Former British PM Truss to visit Taiwan next week

Former British prime minister Liz Truss will visit Taiwan next week and meet senior members of the government, her office said on Tuesday (May 9), Report informs via The Guardian.

"Taiwan is a beacon of freedom and democracy. I'm looking forward to showing solidarity with the Taiwanese people in person in the face of increasingly aggressive behaviour and rhetoric from the regime in Beijing," Truss said in a statement.

The trip follows recent speeches by Truss on China – in Tokyo in February and to the Heritage Foundation, a rightwing US thinktank, in Washington DC last month – where she began setting out how she believed free western democracies should toughen their stance on Beijing.

She is expected to deliver the Taiwan speech in the early hours of the morning UK time at an event organised by the Prospect Foundation thinktank. It was among groups China imposed sanctions on last month in retaliation for Pelosi’s meeting with the Taiwanese president.

A Chinese government spokesperson said at the time that the thinktank was under sanctions for its involvement in promoting Taiwanese independence.

Truss, who has begun efforts to revive her career after her short-lived tenure in Downing Street by focusing on foreign relations, used her 2023 Margaret Thatcher Freedom lecture in Washington last month to assail “wokeism”, praise Ronald Reagan and portray herself as the victim of a vast political conspiracy.