Britain’s General Election of July 2024 brought a tidal wave of change. How will this affect India-UK relations, given that the defeated Conservatives had prioritised ties with Delhi?
The electoral statistics are staggering. Labour took 412 seats to the Conservatives’ 121, winning 34 per cent of the vote to the Tories’ 24 per cent as voters abandoned the Tories in droves. These are in fact historically low vote shares for both parties, reflecting low levels of voter enthusiasm and turnout alongside a worrying rise of the populist anti-immigration Reform UK. That means a balancing act of being seen as tough on illegal immigration while taking on board legitimate Indian asks of fairer, investment friendly movement of professionals.
While the new Labour Prime Minister – Sir Keir Starmer – has immediately emphasised repairing Britain’s strained ties with Europe in the aftermath of Brexit, and the ongoing war in Ukraine, he has previously said that a strategic partnership with India is a priority and has spoken of a “reset”. With a sustainable 7-8 per cent GDP growth rate under Prime Minister Narendra Modi, Delhi looks poised to overtake Beijing as the new economic growth engine of the world and a key pillar of global trade, as both Starmer and new British Foreign Secretary David Lammy well know.
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Given Britain’s commitments to global stability, including in the Indo-Pacific region, security cooperation is bound to be a focus. Both Delhi and London share concerns over the rise of a non-democracy like China in the context of an aggressive neighbourhood. Both countries have also long shared concerns over the rise of destabilising extremist ideologies and the terrorism emanating from that, with many anti-India groups being also proscribed by the UK.
It will be interesting to see how Starmer deals with the issue of anti-India pressures from some grassroots Labour Party members. Notably, the party is known to have historically adopted some anti-India positions, particularly under Jeremy Corbyn, Starmer’s immediate predecessor as Labour leader. In the aftermath of the abrogation of Article 370 by India, revoking the autonomous status of disputed Jammu and Kashmir state, the Corbyn-led Labour conference proposed and passed a Labour Party motion calling for international observers to be sent into Jammu and Kashmir.
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Needless to say, this interference in an internal matter infuriated India, with Indian External Affairs Minister Jaishankar condemning it as “vote bank politics” – a reference to the British Pakistani vote, especially in key Midlands parliamentary constituencies.
Starmer has shown more sensitivity on the contentious Kashmir issue, laying the groundwork for strategic ties with an important ally in the Indo-Pacific. He has labelled the Kashmir dispute an “internal affair” of India and urged a bilateral resolution to the dispute. The question remains whether the new guard at the UK Home Office continues to play down violent pro-Khalistan protests near the Indian High Commission, or will it take robust policing action to prevent such trouble in the future? Counterextremism has for some time been a key focus of both India and the UK, so a detailed Labour counterextremism and counterterrorism strategy would be a welcome signal.
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Modi was on top of the list of international calls after Starmer won with a landslide last week, when the new UK PM said he was ready to conclude an India-UK free trade agreement (FTA) at the earliest. This builds on his public statement that he is committed to a new Strategic Partnership with India at the India Global Forum in London last year. While former UK PM Rishi Sunak put in considerable effort to boost ties when he was PM, he was ultimately unable to get the FTA over the line.
However, the finishing line for FTA negotiations appears to finally be in sight, with Indian Commerce Minister Piyush Goyal confirming recently that both sides were aligned on getting this signed off. India-UK trade is worth around £39 billion annually, and with India’s economy booming, it makes sense to recall new Foreign Secretary David Lammy’s quote that an India-UK FTA “should be a floor and not a ceiling to the partnership”. Lammy intends to be in India within the first month of taking charge at the Foreign Office, as he stated at the India Global Forum days before Labour’s historic win.
With the British economy sluggish in the aftermath of Brexit and Covid, a robust trade and strategic partnership with India is a no-brainer for a win-win relationship that would benefit the world at large.
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Jeevan Vipinachandran is a UK-based writer and political analyst specialising in political conflict and counter-terrorism. With a Masters in Comparative Politics: Conflict Studies from the London School of Economics (LSE), his core interest is in international relations with a special focus on the rise of India and its impact on the world stage.
*Info: Trade Stats; FTA