Hello and welcome to a special podcast from The Spectator.

This discussion about whether Orcus can shift the balance in the Pacific

was recorded at Conservative Party Conference this year.

Cindy Yu, our broadcast editor and host of our Chinese Whispers podcast,

is speaking to Tom Tuganhart, a Minister of State for Security,

Alicia Kearns, a member of the Foreign Affairs Select Committee,

Sophia Gaston, Director of the British Foreign Policy Group, and Sir Martin Donnelly, President of Boeing Europe.

This podcast is kindly sponsored by Boeing.

Alicia, if you win the chair of the Foreign Affairs Select Committee, you'll be holding the government's feet to the fire when it comes to foreign policy,

on all sorts of things, not just on China or on the Indo-Pacific.

But just on that region for now, when it comes to the Integrated Review

or when it comes to future direction,

what are the things that you're going to be looking out for to scrutinise the government on?

So looking specifically in the Pacific, I think one of the big pieces missing from that

discussion is the India aspect of it. I don't think anyone in this room can tell me, oh, I shouldn't

say that. I said that earlier and that got me trouble. I don't think many people could tell

me what the British policy towards India is aside from the fact that we are pursuing a trade deal. And actually, if you talk to MPs, a lot of their inboxes are full of issue concerns around

Kashmir and other issues like that. But we don't know what the Indo bit looks like.

Another big concern for me is as we pursue this Indo-Pacific strategy, it's really important

that we don't further split the global south and the global north. And yes, we have some scenes and what's

unlike called absenteeism from the global south when it comes to some of the coordination

impact we'd have liked to see from them. But if we force them to pick, if we constantly

...