've been rumbled. Again

In pursuit of this goal, the odious flannelled fool Master Harry Cole, still claiming to be a real journalist and masquerading as deputy political editor, has brought forth a hot, steaming, pungent and finely polished turd headed “China owes us £351 BILLION … The verdict of major study as 15 top Tories urge ‘reset’ in UK relations with Beijing”.

Sadly, the “15 top Tories” include has-beens and never-weres like Iain Duncan Cough and the disgraced Damian Grope. As for the “major study”, well, that has even less credibility than its backers. Why that should be can be seen as Master Cole tells “Britain should pursue the Chinese government through international courts for £351 billion in coronavirus compensation, a major study into the crisis has concluded”. Do go on.

“The report, to be published tomorrow by the Henry Jackson Society, a British foreign policy think-tank … is titled 'Coronavirus Compensation: Assessing China's potential culpability and avenues of legal response’”. The Henry Jackson Society. A word in your shell-like, Master Cole: the HJS is not a “think tank”. It is a source of cod propaganda, a formerly respectable organisation which has been hijacked by alt-right ideologues.

What Master Cole has not told his readers is that one of his stepping stones to achieving that entrée into supposedly mainstream journalism was as the HJS’ political editor. He also presumably just forgot that the HJS ended its funding of two Parliamentary groups because it refused to tell the Commons authorities where the money came from.

Worse, the idea that the UK should pursue any other country for reparations, given the history of the British Empire, is a truly eyebrow-raising one. So when Master Cole Tweeted “Britain should pursue the Chinese government through international courts for £351 billion in coronavirus compensation, a major study into the crisis has concluded”, he discovered that this was a campaign destined to develop not necessarily to his advantage.

“Opening up questions of reparations is, might I suggest, a very bad idea for Britain” responded Chris Cook. Chris Wylie mused “That moment when British Tories discuss international reparations and fail to see the irony”. Especially when minor details like the Opium Wars are thrown into the mix. And the Boxer Rebellion. Meanwhile, Richard Chambers added “I feel dumber for having read two sentences of that nonsense”.

Responses to Master Cole also mentioned Ireland, India, the slave trade, a variety of other colonial adventures, and the distinct possibility that if China pursued the UK in a similar fashion, the country would soon be bankrupt several times over. None of this seems to have occurred to him, but then, he was never the sharpest tool in the box.

But good to see his pals at the HJS are keeping up the flow of Fake News. One for the bin.

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