London: Former British prime minister Boris Johnson is all praise for “change-maker” Prime Minister Narendra Modi in a new memoir that reflects upon his eventful political career and recalls a “curious astral energy” that he felt on his very first meeting with the Indian leader.
‘Unleashed’, which hit the shelves in the UK this week, devotes a whole chapter to Britain’s relationship with India as “a relationship as good as it has ever been”. Repeatedly stressing the strong India-UK friendship in the context of the Indo-Pacific, the former prime minister credits himself for setting the course for a “proper free-trade deal” with India thanks to finding “exactly the partner and friend” needed with Modi.
“For some reason, we went down to stand in the dark in the plaza by Tower Bridge, in front of a crowd of his supporters,” shares Johnson in the chapter entitled ‘Britain and India’, referencing his first meeting with Modi during a visit to his City Hall office by the river Thames when he was Mayor of London.
“He raised my arm and chanted something or other in Hindi, and though I couldn’t follow it I felt his curious astral energy. I have enjoyed his company ever since – because I reckon he is the change-maker our relationship needs. With Modi, I felt sure, we could not only do a great free-trade deal but also build a long-term partnership, as friends and equals,” he writes.
Johnson reveals how a “distinctly sniffy” UK Foreign Office had warned him off meeting the “Hindu nationalist” leader during an earlier mayoral trade delegation to India in 2012, a problem “soon dropped” to pave the way for a relationship that “hit an all-time high”.
The 60-year-old politician-author asserts how much he loves India, being a “veteran” of many Indian weddings because his children with Sikh heritage ex-wife Marina Wheeler trace their roots to the country.
While he writes with pride of a similar “Anglo-Indian syncretism” in politics with his diverse Cabinet as PM including many British Indians such as Rishi Sunak and Priti Patel, Johnson laments the slow-paced growth of bilateral trade due to unnecessary trade barriers that leave UK visitors “clinking in with duty-free booze” for Indians starved of Scotch whiskey at decent prices.
The “tremendous success” of his visit to India as PM in January 2022 he recalls as a much-needed “morale boost” and “balm for the soul” away from an increasingly belligerent domestic politics that would eventually end in his unceremonious exit from 10 Downing Street just a few months later.
He claims he had also wanted to use the visit to make a “gentle point to Narendra” on the issue of relations with Russia at a “global inflection point” with its conflict with Ukraine.
He writes: “I knew all the history and the sensitivities, the reasons for India’s post-war non-alignment with the West, the seemingly unbreakable relationship with Moscow. I understand the Indian dependence – like China’s – on Russian hydrocarbons.
“But I wondered if it was not time for a modulation, a rethink… As I was to put it to the Indians, Russian missiles were turning out to be less accurate, statistically, than my first serve at tennis. Did they really want to keep Russia as their main supplier of military hardware?”
It is in this context that in another section of the book, where he showers the late Queen Elizabeth II with effusive praise for her deep personal knowledge of history and history-makers, he references his efforts to get India to take a “tougher line” with Russians.
“She remembered something the former Indian prime minister Jawaharlal Nehru had told her in the 1950s. ‘He told me that India will always side with Russia and that some things will never change. They just are. I cite that as an illustration of her amazing ability to reassure and to contextualise,” he shares, with reference to his customary weekly audiences with the late monarch as prime minister.
Johnson goes on to credit himself with injecting a broader vision for the India-UK partnership to go beyond trade and climate change and educational partnerships and embark on a whole program of military and technological collaboration.
“Overcoming the qualms of the MoD (Ministry of Defence), who are always worried about India’s closeness to Russia, we agreed to work together on all kinds of military technology, from submarines to helicopters to marine propulsion units,” he proudly declares.
With ‘Unleashed’, Johnson seems to be keen to stress a lack of bitterness over his undignified removal as PM in the wake of the partygate scandal of Covid law-breaking parties but is clear that it was Rishi Sunak, his eventual successor at 10 Downing. Street, who precipitated the problems by resigning as chancellor from his Cabinet in June 2022.
“It was worse than a crime, I thought, it was a mistake – both for Rishi and for the party, never mind the country. So it proved,” he writes, alluding to the recent disastrous general election result for the Tories.
“I don’t blame Rishi for prematurely wanting to be PM; in fact I don’t blame any of them, really, for trying to turf me out. It’s just what Tory MPs do…It goes without saying that if we had all stuck together I have no doubt that we would have gone on to win in 2024, and a lot more of my friends would now have their seats,” he claims.