INDIA ranks a dismal 84th in “passport power” in a world ranking based on the number of countries an Indian national can visit without a prior visa – 58.
The ranking of the world’s passports is done by the Henley Passport Index, “based on data from the International Air Transport Association (IATA)”.
Out of 197 countries, Pakistan is almost at the bottom – 104th – with a Pakistani passport allowing visa-less travel to 32 countries.
Only Syria and Iraq – on 105th and 106th places – do worse, with Afghanistan on 107th at the bottom.
The UK is eighth in the list, with visa-less travel to 184 countries.
The five best passports are: Japan (1, with visaless travel to 191 countries); Singapore (2/190); Germany and South Korea (3/189); Finland and Italy (4/188); and Denmark, Luxembourg and Spain (5/187).
British nationals wanting to go to India usually have no problem getting a visa unless they happen to be of Pakistani origin – and the courtesy is returned for Indian-origin Britons travelling to Pakistan. I live in hope that one day, we will have visaless travel between two friendly neighbours.
What’s it like to be in the British prime minister’s country residence tucked away deep in the idyllic Buckinghamshire countryside?
The British and Indian prime ministers, Sir Keir Starmer and Narendra Modi, presided over a “historic” occasion when the two countries signed a Comprehensive Economic and Trade Agreement, known informally as a Free Trade Agreement.
It was certainly very special for me as this was my first time at Chequers. It was also a privilege to witness “the first draft of history”.
Modi arrives at Chequers
Lord Swraj Paul, the Indian steel tycoon, has a 250-acre estate in Buckinghamshire called The Grange not too far away (where I have interviewed him on many occasions). When Gordon Brown was prime minister, he was accused of being too close to the wealthy Paul. To wind up such critics, Paul used to joke that “there is a tunnel connecting The Grange with Chequers”.
Understandably, on Thursday (24) the place was bristling with security, possibly to make sure neither Jeremy Corbyn nor Diane Abbott sneaked in to spoil Starmer’s big day. An armed police officer very politely asked us to open the boot of our car, perhaps to make sure neither Rahul Gandhi nor Mamata Banerjee were similarly intent on ruining Modi’s big moment.
Modi and Starmer at the Norton Motorcyles stand set up in a tent in the grounds of Chequers
Ok, ok, ok, just joking.
The police were all very polite but one did do a camera sweep under our car. A helicopter noisily passed overhead but it was reconnoitring the countryside for Chequers is set in more than 1,000 acres of rural England.
There was a sense of anticipation in the air but there was a calm interlude to take in the atmosphere of the Grade I listed house which has been the British prime minister’s country residence since 1917. I foresee more people from Eastern Eye’s Rich List buying such properties in the years to come.
Chequers, country residence of the British prime minister since 1917
Chequers dates back to 1565 when it was built by a landowner called William Hawtrey, from possibly the reconstruction of an earlier building. There is a drawing room named after Hawtrey where Starmer and Modi made their initial opening statements. Shailesh Solanki and I were later set up to interview Starmer in The Great Hall but he wanted somewhere quieter and more relaxed so we ended up back in the Hawtrey Room.
Another helicopter, which landed in a nearby field, heralded the arrival of the Indian prime minister and his retinue. He was driven to one of the arched entrances and walked alone to where Starmer was waiting to receive his guest. I must say Modi’s crisp white clothes stood out in contrast to the summer green of the trees and the grass. He walked confidently in a straight line for the now familiar embrace. Leaders like the French president, Emmanel Macron, are better at this kind of greeting. Starmer reciprocated manfully but the former director of public prosecutions is not naturally a touchy, feely sort of guy.
Starmer and Modi at Sainsbury's stand
Starmer asked Modi if he had been to Chequers before. Modi replied he had. That was on 13 November 2015 when David Cameron was prime minister and escorted the Indian prime minister, who had been elected the previous year, to his famous meeting at a packed Wembley Stadium.
A decade on, Modi has flown the Indian flag all over the world. This is his fourth prime ministerial visit to Britain. Neither prime minister took questions from the gathered media but Modi came across as someone in command of the nitty gritty of the trade deal. My impression is that if there is one country that can help rescue the sluggish British economy, it is India, given the growing size of its dynamic middle class and also the scale of Indian investment into the UK.
Starmer and Modi watch school children playing cricket Getty Images
The formal signing of documents between Jonathan Reynolds, the business secretary, and his Indian counterpart, Piyush Goyal, the commerce and industry minister, took place in The Great Hall. They appear to be good mates, not least because Reynolds bought Goyal an icecream some weeks ago when they were walking and talking in Hyde Park in London. Portraits from Britain’s imperial past, of lords and ladies and aristocrats, looked down on the assembled gathering – and Indians and their former colonial masters parleying on equal terms. Starmer did say the deal was between the world’s fifth and sixth biggest economies but he didn’t say which was which.
The prime ministers visit the Purejewels stand
There were plenty of pictures, first of Reynolds and Goyal as they did the formal exchange of documents. Rachel Reeves, the chancellor, looked happy as she got a hug from Goyal. Soon, the line up for the “family photograph”, from left to right, included Seema Malhotra (UK immigration minister), Ajit Doval (Indian national security adviser, so the two sides must have talked about terrorism and defence), Rachel Reeves, Goyal, Reynolds, Subrahmanyam Jaishankar (India’s external affairs minister), and Jonathan Powell (the UK’s national security adviser – I noticed he had to persuade the police to allow him to jump the queue when he arrived at Chequers, with his demeanour faintly suggesting, ‘Don’t you know who I am?’)
"Family photograph" in The Great Hall - (from left ) Seema Malhotra, Ajit Doval, Rachel Reeves, Piyush Goyal, Jonathan Reynolds, Subrahmanyam Jaishankar and Jonathan Powell
Later, I spotted the health secretary, Wes Streeting, and told him he looked relaxed despite the doctors’ strike. He hasn’t yet seen Nye at the National Theatre, which I urged him to do, and also read the classic 1937 novel, A J Cronin’s The Citadel, which has “been credited with laying the foundation in Britain for the introduction of the NHS a decade later”. Streeting, only 42 and tipped by many as a future prime minister, made a note of it on his phone. His constituency, Ilford North, has many Indian voters. Significantly, he appears to understand that the Labour party needs to repair its relationship with the new generation of politicians in India. Also, Indian doctors are a key factor in the NHS, and the Free Trade Agreement might mean there will be increasing medical collaboration between the two countries.
Starmer and Modi at the English Premier League stand
After lunch, Modi left to see King Charles at Sandringham. It was clearly an historic and enjoyable day for those of us who have not been to Chequers before. There will be quite a few moments to remember, especially Akhil Patel’s cheeky remark, “From one chaiwalla to another!”, as the Indian prime minister was handed a cup of masala chai. Modi put the encounter on his social media post.
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Keir Starmer (left) and Narendra Modi will sign the UK-India trade deal during the latter's two-day visit to UK
PRIME MINISTER Keir Starmer has been more sure-footed on the world stage than at home in his first year in office, but is sensitive to the wrong-headed charge that he spends too much time abroad.
So, this will be a week when world leaders come to him, with fleeting visits from both Indian prime minister Narendra Modi and US president Donald Trump, touring his golf courses in Scotland before his formal state visit in September. The main purpose of Modi’s two-day stopover is to sign the India-UK trade deal, agreed in May, but overshadowed then by the escalation of conflict between India and Pakistan.
This is Modi’s fourth visit to the UK since taking office – with a change of Monarch and a new prime minister or three since he was last here. Beyond a trip to the Palace, this working visit may lack the razzmatazz of his earlier visits, with no public engagements on anything like the scale of his addressing a Wembley stadium full of the British Indian diaspora alongside David Cameron a decade ago.
It would seem a missed opportunity if the prime ministerial schedules do not allow them to make it to the India versus England Test match at Old Trafford in Manchester. Modi did once take Anthony Albanese, the rather Starmeresque Australian prime minister – to see Australia play India in Ahmedabad, at the Narendra Modi Stadium, no less. Keir Starmer could hardly match that. A trip to watch the cricket would be an instrumental chance to communicate the trade deal. It would exemplify the unique depth of cultural connections and people-to-people links central to today’s post-imperial relationship. And it would be a chance to find out what happens next in a brilliant sporting contest.
This series does not have what we might intuitively think is the key ingredient of a sporting classic: the best teams in the world competing at their peak. These England and India sides are teams in transition – yet their competing talents and flaws are evenly matched enough to produce an epic drama, filled with compelling swings of the pendulum. So, India head to Old Trafford for the fourth Test bemused to somehow find themselves twoone behind, having been the better team on most days, but not in the decisive moments. If India could level the series before the final Oval Test, this could have a good claim to be the most memorable series that England and India have ever played.
Yet Old Trafford has not been a happy hunting ground for India – with four defeats and five draws in the past nine Tests. Yet young Indian Shubman Gill has already given the first ever win at Edgbaston in his first season as captain, between the narrow defeats at Headingley and Lords, so is unlikely to be daunted by the shadow of history.
Yet Old Trafford was also the scene of one of the greatest ever Indian performances – fully 129 summers ago, long before India had a Test team, as the swashbuckling prince Ranjitsinhji scored 154 not out for England in the Ashes test. Ranji had been left out at Lords, regarded as a ‘mere bird of passage’ by MCC selector but the Old Trafford selectors responded to the press and public clamour for Ranji’s selection, and his swashbuckling innings becoming the stuff of Victorian cricketing legend. Ranji’s history of 1896 makes it even more remarkable that Wisden Cricket monthly was to disgrace itself a century later with an article headlined “Is it all in the blood?” by Robert Henderson, which called for ‘a rigorously racially and culturally determined selection policy’. The explicit argument was that those without ancestral ethnic connections could never feel ‘a deep, unquestioning commitment to England’ but would risk instead gaining a conscious or subconscious satisfaction in seeing England humiliated. Wisden settled legal claims from Devon Malcolm and Phil Defraitas out of court for describing them as not ‘unequivocal Englishmen’ who should be excluded on these grounds.
The Wisden Affair exemplifies that there was a strong common sense consensus that ethnic minorities could be English at least 30 years ago. England’s black footballers had clearly settled this question by the early 1990s too. In doing so, they made the black English rather more culturally familiar than the Asian English.
Cricket did more to complicate questions of national identity and sporting allegiance. Most fans saw the Tebbit test as outside the spirit of cricket – it does not apply to Australians here, or the English down under. British Asians are only likely to play for England, not India or Pakistan, but still more likely to support the Asian teams at cricket while cheering for England at football. Norman Tebbit died the week before the Lord’s Test, where Shoaib Bashir took the final Indian wicket for England. It may have been a sign from above that the argument has moved on.
Sunder Katwala is the director of thinktank British Future and the author of the book How to Be a Patriot: The must-read book on British national identity and immigration.
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Investigators at the site of the Air India crash in Ahmedabad on June 13
SOME western papers have been too quick to suggest pilot error or sabotage in the Air India crash in Ahmedabad last month.
This is based on a couple of lines in the preliminary report on the crash: “In the cockpit voice recording, one of the pilots is heard asking the other why did he cutoff. The other pilot responded that he did not do so.”
It seems the crash was caused by fuel supply to the engines being cut off.
The exact quotes are not given and neither are the pilots identified.
The senior pilot was Sumeet Sabharwal, 56, who had clocked 8,200 flying hours. The co-pilot, Clive Kunder, 32, had 1,100 hours.
India’s civil aviation minister, Kinjarapu Ram Mohan Naidu, urged people not to jump to conclusions, but wait for the full report: “I believe we have the most wonderful workforce of pilots and crew in the whole world. I have to appreciate all the efforts the pilots and crew of the country are putting, they are the backbone of civil aviation. They are the primary resource of civil aviation. We care for the welfare and well-being of the pilots also. So let us not jump into any conclusions at this stage and wait for the final report.”
What many commentators have missed is that once the fault was detected, there was an attempt to restore the fuel supply. One engine restarted, but the other did not.
Perhaps Eastern Eye readers can make up their own minds by reading the preliminary report in full as I have done: https://static01.
Take off speed was normal with fuel supply to both engines, but “immediately thereafter, the Engine 1 and Engine 2 fuel cutoff switches transitioned from RUN to CUTOFF position one after another with a time gap of 01 sec. The Engine N1 and N2 began to decrease from their take-off values as the fuel supply to the engines was cut off.”
Next followed the exchange between the two pilots.
Then it seems action was taken quickly to restore fuel supply. The language is technical, but one gets a sense the pilots were trying desperately to reverse the downwards path of the aircraft.
The report states: “As per the EAFR (Enhanced Airborne Flight Recorder) the Engine 1 fuel cutoff switch transitioned from CUTOFF to RUN at about 08:08:52 UTC (Coordinated Universal Time). The APU Inlet Door began opening at about 08:08:54 UTC, consistent with the APU Auto Start logic. Thereafter at 08:08:56 UTC the Engine 2 fuel cutoff switch also transitions from CUTOFF to RUN. When fuel control switches are moved from CUTOFF to RUN while the aircraft is inflight, each engines full authority dual engine control (FADEC) automatically manages a relight and thrust recovery sequence of ignition and fuel introduction. The EGT (exhaust gas temperature) was observed to be rising for both engines indicating relight. Engine 1’s core deceleration stopped, reversed and started to progress to recovery. Engine 2 was able to relight but could not arrest core speed deceleration and re-introduced fuel repeatedly to increase core speed acceleration and recovery. The EAFR recording stopped at 08:09:11 UTC. At about 08:09:05 UTC, one of the pilots transmitted ‘MAYDAY MAYDAY MAYDAY’.”
Is it possible there was a technical fault after normal take off that caused the fuel supply switch to flip from RUN to CUTOFF without pilot intervention?
Maybe this is one of those mysteries that sometimes happens with air crashes that will never be solved. But to me a technical malfunction appears to be a more credible explanation than deliberate sabotage and suicide by one of the pilots.
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FILE PHOTO: Riot police hold back protesters near a burning police vehicle in Southport, England
Could this long, hot summer see violence like last year’s riots erupt again? It surely could. That may depend on some trigger event – though the way in which the tragic murders of Southport were used to mobilise inchoate rage, targeting asylum seekers and Muslims, showed how tenuous such a link can be. There has already been unrest again in Ballymena this summer. Northern Ireland saw more sustained violence, yet fewer prosecutions than anywhere in England last summer.
"We must not wait for more riots to happen" says Kelly Fowler, director of Belong, who co-publish a new report, ‘The State of Us’, this week with British Future. The new research provides a sober and authoritative guide to the condition of cohesion in Britain. A cocktail of economic pessimism, declining trust in institutions and the febrile tinderbox of social media present major challenges. Trust in political institutions has rarely been lower – yet there is public frustration too with an angry politics which amplifies division.
The political arguments this autumn will not take place only at the traditional party conferences. Both the supporters of Tommy Robinson and his opponents in anti-racism groups will try to mobilise marches and street movements in September, just days before US president Donald Trump’s state visit provides a focal point for political protest that could stake a claim to unite, rather than polarise, British public opinion.
Amid a febrile political atmosphere, the State of Us report does find reasons for grounded hope too. There is pride in place just about everywhere. In the long run, Britain’s story is of increasing tolerance and liberalism across generations, despite cities and towns having contrasting experiences of economic change. Talk of a ‘lost decade’ of growth after the 2008 crash had turned into 17 years, Southport MP Patrick Hurley told the recent Belong summit, fuelling a nostalgic sense of decline and loss in many towns. That event spotlighted useful work on cohesion happening around the UK, though Fowler notes that this can be patchy. The 35 areas where unrest briefly flared up did get one-off community recovery grants of £650,000 each to spend in six months. There were no conditions to prevent councils just shoring up general finances, but most tried to do something constructive. Sunderland and Tamworth held community conversations that could found longer-term strategies. Some councils hoped to myth-bust misinformation or contest racist narratives, but they can struggle to know how to engage low-trust sections of the public effectively.
What should be done - and by whom? Because the State of Us report is a foundational input for an Independent Commission on Community and Cohesion, being co-chaired by Sajid Javid and Jon Cruddas, the report sets out the key challenges, but deliberately stops short of recommending an action plan. The government should act faster on the flashpoint risks. The very incitement for which users were imprisoned last August remains online today, illustrating how slow platforms and regulators have been to act on this ongoing national security threat.
Immigration and asylum divide opinion. Governments have spoken loudly about stopping boats crossing the Channel, but failed to do so. Perhaps the new UK-French pilot deal unveiled last week will scale up into an orderly asylum process that could reduce dangerous crossings. The UK government does already have more control over local impacts. The incentives to concentrate asylum seekers wherever housing is cheapest, with minimal communication with local authorities nor contact with local communities, exacerbate local cohesion tensions.
Faith minister Lord Khan rightly notes that addressing the root causes of division and discontent will take time. Making a start requires a clear analysis of both the drivers and the useful responses. This government can sometimes see cohesion as an issue for deprived and diverse areas, rather than as a challenge for everywhere.
Even in withdrawing his contentious “island of strangers” comments, prime minister Sir Keir Starmer again fell into sending parallel messages to different audiences, “deeply regretting” the language in the Observer before reassuring Sun readers that he “stood by” the underlying sentiments. The acknowledged lack of pre-delivery scrutiny over the speech was a symptom of the government not yet finding the bandwidth to work out its philosophical framework, public narrative or policy strategy. This government has had no public position, for example, on whether it is an advocate or critic of multiculturalism, or seeks to offer its own distinct framework for what integration should mean in this changing society.
The anniversary of the riots offers the prime minister another opportunity to voice a more coherent public narrative of what it means to respect our differences and work on what we can share in common. That could underpin a sustained, practical strategy on cohesion. Even in polarising times, one core test of a shared society is how far we can develop a shared story about who we are, how we got here, and where we want to go together.
Sunder Katwala is the director of thinktank British Future and the author of the book How to Be a Patriot: The must-read book on British national identity and immigration.
It is a truth universally acknowledged that voters are dissatisfied with the political choices on offer - so must they be in want of new parties too? A proliferation of start-ups showed how tricky political match-making can be. Zarah Sultana took Jeremy Corbyn by surprise by announcing they will co-lead a new left party. Two of Nigel Farage’s exes announced separate political initiatives to challenge Reform from its right, with the leader of London’s Conservatives lending her voice to Rupert Lowe’s revival of the politics of repatriation.
Corbyn and Sultana are from different generations. He had been an MP for a decade by the time she was born. For Sultana’s allies, this intergenerational element is a core case for the joint leadership. But the communications clash suggests friction ahead. After his allies could not persuade Sultana to retract her announcement, Corbyn welcomed her decision to leave Labour, saying ‘negotiations continue’ over the structure and leadership of a new party. It will seek to link MPs elected as pro-Gaza independents with other strands of the left outside Labour.
Nigel Farage
Would the new party cooperate or compete with the Green Party? Zack Polanski’s leadership campaign promotes a “left populism” with much overlap with the Corbynista agenda. He is challenging MPs Adrian Ramsey and Ellie Chowns, who offer continuity with the quieter strategy which saw Green gains in their Herefordshire and Norfolk seats while winning in Bristol and Brighton.
On the right, Ben Habib, sacked as a Reform deputy leader by Farage, launched a new ‘Advance Party’ - but could not get Great Yarmouth MP Lowe to join it. Lowe launched a Restore Britain campaigning movement instead.
Habib has yet to make his new party official, claiming it must recruit 30,000 members to be eligible for registration. The Electoral Commission has no such threshold: there are over 300 registered parties. This false claim may just be a recruitment tactic or a device to delay revealing its donors.
A congratulatory tweet from US billionaire businessman Elon Musk reinforced Habib’s hope that the world’s richest man may help to fund his new party. But Musk’s own focus is on launching a new “America Party” as his feud with US president Donald Trump escalates. Musk self-identifies as a centrist, oblivious to his own self-radicalisation after curating an entire social media platform in his own image. Reform had hoped for a multi-million pound donation from Musk too, before he attacked Farage’s refusal to embrace former EDL leader Tommy Robinson. Yet this simply reinforced Musk’s toxic reputation with the British public.
How much political space is there further right of Farage? About a quarter of the Reform vote - about three per cent of the electorate - find Farage too moderate on race and immigration. But these are mostly the same group who supported last summer’s violent riots. Farage believes a boundary rejecting the BNP (British National Party) and Robinson is imperative to be a mainstream party. Farage faces start-up challenges too. Farage wants to bring 300 first-time MPs to parliament - and would have to give top Cabinet jobs to many unknown quantities. Thurrock MP James McMurdock resigned the Reform whip over the weekend after credible allegations of business fraud during the pandemic.
Rupert LoweGetty Images
Habib can appeal only to those within the segment to Farage’s right who find ethnic minority leadership acceptable. He may be offering too niche a product to find a viable market. Lowe’s agenda is to go much further than Farage on immigration and race. Since Farage’s slogan is to cut net migration to zero, Restore Britain is campaigning for “negative net migration” - pledging to remove ‘millions’ of legal migrants so that “outflows considerably outstrip inflows’. The Migration Advisory Committee projects that the UK population would begin to shrink if net migration was below 110,000. Lowe argues that rising ethnic diversity can be reversed, not just be slowed down. His slogan, ‘stop importing, start deporting’, consciously revives the ‘send them back’ politics of Enoch Powell and the 1970s National Front. Lowe is celebrated by overtly racist bloggers for these efforts to popularise the idea of ‘remigration’. Several London Conservatives are dismayed that Susan Hall has joined this Restore Britain campaign, since the former Tory mayoral candidate leads the party’s Greater London Assembly group. But that criticism remains muted in public. Lowe himself has not ruled out joining the Conservatives before the next election.
The rise of new parties is an expression of democratic politics, but can reflect a misunderstanding of its challenges, too. New parties can voice arguments that citizens feel are missing. But a consumerist search for the perfect party can seek to side-step the inevitable frustrations of compromise. Politics is about how societies make collective decisions when we disagree. Whether we have four-, five- or six-party politics, the challenge for parties - old and new - is how any can secure broad enough support to govern in such fragmented and polarised times.
Sunder Katwala is the director of thinktank British Future and the author of the book How to Be a Patriot: The must-read book on British national identity and immigration.