China Straight

As is increasingly the practice of Any Questions, one of this evening’s panellists, a Jesse Norman (yes, that was his name), was on for no reason except that he was a regular dining companion of the BBC’s beloved David Cameron. Does mere PPC status get Labour, Lib Dem or any other types that sort of coverage? This is one for the Representation of the People Act.

Anyway, Mr Norman was off about Tibet, a subject of which he clearly shares his patron’s absolute ignorance. (I apologise for suggesting previously that Tibet had no more right to independence that Northumbria, Mercia, Wessex or Kent. Those have in fact existed as independent states, however long ago. Tibet has never done so.) His wheeze was for the failed “one country, two systems” arrangement between the capitalist dictatorship in Hong Kong and the capitalist dictatorship in the rest of China to be extended to Tibet.

So, Mr Norman, how, exactly, do you (and therefore, no doubt, David Cameron) propose that the rest of China become a forcibly monoethnic feudal theocracy in order to mirror the one that you would erect in Tibet? And where, exactly, would that leave Hong Kong? I think we should be told.

And that’s before we even get in to the impending Isle of Wight independence referendum. Because that is what it might as well be.