Labour will reset partnership with India: David Lammy
Days before the UK’s general election, the opposition Labour Party’s shadow Foreign Secretary, David Lammy, reiterated that his party would reset its relationship with India.
Mr. Lammy is all but certain to be the country’s next Foreign Secretary, given that Labour is most likely — as per polls — to form the next U.K. government after the country’s July 4 elections.
Speaking on June 24 afternoon at the India Global Forum, a weeklong gathering of government officials, politicians, entrepreneurs, and industrialists, Mr Lammy outlined some of the areas of cooperation — notably trade, climate, and security.
“We need a reset,” he said, saying a reset of the UK’s relationship with the Global South was needed, starting with India.
Referring to former Conservative U.K. Prime Minister Boris Johnson’s recital of a colonial-era Rudyard Kipling poem during a visit to a temple in Myanmar, Mr. Lammy said, to applause,
“If I recite a poem, it will be by Tagore.” Mr Lammy’s great-great-great-grandmother was from Calcutta and was taken (by the British) to the Caribbean as an indentured laborer, he said.
The Labour Party has also been seeking to reset its relationship with India after some evidence that British Indians, who have traditionally supported the Labour Party, were moving to the Conservative Party. As per some data from 2021, the shift was led more by Hindus and Christians than Muslims or Sikhs.
The ‘free trade’ deal (FTA), negotiated by India and the U.K., was a floor, not a ceiling to the relationship, Mr Lammy said.
He also stressed the emphasis a Labour government, under Keir Starmer, would place on climate action, including by appointing a climate envoy and reversing the watering down of the U.K.’s climate targets by the Rishi Sunak government.
Speaking of a power alliance abroad, Mr Lammy said, “There can be no energy transition without an Indian energy transition.”
He urged China not to join forces with Russia, Iran, and North Korea and urged deeper cooperation between India and the UK.
“Because we are committed to a free and open Indo Pacific, just like India is,” he said, adding that a Labour government would seek to ramp up its partnership with India across several dimensions: military and maritime cooperation, emerging technology, cyber and supply chain security.
“We are India’s friends, with her and right behind her. This is our message, which the UK Carrier Strike Group will carry to the Indian Ocean in 2025,” he said. In January, The Rishi Sunak government announced that the Carrier Strike Group would undertake joint training with Indian forces.