THE Tories were accused of trying to whip up “cold war fever” after Prime Minister Rishi Sunak warned of an “increasingly assertive” China today.

The government has blamed Beijing-linked hackers for a cyber attack on the Electoral Commission, which exposed the personal data of 40 million voters.

Mr Sunak said: “We’ve been very clear that the situation now is that China is behaving in an increasingly assertive way abroad, authoritarian at home, and it represents an epoch-defining challenge, and also the greatest state-based threat to our economic security.”