Forensic analysis of China trip supports claims that truth is a stranger in Starmer HQ
Damning new report sheds light on No.10’s loose relationship with reality
As his world began to implode in a series of scandals, Sir Keir Starmer was in Beijing on a rescue mission for his No.1 priority of “Growth, growth, growth”. If he could come back triumphant, waving a sheaf of deals to turn around the UK economy, promising jobs and a major GDP boost, perhaps the public would care more about their prospects and incomes than about a disgraced, former, senior member of Sir Keir’s administration.
China, the second-largest economy on the planet, had the capacity to deliver for him. They chose not to. Not only that, but the leadership treated him as if he were barely there. The following report comes from the think-tanks Facts4EU and Stand for Our Sovereignty (SOS), with additional comments from Lord (John) Redwood, and has been produced exclusively in association with GB News.
EXCLUSIVE – ‘The Lying Game’ – The final proof it comes from the top
Sir Keir’s own online diary of his China trip – “Britain’s Shop Window…”
Below we bring you the literary gem that is “China – Why I went, and what I did while I was there.”
(By Keir Starmer, age 113/4)
It is little known, but Sir Keir Starmer writes a form of online diary, published on Substack. What follows is perfectly serious and we have drawn on his story of his trip to China. Containing photos and his claims of a great success, we start with this, before examining the claims he makes in forensic detail.
In which Keir eventually finds a new friend who will talk to him
PM boasts he launched UK’s strike force of 60 business leaders from….. a hotel lobby
In the section “Britain’s Shop Window”, he actually wrote this: “when we landed in Beijing I assembled the delegation of 60 business leaders who had joined me to fly the flag for Britain.
“I gathered them in the hotel lobby… and set them off on the task of striking out and making deals”
In a hotel lobby? The UK is the 6th largest economy in the world, and we couldn’t afford a meeting room? It’s hardly surprising the Chinese didn’t take Starmer seriously, and that instead of striking out, the majority of the UK’s business leaders struck out.
Undaunted, the PM claimed success. Here is his summary.
“Three days later, and the results speak for themselves.
“We’ve secured £2.2bn in exports, £2.3bn in market access wins, and hundreds of millions of pounds of investment.”
“Real, meaningful wins that grow Britain’s economy, create jobs, and puts money back into the pockets of British people”
Putting aside the acute embarrassment of “Britain’s Shop Window” being a cramped hotel lobby, this report goes beyond showing incompetence and proves:
No.10’s culture of misrepresentation, half-truths, and outright lies starts at the very top
The culture he refers to throughout his diary is redolent of the gross misrepresentation we have seen over the Mandelson affair. And now we have proof from the Prime Minister’s own words.
If the Prime Minister wants us to believe him on everything, then he will have no problem with us analysing his “wins”. That is precisely what we have done. Now read on…
“A good debunk of the UK’s ace export salesman!” by the newly ennobled Lord Redwood
“The PM came away from China with almost nothing, claiming even fewer exports than the Chancellor on her unsuccessful trip.
“Our top politicians need to understand they are presiding over a £3,000 billion economy, so it takes deals worth billions to create a favourable change.
“Sir Keir Starmer needs to learn how to negotiate strongly in a tough world. He usually asks what the foreign country or EU wants, gives it to them, and comes home empty-handed.
“Please, Prime Minister, stand up for us, instead of giving way to them.”
– Lord Redwood, 10 Feb 2026
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Xi Jinping took the mega-spy hub (embassy) approval and simply pocketed it
Ahead of boarding his chartered jet, Sir Keir already knew things were not looking good. His only hope was a surprise from President Xi Jinping. Immediately before the trip, Sir Keir had approved Xi’s European mega-spy hub, masquerading as its UK embassy, which he may have hoped would help.
Those familiar with international negotiations, (including members of the Facts4EU team), believed this should have been held as a bargaining chip. With the spy-hub already approved, however, the inscrutable Xi left the PM and his embattled No.10 operation with only one option: to lie to the British public and his MPs.
SUMMARY
In our preliminary coverage of Sir Keir’s China visit last week, GB News reported on the scepticism surrounding No.10’s final communiqué and its summary:
“£2.2 billion in export deals, around £2.3 billion in market access wins and hundreds of millions of investments secured”
– Final statement from No.10
On social media, our coverage attracted the ire and disbelief of those who would prefer the UK rejoin the EU, so today we go further and report on the forensic dissection by Facts4EU and SOS of each claim making up this total. Together they found nothing to justify the claims, and suggest this provides further evidence of a culture of half-truths and misrepresentations emanating from No.10. Below are the findings, in the same order as the claims.
The findings
At the end of the PM’s final statement on his China visit are two links to official government documents. The first in particular promised much: “Further data on the UK government’s export wins to China can be found here”. Sadly, it delivered little. It takes the reader to a page which is old news – all of it. The content relates to the first three quarters of last year (2025) and has absolutely nothing to do with the PM’s visit to China two weeks ago.
Official page does at least give the Government confirmation of “What an export win is”
“An ‘export win’ is a deal, contract, sale, or other specific type of agreement for an eligible UK company that has resulted from support provided by the Department for Business and Trade (DBT).”
So far, so good. However, it then goes on to say:
“The metric is a departmental performance measure and does not capture exporting activity on the same basis as measured in official trade statistics.”
– Dept for Business and Trade
So, it’s an internal document which simply measures how well its staff are doing. Crucially, it does NOT measure export sales. Almost unbelievably, this document actually continues and tells the reader that:
“A win is a 5-year forecast of the export value as part of the deal.”
Five years? No business can forecast exports sales five years in advance. Yet this is how Sir Keir Starmer is presenting the results of his China visit. Not on export sales at all, but on some wishful thinking they might materialise in the first place, and then a guestimate of what they might total over a five-year period. As any successful business person will tell you, this is, to quote Samuel Johnson, “the triumph of hope over experience”. There isn’t any business in the country that would count these ‘deals’ in their official sets of accounts.
When Facts4EU and SOS researched each bullet-point they were astonished at what they found.
“A list of exports announced throughout this visit are below:”
(Says the Government statement)
Glasgow Prestwick Airport has announced £76 million in exports from expanded direct cargo services to China
Prestwick airport – £76m in exports announced. However, on 01 September last year, the airport announced it was opening new services to China to cater for exports of Scottish salmon. The value of these salmon exports totalled £76 million – and that was in the previous year, 2024. A coincidence? We doubt it.
World Snooker has announced a £15 million five-year agreement, including a new major event in two Chinese cities
World Snooker is already well-established in China, across six venues, and is a very popular sport. The current World Champion is Chinese. In fact we have pictures of the British Chairman of the World Association showing the PM around. All of this was done without any help from Sir Keir.
Cultech has announced a new partnership with China Resources expected to deliver up to £90 million in exports over five years and creating 55 jobs in Port Talbot.
“Expected to” – This appears to be a distribution agreement but there are no details on the Company’s website and “expected to” is not the same as firm orders.
Gallant has announced the launch of Outwall in China, serving British touring artists, projected to generate over £10 million in revenue over five years.
Once again already established well before Sir Keir’s visit, Outwall is a joint venture with the Chinese company Showstart who mostly deal with merchandising, all of which appears to have to be made in China. This Chinese company Showstart handle all the sales, including ticket sales.
Birmingham Biotech has announced plans to scale its biobarrier platform in China, securing £20 million in projected UK exports.
And again, these are “projected exports”.
“Silverstream Technologies, a UK-based leader in ships air lubrication technology, has collaborated with 13 major Chinese shipyards and partners, supported the installation of our Silverstream® Systems on both newbuilds and retrofits, and achieved export revenue in excess of £50m in 2025.”
A success story, but not one of Sir Keir’s making. To quote the Company itself: “we have been growing our relationships in the country ever since Silverstream’s establishment in 2010. Some 15 years on, with 150 ships installed with the Silverstream® System and an orderbook of another 100 vessels, we are pleased to have strong leadership on the ground in China to support our customers.” They were not announcing new orders, as the last ones were received in December.
Anemoi Marine Technologies - a UK based engineering R&D company – has announced £28 million in export value through the installation of its Flettner Rotor Sails.
Old news again. Anemoi has been working in China since its pilot installation in 2018, and subsequently established its Chinese entity, ANEMOI Marine Technologies (Changzhou) Co., Ltd, in 2021.
Brompton Bikes has announced £111.5 million in projected export sales in China over three years.
Brompton Bikes already have a store in Beijing and seem well-established. The £111.5m mentioned above is once again “projected sales” and it’s over three years.
“Big Wins” for Sir Keir: Zero
Total: Zero. Not one of these “big export wins” is down to Sir Keir.
He took with him many companies already well established in China, generally with Chinese partners. In his final report, issued from No.10 Downing Street, the results which were reported came from the first three quarters of last year, up to September 2025, and even from 2024 in some cases.
Even “results” which were reported were “projected” or “expected”. It concerns us when we look in more detail at the way the Department of Business and Trade looks at exports. Here is an example of their calculations. They say “the gravity model is configured as per the following specification:”
Perhaps this means something to economists who work at that Department. To those of us who have actually worked in exports, however, it is pure gobbledegook.
Our report is No.3 on the GB News homepage, as we write
This takes a lot of work and liaison, but we get the messages out
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Please donate today if you would like to continue reading us tomorrow, next week, and the weeks after.
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The final humiliation
For Sir Keir to come back with a major win would have meant something in the order of more than £10 billion, considering the sizes of the economies involved. A win of £3m or £5m (as in some cases above) would be good news for a company. For the UK as a whole, it doesn’t even register. A major agreement for China to slash its import tariffs to zero on certain types of imports would have been welcome.
Instead the PM announced a pre-agreed deal for the Chinese to cut tariffs on Scotch whisky by 5%. This is such a tiny amount of business, it will not even be noticed in the UK’s export figures. It also dwarfs the size of the drop in Scotch whisky sales to China in 2024, which was 39%.
Sir Keir has no successes to point at, after this report
None of this will make a dent in the enormous trade surplus China is running with the UK. In our last report we showed how the cumulative surplus in goods trade which Sir Keir has built with China since being elected is over £75 billion, excluding the effects of inflation.
British citizen Jimmy Lai imprisoned
One major concession which would not have cost President Xi Jinping anything at all, would have been the release of British citizen Jimmy Lai. Instead, yesterday this elderly man was sentenced by a kangaroo court to 20 years in prison.
Yesterday, the PM did not utter a word about this gross human rights abuse.
What No.10 said, faced with this report
Facing attacks over his personal and political judgement, Sir Keir may have been hoping trade would save him. If he thought that, this report has proven him very sadly mistaken.
When approached yesterday with the above facts, No.10 merely doubled down. When asked specifically to explain the PM’s claim that he had “secured £2.2bn in exports, £2.3bn in market access wins”, compared to the facts we uncovered, No.10 failed to provide the breakdown to justify their claim. Their answer was to point to exactly the same summary page of “export deals” supposedly “secured” during the trip. Readers can look at this here.
The majority of this statement is devoted to Chinese deals to buy up investment opportunities in the UK. The big benefit to the UK economy would have been large export deals secured, where the benefit all flows to UK GDP. In addition, a major reduction in tariffs applied to British exports would have been a large benefit. In its report, No.10 summarises what it says are export deals, but as we have shown above they are not.
We therefore stand by our story that the characterisation by Sir Keir of the Chinese trip was not only completely wrong, and that it had not in fact been a success, but that the figures used by the Prime Minister at the end of it were wrong and thoroughly misleading to the point of an outright deception of the public, and he knew it.
They say a fish rots from the head down…
Observations
Does Sir Keir write his diary, or is it written for him? could come up with such exquisite literary prose as this:
“I don’t think any of them would have happened without us taking the time and making the effort to come here and win them.”
“I sat down with President Xi, and we spoke for a long time.
“I sat down with Premier Li, and we spoke for a long time.
“I sat down with Chairman Zhao, and we spoke for a long time.”
This is verbatim, exactly as the words appear on the page. At the least he must approve what is written. At most, he edits it. Whichever way, it is clear he backs the claims which we cannot substantiate, of billions of pounds of benefit to the UK.
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