Sir Keir Starmer leaves behind the row over Andy Burnham’s return to Parliament and the chatter among his MPs about who should replace him and has landed this morning in China with the heads of 50 British businesses in tow.

After the Prime Minister’s visit to the White House last February this is the most consequential visit of his premiership so far.

And it is historic – the first by a UK PM since Theresa May in 2018.

Number 10 aides are keen to highlight this – and point to the fact that the Germans have sent their political leaders to China four times since 2019; the French have done it three times since then.

Starmer wants to engage when he can, challenge when he disagrees.

A No 10 source says: “Sticking our heads in the sand and refusing to engage would be a staggering dereliction of duty.”

There is more to it of course – with the economy stuck in the doldrums, the PM and his team will do all they can to find more growth and perhaps ease the cost of living crisis.

Starmer has flown the 5,000 miles to Beijing to bang the drum for British business.

He wants to see if he can be the catalyst for business deals which could help boost the UK economy.

As the world’s second largest economy, China is our third largest trading partner and supports 370,000 British jobs.

There is a risk by getting close to a country which many see as an adversary of the UK.

There are MPs who have been banned from China for speaking up for the oppressed Uighur minority.

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Others are worried about the fate of jailed pro-democracy campaigner Hong Kong tycoon Jimmy Lai.

Starmer dodged the questions about these two thorny issues when we raised them with him on the flight to Beijing overnight.

Starmer told us en route to Beijing: “Under the last government, we veered from the golden age to the Ice Age… I do think there are opportunities, but obviously we will never compromise national security in taking those opportunities.

“The evidence that there are opportunities is the fact that we’ve got so many CEOs with us on this flight, that we’ve got 60 coming out to explore those opportunities.”

A Number 10 source is more blunt saying that the UK “will never trade economic access for our national security. We remain clear-eyed and realistic about the threats China pose”.

That is the challenge, then, as the PM prepares to meet President Xi Jinping and Premier Li Qiang later this week.

Starmer wants to talk about trade and investment, migration, health and climate in meetings and perhaps sprucing up the British embassy in Beijing.

And on the way back he is stopping over in Japan for more talks. Number 10 says this is part of hard-headed, risk-based engagement with the world’s major powers.

The PM will want to return to the UK this weekend with a sheaf of business deals agreed with Beijing and Tokyo.

Whether he gets any credit for it at home – with MPs now openly contemplating who might replace him – is a different matter.

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