What might Rishi Sunak achieve at the G20 summit?

Besides meeting Joe Biden, the prime minister also has some unfinished business with India and Japan. As Sean O’Grady explains

Rishi Sunak at the Cop27 summit in Sharm el-Sheikh, Egypt, this week (AP)

It was a depressing moment for those still nurturing the belief that the United States has a special relationship with the UK, to hear President Biden refer to the latest prime minister a few weeks ago as “Rashid Sanook”, as if he were part Arabic, part Cambodian. Admittedly, the president is prone to senior moments, but it does suggest the White House doesn’t pay as close attention to developments in Westminster as many there would like to believe.

Still, the G20 summit in Bali next week is another opportunity for Biden to put the right name to a face when he and Rishi Sunak have their bilateral meeting. Though obviously coming from different political traditions, Biden will probably find more in common with Sunak than he did with Boris Johnson, who Biden’s predecessor famously, if ungrammatically, called “Britain Trump”. Washington was never keen on Brexit (recall Barack Obama’s line about being at the back of the queue for a trade deal) and Johnson was the unfortunate progenitor of that benighted project. He bore the mark of Cain. Sunak, though a more sincere Leaver than Johnson, won’t trigger the same instinctive dislike.

The pair will certainly have some common national interests, which has always been the basis of the transatlantic alliance: the international recession, China’s assertive foreign policy, the Australia-UK-US (Aukus) defence partnership, and of course an honourable end to Russia’s war on Ukraine. Biden will welcome Sunak’s apparently more energetic attempts to resolve the Northern Ireland protocol, and protect peace in Ireland, a central goal of US foreign policy. Unless President Biden is satisfied that Sunak is serious about that, Britain’s relations with America won’t improve.

President Biden will also have face-to-face talks with President Xi, with Ukraine and Taiwan on the agenda. A grand bargain over the two might appeal to a more pragmatic president, but Biden has been surprisingly bellicose about China’s desire to reunify with its lost province. Russia and America have been talking through “back channels”, but peace is not at hand.

Although Vladimir Putin is wise enough not to show up, Sunak, Biden, Emmanuel Macron, Olaf Scholz and even Giorgia Meloni will be able to gang up on the Russian foreign minister, Sergei Lavrov – though he is well used to shrugging off Western pressure. A phone-in appearance by President Zelensky might be trickier for him to ignore, if it transpires.

More concretely, Western leaders will attempt to lobby Saudi Arabia, China and India, to put pressure on Russia to end its disastrous war, ending their more neutral stance. Sunak and his allies will no doubt review the effects of sanctions on Russia and its elites, notably the freeze on their extensive assets in London.

In many ways, Sunak’s bilateral ties with the prime minister of India, Narendra Modi, could be the most beneficial to Britain. A free trade agreement with India would be the prize – the only deal, along with Australia, with anything like the potential to reposition the UK as a global player. Modi will demand more UK visas for Indian students, workers and their families, while Sunak is under pressure from his xenophobic wing and Suella Braverman to offer few, if any. To borrow a phrase, it is a kid who holds most of the cards in this game of poker. Sunak may well walk away empty-handed again, another Brexit opportunity closed off.

Sunak might have a little more luck with his Japanese counterpart, Fumio Kishida. The UK has concluded a trade deal with the country, albeit barely different to the existing EU one, and there is much scope for closer trade relations. However, Sunak will have to find a way to apologise for the crass racist epithet used by his undiplomatic backbencher, Mark Francois. Gracious and courteous as Sunak will be, he won’t be able to dissolve the residue of resentment left by Brexit. Great Japanese companies invested huge sums in the UK – revitalising the car industry, for example – on the basis that Britain was a leading member of the European Union. No other foreign economic partner had so much to lose, or felt so let down. Time heals, but the glory days of Japanese investment in Britain are over.

Without the clout of the EU, and thus in a unique position at the centre of the overlapping circles of the EU, Nato and the Commonwealth, “Global Britain” is a smaller player on the international stage. With an economy likely to stagnate over the next decade at least, the diplomatic power that derives from economic prowess seems likely to decline still further. Sunak knows it, too.