How could Britain take more effective action over Hong Kong?

There’s only so much a medium-sized power like the UK can do, but it can certainly do more than Raab’s passport offer, writes Sean O'Grady

The foreign secretary has tried to work with the US, Canada and Australia (AFP)

It is unusual for any foreign secretary to be, ever so diplomatically, monstered by a distinguished group of his predecessors. Yet such is the apparent weakness of Dominic Raab’​s response to China’s power grab in Hong Kong that they could stay silent no longer.

So they have written a joint letter – an act which the coming generation may have to have explained to them as the pre-digital version of a Twitter pile-on – to his boss, Boris Johnson.

Spanning party lines and encompassing decades of experience, from David Owen (1977-79) to Jeremy Hunt (2018-2019), the former foreign secretaries feel that the government is not being energetic enough on Hong Kong.