Visit to India to follow up the PM’s trip

In a lovely touch, the West Sussex Philharmonic Choir added to its programme at St Mary’s on Saturday evening A Prayer for Ukraine, which John Rutter composed in response to the War to help raise money for the victims. The calm of St Mary’s or the glories of the Warnham Park gardens, open to the public the same day to raise funds for blood cancer research, are in stark and welcome contrast to the fraught global events currently underway.

The world is assessing Putin’s actions, and events that would normally be considered over years – such as Finland and Sweden getting closer to NATO – are developing rapidly.

These considerations are not just restricted to Europe, where war is raging on our continent on a scale unknown since 1945. Similar concerns about what Putin’s actions imply for the international rulesbased order and the need for his unprovoked and illegal act to fail are shared widely.

These concerns are compounded by the tragic impacts on populations far distant from Putin’s war – including the impact of inflation and the reduction in critical grain shipments from Ukraine on some of the most deprived regions of the world. In the Indo-Pacific many countries are focused on China and how she reacts.

Long-term relationships however always endure and it was a privilege to join the High Commissioners of Australia and New Zealand at the Commonwealth War Cemetery at dawn in Delhi on Monday to mark ANZAC day.

This annual event commemorates the start of the 1915 Gallipoli campaign in which the Royal Sussex Regiment (which we remembered with pride in Chichester Cathedral on Saturday) fought alongside their Commonwealth and French allies.

I was in Delhi to follow-up on the Prime Minister’s hugely successful visit. As ever, being in India is extraordinarily exciting. A vibrant, thriving democracy of 1.4billion people, it is nearly four times the population of Europe with huge potential.

There are many areas in which our collaboration and partnership is critical – not least in addressing climate change.

One such area is defence cooperation. We are already closer to India on defence than we have been for decades – a relationship underpinned by our Carrier Group visiting last year.

However there is a huge amount more we can do to our mutual benefit and seeing U.K. and Indian businesses and the Indian Defence and Foreign Secretaries this week has made me very optimistic about our future relationship which has the potential to benefit us all.