The Spectator magazine combines incisive political analysis with books and arts reviews of unrivaled authority. absolutely free. Go to spectator.com.uk forward slash voucher.

Hello and welcome to Coffee House Shots is Spectator's Daily Politics Podcast. I'm Katie Balls

and I'm joined by Isva Hardman and James Forsyth. Today we have a growing internal Tory row in

the Commons, one that the opposition are all too happy to get

involved in and it relates to what has come to be known as the genocide amendment. James, can you

talk to us about what this is and how it relates to the trade bill, which is coming before the

House. It is an amendment that started off in the House of Lords and it essentially would

mean that if a high court in London decided that a country was guilty of genocide, then any trade agreement with it would fall.

And there is another amendment down today which would suggest slightly changing with it so that the Commons would vote on whether it should fall or not.

Now, the government is

resisting this amendment and it makes kind of two arguments. One is, is it the right place for

the courts to make that decision? Surely if there was an evidence of genocide going on,

Parliament itself should wish to act to bring to an end any trade agreement with

that country. And then its second's kind of slightly more pragmatic argument is, look, this is

clearly aimed at China and its treatment of the Uigham Muslims, and there is no prospect of any

trade deal with China. I think that what worries the government is that you get into a slippery slope and that you get court cases

brought alleging that X, Y, Z countries engaged in human rights abuses, that then turns into

a case about whether it's genocide or not. I think what the, but I think the significance of this

is what it shows is there's been a dramatic change in UK approach to China. It's remarkable to think that only a year ago,

the government was defending the idea of having Huawei

accompanying very close things to a Chinese military

play a crucial role in the building of a UK's 5G network.

...