The Tory grandee, publishing his diaries of his time as governor of Hong Kong, on the ‘greedy’ west giving China an easy ride – and his party’s ‘long nervous breakdown’
. “Mirsky had many Chinese friends, but he denounced the Chinese Communist party as wicked.” Patten believes both politicians and businessmen are too slow to say that. “What the Russians are doing in Ukraine is wicked. What the Chinese have done in
Patten tried, he says, to give an answer that recognised that he was not being required to be as brave as they might be, in making that choice. At which point, the young man’s “lovely girlfriend just burst into tears”. In the last three months, he says, partly as a result of Britain’s generous visa scheme, “there have been 100,000-plus people from Hong Kong, teachers, medics, lawyers, leaving to come here and lots of other places as well”.
He has been an opponent of the movement at Oxford to tear down the statue of British imperialist Cecil Rhodes. Isn’t deciding who we venerate a vital part of that reckoning also?