Boris looks to India to avoid homegrown scandal

BESIEGED at home by scandals, United Kingdom Prime Minister Boris Johnson heads to India this week to seek a change of political fortunes abroad with a potential bilateral free trade deal a key prize.

One of the consequences of the pandemic has been that Johnson's premiership has seen very little international travel by him, and mainly then to Europe.

Yet, that is now changing in 2022 as he seeks to look beyond the continent to drive a new 'Global Britain' campaign focused around issues including economic growth, energy security and defence.

After only 13 foreign trips since July 2019, most of these within Europe, a key sign that change is on the horizon is this week's trip to India. It is Johnson's first visit to the country as prime minister, following up on the visit of Foreign Secretary Liz Truss to New Delhi last month, and he wants to send out a signal of what is to follow in 2022 and beyond with an intended UK pivot toward Asia-Pacific, post-Brexit.

For the UK government, Global Britain is about reinvesting in relationships, championing a rules-based international order, and demonstrating that England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland are open, outward-looking and confident on the world stage. So the trip to the more than 1 billion population of India is a major moment for the PM building from the Comprehensive Strategic Partnership he announced last year with Narendra Modi which committed to a deeper bilateral relationship across trade, health, climate, defence and security backed by more than half a billion pounds in new funding.

London and New Delhi have, of course, long had a unique relationship dating back to the British Empire. But the growing warmth in their bilateral ties under the leadership of Johnson and Modi is striking, including during the coronavirus crisis to maintain flow of medical goods: the UK has, for instance, received many millions of face masks and packets of paracetamol from India during the pandemic.

Bilateral relations

Both Johnson and Modi attach high importance to bilateral relations. In 2018, Modi became the first Indian premier to visit Britain for over a decade, and he travelled there too last year for the COP26 climate summit in Glasgow.

Johnson's visit to India will begin on Thursday in Ahmedabad, the capital of Gujarat, where he will meet with leading businesses to discuss the UK-India commercial, trade and people links. This will be the first time a sitting UK prime minister has visited the state - India's fifth largest - which is the ancestral home of around half of the British-Indian population living in the United Kingdom. He will conclude the visit on Friday in New Delhi where he will meet with Modi.

Johnson has at least 3 big reasons to want the relationship with India to be as warm as possible.

Firstly is the cooling of ties with China which has been more significant between Beijing and London than with many other European capitals.

The second rationale is that, in this context, London would like New Delhi to play an ever-increasing role in international affairs. To this end, Johnson last year invited India, alongside fellow G20 states South Korea and Australia, to the UK-hosted G7 summit at Cornwall as part of an ambition to work with a group of like-minded democracies to advance shared interests and tackle common challenges.

A third reason is Brexit with Johnson wanting UK firms, post-EU membership, to gain stronger access to the massive Indian market consumers through a new UK-India trade deal which is forecast to boost UK exports by as much as £28 billion annually by 2035.

London and New Delhi have already had 2 rounds of talks on the free trade agreement, completing 4 out of 26 chapters in the negotiations, with a third round imminent.

The strength of the contemporary economic relationship is underlined by the fact that the UK is one of the biggest G20 employers and investors in the country - more than 400 UK firms have a presence there. India, meanwhile, is one of largest sources of foreign investment in the UK. There are now over 800 Indian companies operating in the UK supporting around 100,000 jobs.

Economic relationship

There are several distinctive elements of the economic relationship - which has come to dominate bilateral ties recently - that Johnson wants to emphasise in a post-Brexit trade deal.

Firstly, he wants to see even stronger cooperation in defence manufacturing as part of a wider security and defence bilateral dialogue, and here he will encourage Modi to adopt a tougher stance toward Russia's aggression in Ukraine.

Second is encouraging further international investment, via the City of London, to finance Indian infrastructure.

Third is technology given the significant investment in Indian telecoms and technology investments by UK-headquartered firms.

Fourth is health, pharmaceutical and life sciences. As the 'pharmacy of the world', India supplies more than half of the world's vaccines, with over a billion doses of the UK's Oxford/AstraZeneca coronavirus vaccine being manufactured in Pune.

Yet, despite all the potential gains from a trade deal, there are challenges too. One key issue India is pressing for in this wider agreement is immigration reform to enable more Indian businesspeople and students to travel to the UK.

However, despite remaining bilateral differences on the details of a new post-Brexit trade deal, what is more striking is how much economics has come to dominate bilateral relations in recent times. In doing so, some traditional irritants have been de-emphasised, including human rights in India. In 2013, there was even a UK House of Commons motion calling on the government to reintroduce a previous UK travel ban on Modi citing "his (alleged) role in the communal violence in 2002" in Gujarat.

Nonetheless, as Johnson continues to prioritise ties with India, post-Brexit, these controversies have been cast aside. During his prime ministership, irritants in UK-Indian relations look likely to be superseded by the desire for greater economic cooperation as London seeks to balance warmer ties with New Delhi with cooler relations with Beijing.

Andrew Hammond is an associate at LSE IDEAS at the London School of Economics