WRITING in this column a few weeks ago, I warned about the looming confrontation between China and the UK. At the time the situation in Hong Kong had worsened and the UK Government was threatening to get tough with Beijing.

And so this week Boris Johnson finally got down to a bit of diplomatic and economic fisticuffs with Chinese leader Xi Jinping by tearing up an agreement that allowed China’s telecommunication’s giant Huawei to help build Britain’s 5G network.

Downing Street, of course, is keen to present this as yet another sign of the UK being a “world-beating” power, a nation still to be reckoned with and more than capable of mixing it with the “big boys”.

The reality, however, is something else entirely, for the PM’s decision was more a response to coercion than any clear-sighted reading of the right course of action. The bottom line here is that Johnson jumped to the Trump administration’s tune.

Washington has long wanted to land an economic punch on China and the Tory Government duly obliged this week, albeit perhaps reluctantly among some within its ranks.

For his part Trump, never shy in claiming credit, wasted no time in pointing out that he personally had “persuaded” the UK to change tack over Huawei.

But the message from Washington was certainly clear enough. Or, to put it another way, the going right now for the so-called special relationship, should Britain want it, is to toe the Trump White House line.

Some pro-Washington Tory MPs were of course rubbing their hands with happiness at all of this, pleased to have done the UK’s pal across the Pond a big favour.

But their triumphalism might be short-lived, for the inescapable fact is that Britain has now effectively entered a Cold War with China, the economic implications of which could be profound indeed.

That Beijing is promising retribution should come as no surprise. Britain’s Huawei 5G deal was China’s jumping-off point in terms of its ambitions to dominate next-generation communication technology across Europe.

In a nutshell, Xi Jinping and his cohorts will not take kindly to this and only the most naively optimistic would imagine Beijing failing to lay down a few biting economic and diplomatic markers of its own in response, both to the UK and US.

But just as China will be motivated to act, so too the Trump’s administration has the bit between its teeth. Not content with having brought Britain to heel, it will now attempt to do likewise by turning the screw on Europe to try and drive Huawei from next-generation mobile networks.

In fact, this coming Monday, Robert O’Brien, the US national security adviser, arrives in Paris to try and do just that, making clear that 5G networks are on the agenda of talks scheduled with his counterparts from France, Germany, Italy and Britain.

At these talks a lot will depend on the position Germany adopts. Chancellor Angela Merkel has long advocated “change through trade”, arguing that China can become a more trusted partner through engagement.

But Merkel will have her work cut out now that China has got increasingly tough on Hong Kong and along the way adopted what some have dubbed its “wolf warrior” diplomacy, characterised by a much more aggressive approach.

Looking on at all of this, one can’t help feeling that the UK appears totally at sea in foreign policy terms. What recently was meant to be a sweeping review of security, defence and foreign policy now looks anything but when put to the kind of test faced over relations with China these past weeks.

What we are currently witnessing here is the first real glimpse of what Johnson’s “Global Britain” really means and what any post-Brexit and post-Covid strategy will look like. By any stretch of the imagination it’s far from impressive. In fact it’s downright worrying, given who knows where relations with China could end up and the economic carnage that might ensue.

ONE of the things about foreign policy is that for many people it never seems to rate highly among political priorities until it lands on their doorstep in the shape of an economic downturn, terrorism or the need for military intervention in some far-off land.

Just last month the British Foreign Policy Group (BFPG) published its annual survey entitled UK Public Opinion On Foreign And Global Affairs. Among the survey’s findings was that international identities in Britain are becoming increasingly fused on to the broader trends towards social and political polarisation.

Some 40% of Britons, the survey found, describe themselves as “global citizens”, 54% describe themselves as “patriots” and 47% describe themselves as “European”.

The report, which describes its findings as “a nationally representative survey of British adults”, also found that Conservative voters in 2019 have “bought into” the Global Britain narratives much more strongly “than other Britons”, even if 28% of Britons are “unsure about what Global Britain actually means”.

I can empathise with their confusion. After all, how can anyone be expected to understand, when the Prime Minister himself appears to have no idea what the term means. For if there is one thing Britain is failing miserably at right now it’s in having a global outlook.

Johnsons’ notion – for that is all it is – of a Global Britain has never been clearly defined but instead variously described as some vague “buccaneering tradition”, or “freedom to choose”. This is a man who specialises in vagueness. For those other countries looking on, it’s hardly surprising then that “Global Britain” looks more like the empty slogan it is than any real joined-up foreign policy.

Thanks to Johnson the UK, far from being a global player, has instead been reduced to groping around on the international diplomatic and economic stage looking at best for a bit part. The latest standoff with China has only confirmed as much.

As the Financial Times rightly pointed out a few days ago, any “free trading” ideas the UK Government might have had have been dealt a severe blow by the latest “China- sized hole” punched into such a policy.

This is just the start. With global politics and economics becoming increasingly intertwined in our post-pandemic world, what Johnson and his Government passes off as foreign policy will in the future be sorely tested time and again. And as we know all too well by now, this is a man who is constantly found wanting when it comes to any kind of leadership.