“I won’t rush it, I’ve always said I want to take the time to get trade deals right…”
Suella Braverman’s complaint that “the largest group of people who overstay are Indian migrants,” and the Home Secretary’s comment that “We even reached an agreement with the Indian government last year…It has not necessarily worked very well,” have come at a delicate time for UK-India trade negotiations. The Indian government is keen on easier visas as they liberalise their import regime for British exports, Britain is aiming to get a trade deal signed within a month. Downing Street is said to be not best pleased with her comments.
Guido thinks we could do with a few more Indian doctors, broadband engineers and similar highly-skilled workers that are currently in short supply.
Two-way trade with India was worth £24 billion in 2021 and India is now the fast-growing fifth biggest economy in the world. This government is supposed to be pro-growth and in favour of controlled immigration. Suella would be better focused on curbing the growth of uncontrolled cross-channel immigration…
Guido managed to grab a word with the new Foreign Secretary, whose conference workaholism has stood out in comparison to her holiday-loving predecessor. She confirmed that a date has been set for her first visit to India – October 22nd. Her date recall tallies with Playbook’s report last Wednesday’s that Boris plans a trip to the country ahead of COP in November…
Co-conspirators will remember Boris was very keen for a trade trip to India in April, cancelling it last minute due to the country’s rapidly deteriorating Covid crisis. Guido had looked forward to attending that trip, so he’s hoping invites will once again be offered out to the media. Among other topics, the foreign secretary confided in Guido she was finding the new department’s mandarins to be “a bit ‘Yes, Minister'”…
Neither China nor India has submitted updated climate plans to be included in an assessment of progress towards the Paris Agreement goals ahead of COP26. Only 110 out of 191 parties to the Paris Agreement have presented new or updated plans by the cut-off date for submissions to be included in the forthcoming UN progress report. This is despite the UN extending the deadline for them. The UN’s Patricia Espinosa has been pleading with governments to contribute their plans…
That the governments of half the world’s people have not complied suggests that either they are not taking the process seriously or they, more likely, don’t want to put in writing that they are failing to decarbonise. India and China are rushing to develop their economies and raise the living standards of hundreds of millions of their citizens from absolute poverty. That can’t be done if they are restrained by net zero commitments…
Alok Sharma hosted a pre-COP26 summit in London last week where he was attempting to shape the agenda and outcome of the event. India, which due to industrialisation in recent decades has raised the living standards of hundreds of millions of her citizens, made excuses for not attending. Continental Africa, which sent only a handful of countries, repeated demands for rich industrialised countries to transfers billions annually to fund green growth. This comes after Britain cut back billions from foreign aid this year, putting Sharma in a difficult position.
South African Environment Minister Barbara Creecy demanded countries at November’s UN COP26 climate talks in Glasgow should set a target of mobilising $750 billion-a-year from industrialised countries to help poorer nations transition to greener energy. Her goal is significantly higher than the $100 billion-a-year that was set for 2020, which rich countries have so far failed to deliver on. In negotiations leading up to COP26, a compromise is supposedly emerging to push the date to 2025. Which rich democratic countries will once again fail to deliver on.
The truth is that there will not be, whatever is promised in November, a $750 billion-a-year transfer of capital from the billion or so taxpayers in the industrialised world to the government elites in the developing world. No democratic country has a mandate to “tax and send” at that level – nor will they ever. India is not going to change direction on the dash for industrialisation powered by coal, which has powered great rival China’s rapid industrialisation. India knows that vastly more people die as a consequence of poverty and disease each year than die as a consequence of global warming. As in the past, we humans are capable of adapting to climate change in ways that can significantly mitigate its adverse effects, without choking off economic growth. A massive reduction in fossil fuels would exacerbate global poverty, cost-benefit analyses of climate policies reveal that there are better ways to alleviate human misery than spending taxpayer subsidies on panic-driven, political non-solutions to a changing climate. We need to develop more clean, green technology to save the planet and lift people out of poverty.
This week, India failed to appear at Alok Sharma’s two-day conference intended to outline plans for the upcoming COP26 summit. It follows an earlier meeting of the G20, in which they also refused to commit to the agreed language of net-zero emissions. India was the only country out of 51 invitees not to attend Sharma’s conference…
Having refused to appear in-person on the grounds that they’d already made their position clear at the G20 meeting, they then blamed “various technical issues” for failing to take part virtually. Guido doesn’t buy it: India is the third-biggest emitter in the world, and have long resisted pressure to phase out fossil fuels. 75% of India’s energy supply comes from coal, and even generous projections suggest it’ll still be around 50% by 2030.
Skipping the COP26 meeting was a deliberate snub. Net-zero targets are beyond pointless if India (and China) aren’t playing ball. It makes Allegra’s ‘don’t wash dishes before putting them in the dishwasher’ plan look even more ridiculous…
