Partygate could play spoiler ahead of UK-India free trade deal

After two cancellations due to the Covid-19 pandemic, British Prime Minister Boris Johnson’s visits to India seemed jinxed: the third scheduled visit (April 21-22) almost didn’t happen, this time due to rows over ‘Partygate’.

Hours before he took off for India on April 20, Westminster was abuzz with claims that the visit was to be cancelled, when MPs were due to debate a motion on referring him to the Privileges Committee for allegedly misleading the House of Commons on parties in Downing Street (the motion was carried).

The visit went ahead in the end, but by all accounts, he felt the parliamentary heat from back home more than the heat in India during the visit. It was another example of an official visit dominated by the context rather than the text.

‘Partygate’ was the context in the short-term, but a slightly longer perspective reveals significant changes in the relationship between Britain and India in recent years, to the extent that experts believe that the overall relationship is now marked by an asymmetry: India is now more important to the UK than the UK is to India, in which the UK is pursuing India more than India is pursuing the UK. This was clear even before Johnson formed the government after the 2019 elections.

As prime minister, David Cameron made three official visits to India (in 2008, 2010 and 2013), while there was a gap of nearly a decade between Manmohan Singh’s visit in 2006 and Narendra Modi’s in 2015. The UK itself has changed due to Brexit, which led India to renegotiate and relook at the entire relationship. Until Brexit happened, the UK presented itself as India’s gateway to Europe, which is no longer true. It is also true that Britain’s new strategic tilt towards the ‘Indo-Pacific’ region with India as a key player would not have happened before Brexit.

For one, economic considerations now dominate Britain’s relationship with India, currently focused on reaching a free trade agreement; it was a key aspect of Johnson’s visit. Four of 26 chapters (trade areas) – described as ‘low-hanging fruit’ – have already been agreed upon, and both prime ministers have set a deadline of Diwali in October to complete negotiations in the other areas. Those close to the talks say India has never joined such ‘swift’ action on trade negotiations, even if the deadline appears too ambitious. A realistic outcome is an interim trade agreement later this year. Trade negotiations usually go on for years – the long drawn-out talks with the European Union are still nowhere near completion. There has long been talk in London of the ‘potential’ to drive trade between the two countries, but the reality is that Britain’s trade with smaller countries is much more – Belgium (£45 billion) or Ireland (£60 billion) – than with India, which has greater trade engagement with Germany, France, Australia, China or Russia.

Britain no longer produces many of the goods that India needs, as former Business secretary Vince Cable admitted some time ago. The figures are clear: the total trade in goods and services (exports plus imports) between the UK and India was £21.5 billion in the four quarters to the end of Q3 2021; total UK exports to India amounted to £7.7 billion, while total UK imports from

The fate of the many initiatives announced during the visit – gushingly by Johnson, reflecting another level of asymmetry – will also depend on his own fate in the Partygate row, but those with longer memories believe that the observation by former US secretary of state Dean Acheson remains as true today as when it was made in 1962, that “Great Britain has lost an empire but not yet found a role.”