States gain security and economic benefits by aligning with others, but surrender some freedom of action in return. As Saudi, Turkey and Pakistan make a Nato like alliance (what, Turkey will drag NATO, the UK and US, into a war with India when India retaliates to the next set of Pakistani terrorist attacks which are all but inevitable due to this alliance?)
The emerging UK–India relationship offers a different possibility: deep interdependence without subordination. Bilateral trade was already worth £48 billion in 2025, while the British Government estimates that the agreement could eventually increase bilateral trade by £25.5 billion and UK GDP by £4.8 billion annually. The FTA removes or reduces tariffs on 99 per cent of Indian goods entering Britain and 90 per cent of British goods entering India.
But tariffs may prove the least interesting part of the relationship as I have mentioned on BBC News several times. Alongside it sits the Technology Security Initiative, through which Britain and India are cooperating on artificial intelligence, semiconductors, quantum technologies, advanced materials, telecommunications and critical minerals. Vision 2035 even envisages a joint UK–India centre for AI.
Dependence exists when withdrawing from a relationship would impose substantially greater costs upon one party than the other. Interdependence exists when both sides possess alternatives but nevertheless gain from cooperation. India brings extraordinary assets to the relationship: economic scale, demographics, technological talent, manufacturing capacity and one of the world's fastest-growing major markets. Britain brings different assets: global capital markets, elite universities, scientific research, sophisticated professional services, legal infrastructure and international commercial networks.
Neither country needs to replicate the other. There is also a deeper geopolitical reason why this model suits India. Since independence, Indian foreign policy has resisted permanent subordination to great-power blocs. What was once called non-alignment has evolved into strategic autonomy. India cooperates with America through the Quad, maintains relationships elsewhere, works increasingly closely with Britain and Europe, yet reserves the right to determine its own national interest.
A strategically autonomous India is potentially a more valuable partner than a dependent India because it possesses greater influence with states outside the traditional Western alliance system. Britain, meanwhile, also benefits from greater optionality. Brexit made diversification of Britain's economic relationships more important. A deeper relationship with India gives Britain access to growth beyond Europe without requiring it to abandon either European or American partnerships.
There are nevertheless dangers. Technology creates dependencies more profound than tariffs ever did. Semiconductor supply chains, cloud infrastructure, AI models, telecommunications networks and critical minerals can become geopolitical choke points. The same interdependence that creates prosperity can create vulnerability. Cooperation on critical minerals, cyber resilience, secure telecommunications and advanced technologies explicitly combines economic opportunity with national resilience.
The objective should not be independence from everyone. That is economically inefficient and probably impossible. It should be freedom from excessive dependence on anyone. We used to ask whose side are you on? The twenty-first-century partnership increasingly asks: What can we build together while retaining the freedom to disagree?
The strongest partnerships, after all, are not those in which one country cannot survive without the other. They are those in which both remain sovereign, but become stronger because the other exists. Bit like a marriage.