Lord Powell’s Words of Honesty on Hong Kong

Posted by on Oct 7, 2014 in Blog | 0 comments

Here are some blunt words from former British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher’s private secretary Lord Powell on the Hong Kong protests (although the last sentence is kind of a cop out):

The protesters in Hong Kong are “unrealistic” and should enjoy the freedoms they already have, said a former advisor to Margaret Thatcher.

Lord Powell, who served as private secretary to then British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher when Britain agreed to return Hong Kong to China, said he did not believe the protest would make a change.

“The position about elections has been clear since the law was published in 1991 and I don’t believe for one moment that Chinese are going to change that basic position,” Powell told British BBC Radio 4’s The World This Weekend.

“Hong Kong has always been part of China,” Powell said. “We rented for a while and we didn’t introduce democracy… and one reason we didn’t is because we knew it was eventually going back to China and it would have been far worse to introduce full democracy and then taken it away from them.”

– The Standard (Hong Kong)