London Diary: India-Labour ‘bhai bhai’? Not so fast

What an “electoral Armageddon”, exclaimed a senior British Conservative party figure who lost his own parliamentary seat in last week’s Labour landslide.

A rather morbid joke going around likens the party’s rout in the 4 July general elections to the fatal sinking of the Titanic—except that there was nothing sudden or accidental about this sinking. 

This ‘Titanic’ had been slowly going down for quite some time but Rishi Sunak and his delusional band of boys pretended not to notice.

It will take the party leadership a while to take in and process the scale of the humiliation British voters have heaped on it for its corrupt and reckless behaviour.

Meanwhile, the Labour Party’s return to power after 14 long years of chaotic Conservative rule, which saw Britain’s relations with its allies take a nosedive and its place in the global stage diminish, is being keenly watched in New Delhi.  

The ‘big question’, as TV anchors are fond of saying, is: What does the change of guard in London mean for the future of India–UK relations which, for all the apparent bonhomie, is not all moonlight and roses.

Already, pundits in India have taken to talking up the prospects of better relations under Labour on the basis that Prime Minister Keir Starmer, who led his party to a historic landslide win, is a shrewd pragmatist who understands the importance of cultivating a rising India whose economy has just got slightly bigger than Britain’s.

It is being suggested that the Starmer government has an ‘ambitious vision’, as one learned commentator put it, for its relationship with India.

Really? The fact is that the Labour campaign was conspicuously devoid of any reference to India. David Lammy, the new foreign secretary, didn’t mention India even once in a nearly 5000-word interview (spread over four full pages) to the New Statesman editor Jason Cowley. 

Narendra Modi has invited Starmer to visit India and he has reportedly accepted. Let’s see if he actually turns up.

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Farce or tragedy?

British commentators are having a field day taking pot shots at the Tories’ demise.  Does it constitute a farce, they ask, or a Greek tragedy?

One saw it as ‘so full of dramatic potential’ as to demand a literary adaptation. ‘The question is, what genre is most appropriate? As a farce, it would feature a confident new prime minister striding on to the stage in every scene only to slip on a banana skin seconds later.

As a 19th-century novel it would benefit from the huge cast of characters, including swaggering Etonians straight out of Trollope. In the end, though, it is essentially a Greek tragedy,’ wrote Times columnist Emma Duncan.

Or maybe a modern cautionary tale about taking too many people for granted for too long? 

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Whither Sunak and the Tories after the deluge

So, what next for Rishi Sunak and his party as it seeks to make sense of its massive rejection by voters? Who will steer the listing ship through the difficult months and years ahead? 

Sunak has agreed to stay on until a new leader is elected. But with much of the top leadership, including many leading contenders, swept away by the Labour ‘tsunami’, it is likely to struggle to find a credible replacement.

The perennial contender Suella Braverman’s leadership campaign is said to be a non-starter, amid suggestions that some of her erstwhile key supporters have backed down after her vitriolic attacks on Sunak’s leadership. She is accused of undermining the party’s election campaign. 

Among other things, the former home secretary (she was sacked) called his policies “idiotic” and said he took voters for “mugs”. The party “deserved the result” it got, she declared.

“Suella went too hard too soon. Her campaign is dead before it has even started,” one senior figure was quoted saying. 

That clears the way for that other persistent ‘desi’ contender Priti Patel who survived the electoral cull by a whisker.

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Nigel Farage on the prowl, again

Meanwhile, right-wing Tories are said to be looking for someone who has the “policies of Nigel Farage with the presentational skills of David Cameron”.

Farage, architect of the Brexit campaign, who leads the racist and xenophobic Reform Party, has threatened to “take over” the Tory party which he has declared as “not fit for purpose”. 

The fun and games have only just begun.

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‘Firsts’  and all that

The new UK ruling dispensation is credited with many ‘firsts’. There are more fresh faces in the House of Commons than any new parliament in over 50 years, making up more than a third of the country’s representatives. 

It is also the most racially diverse in history. In total, there are now 88 people of colour in parliament, up from 66 in 2019 and just 15 in 2005, when Labour last won an election. 

There are more women in British parliament now than at any time in history. Labour has 190 female MPs—more than the total number of Conservative MPs—93 of whom are in parliament for the first time. Women make up 41 per cent of the new government and 46 per cent of the parliamentary Labour party.

Welcome to Labour Britain.

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And, finally, despite his denial, rumours persist that Rishi Sunak has had enough of ‘Great’ Britain and is preparing to up and move to where he made his money and met his life partner—the sunny uplands across the pond.