Shadow Foreign Secretary David Lammy. File
| Photo Credit: Reuters

Days before the U.K.’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 with of the U.K.’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 grandmother was from Calcutta and was taken (by the British) to the Caribbean as an indentured labourer, he said.

The Labour Party has also been seeking to reset its own relationship with India after some evidence that British Indians, who have traditionally supported the Labour Party were moving to the Conservative Party. The shift, as per some data available from 2021, was led more by Hindus and Christians, rather than Muslims or Sikhs.

U.K.-India FTA ‘A floor not ceiling’

The ‘free trade’ deal (FTA), being 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 appointment 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 U.K.

“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, and we are 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. The Rishi Sunak government had announced in January that the Carrier Strike Group would undertake joint training with Indian forces.