This is the week Starmer must finally stand up for freedom in Hong Kong
The Telegraph, 25th August 2025
As the trial of Jimmy Lai reaches its climax, the Prime Minister must show he backs a heroic British citizen
A 77-year-old British citizen has been in prison for almost four years. He has spent much of it in solitary confinement. His health has deteriorated: diabetes worsened, heart palpitations treated.
His alleged crime? Criticising his government. No – not in Sir Keir Starmer’s Britain, though many might raise an eyebrow at the thought. This is Xi Jinping’s China. The man is Jimmy Lai.
The trial of Lai – founder of Apple Daily, Hong Kong’s most prominent pro-democracy newspaper – concluded closing arguments last week. He stands accused of sedition and “collusion with foreign powers,” his supposed offence being to report on Beijing’s assault on liberty during the 2019 protests and to call on the international community to hold China to account. In other words: journalism. Also known as: the lifeblood of any free society.
It is almost certain he will be found guilty. The National Security Law (NSL), passed in 2020, criminalises previously lawful acts of dissent. Last year, Beijing went further with the “Article 23” legislation, hardening penalties, removing the jury and lowering thresholds. In practice this means the state can convict almost anyone it wants, and it has: of the 78 cases tried under the law, all but a handful have ended in guilty verdicts.
In the landmark “Hong Kong 47” case, a group of pro-democracy activists were sentenced to double-digit prison terms for peaceful political organising – now, a violation of the NSL. Appeals abound but will take years to be heard. This is not justice. It is theatre.
Hong Kong’s courts, once respected across the common law world, now sit under the shadow of Beijing’s will. Lord Sumption, formerly a member of the Hong Kong bench, has warned that judicial independence there is collapsing. Together with Lord Collins, he left the Hong Kong court because it was being reduced to an annex of the Chinese Communist Party.
According to the World Justice Project, Hong Kong has tumbled down global rankings for human rights protections. What was once Asia’s freest city is now little more than another Chinese satellite, its promises of liberty from 1997 reduced to ashes.
And where is Britain? Where is the voice of the country that once guaranteed Hong Kong’s freedoms and whose citizen is now facing life in prison for standing by them?
We have heard the usual ministerial murmurings of concern. We have been told that “the case has been raised”. Meanwhile, the Government seems unwilling to stop Beijing from constructing its gargantuan embassy complex in central London – a project better described as a surveillance fortress.
The Prime Minister refuses to list China as a threat on the Enhanced Tier of the Foreign Influence Register. The Foreign Secretary, once a great orator against Beijing’s crimes, has now retreated into virtual silence: whether on the plight of the Uighur Muslims, Taiwan or Chagos. This is not diplomacy. It is appeasement.
The contrast with past efforts is stark. Britain fought, lobbied, and eventually negotiated to bring Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe home from Iran. Other Western nations have secured the release of their citizens from Chinese jails.
Yet for Jimmy Lai – a British passport-holder, a man whose only “crime” is to believe in the principles Britain once taught Hong Kong – there is inertia. Strange, given that our Government is headed up by one former human rights barrister, Starmer and supported by his close friend from chambers, the Attorney General, Lord Hermer. For all their zealousness over human rights, why so silent now?
I have met with Jimmy Lai’s son, Sebastien and their legal team. He is campaigning diligently for his father’s life. But this case is not only about Lai’s freedom, crucial though that is. It is about Britain’s willingness to defend its citizens, its values, and its word. Beijing is watching. The world is watching. If Britain will not raise its voice for liberty now, then when?
The question is brutally simple: will Starmer and his Attorney General rediscover their principles and use them to save a British life? Or will they allow themselves to become the diplomatic errand boys of a regime that fears nothing more than the sound of free men speaking?
The Chinese Communist Party or Jimmy Lai. It’s time to choose. I know whose side I’m on. But does this Government?
Suella
