London Diary: UK swamped by Indian migrants

Indians have become the largest group of non-EU citizens to migrate to Britain for work since Brexit, which banned free movement of European Union citizens to this country.

Indians accounted for about a third of all work visas granted to foreign workers in the first quarter of this year (January to March) followed by Americans, Filipinos, Nigerians and Zimbabweans, according to official data.

Meanwhile, for the first time since 2010, non-EU workers have overtaken their EU counterparts in the UK. As per data upto December 2022, there were 2.55 million

non-EU workers in the UK, which is 220,000 more than EU-born employees. Prior to Brexit, EU workers outnumbered their non-EU counterparts by more than half a million.

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Media told to pay up to cover ruling party event

Rishi Sunak’s Conservative Party, in an unprecedented move, has decided to levy a charge on journalists wanting to cover its annual conference, provoking a huge media backlash including boycott threats.

Starting this year, reporters seeking accreditation for the party’s conference in Manchester in October will be required to pay £137 each, ostensibly to cover ‘administration costs’.

News organisations across the spectrum have refused to pay, calling the move ‘draconian’ and a ‘barrier for journalists to be able to act as the eyes and ears of the public’.

No other British political party charges for press accreditation. Hundreds of reporters, columnists and editors attend the three main parties’ (Conservatives, Labour and Liberal Democrats) annual conferences, giving them huge publicity. A coalition of media bodies said they were ‘united’ in opposing what they described as an ‘undemocratic’ move [that is] ‘detrimental to the interests of society and the party itself’.

‘In a democratic society, all party conferences are of considerable political and public importance and, as such, there should be no charging barrier for journalists to be able to act as the eyes and ears of the public by freely reporting at such events’, a joint statement from the industry said, as editors sought talks with the party to resolve the issue.

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Wooing the Labour Party, BJP style

London-based India Global Forum, which describes itself as ‘the agenda-setting forum for international business and global leaders’, is effectively an arm of the BJP and has been a natural ally of the Tories. It keeps its distance from the Labour party, regarded by Hindu nationalists as ‘pro-Pakistan’.

But with the Tories in the electoral dog house and Labour predicted to form the next government, post-2024 general elections, the Forum doesn’t want to end up on the wrong side of history. So, it has invited Labour leader Keir Starmer to open its 5th annual UK–India Week on 26 June in London.

The Forum said it would offer “the first comprehensive insight into the Labour leader’s vision of the UK-India relationship, its wider geo-political importance, and how Labour will seek to engage with the world’s largest democracy and fastest-growing economy”.

Manoj Ladwa, its founder and chairman, known to be close to Prime Minister Narendra Modi, said Starmer’s participation underscored the “importance of the need for a bipartisan approach to the relationship with India”.

“Given the ups and downs in Labour’s ties with India in recent years, I am sure his intervention at India Global Forum will be eagerly awaited, and in my view, much needed.”

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Sunak to shake up UK honours system

Britain’s London-centric and nepotistic honours system is in for a shake-up after Prime Minister Rishi Sunak urged officials to give more knighthoods, damehoods and other honours to people living outside of London and the south-east England—home to the country’s ‘metropolitan elite’.

In what media reports described an ‘edict’ to the officials who run the birthday and honours system, Sunak told them to prioritise awards to under-represented areas of the country.

The shake-up comes after a government audit revealed that people in London and the south-east were more than twice as likely to get an award as those living in the north and the Midlands.

In this year’s New Year honours list, one in five recipients lived in London, compared to less than 3 per cent who came from the north-east. A Whitehall source was reported as saying that there was concern that the honours system had become ‘self-perpetuating’, with the same groups nominating similar types of people for awards every year.

“Honours are something for the whole country and it is inherently unfair if the system is weighted to one particular part of it. This is something we need to correct,” they told The Times.

Ironically, Sunak himself is seen as too elitist and ‘out of touch’ with ordinary Brits. Critics say the move is what Indians call a political jumla (rhetoric) to deflect attention from criticism.