Peter Edwards: The rise and rise of India contrasts with our decline

Britain's trade mission to Delhi was an incredible – and some would insist, inevitable – reversal of four centuries of economic one-upmanship practised by the imperial nation on the sub-continent.

It also illustrated the truly desperate position of Britain's finances in the new world order. Our country's fiscal position may well have slumped appallingly over the last two years but recent history only represents the final few yards of a race in which we have been losing ground for several decades.

India, much like China, has emerged with cheetah-like speed. Compared to the East, Britain has been left looking like a plodding shire horse on a hot day, not just out of breath but out of time.

This is despite going through much of the last century with the world's best universities and manufacturers. That couldn't be said of our country in 2010. Although we still have a huge number of skills to offer, so, too, do countless other countries.

India and China's huge populations, technological know-how and supply of cheap labour mean they can dominate the world stage in a manner known only to Britons in their memories rather than reality. Even several of our largest companies have fallen under Indian control – Corus, Land Rover and Jaguar are all now owned by the conglomerate Tata.

Of course, this doesn't mean that David Cameron was wrong to go to India to bang the drum for Britain – after all, no-one will come to your party unless you take the trouble to invite them – but the mission was several years too late.

UK Trade & Investment, which helps British companies succeed in the global economy (or at least tries to), as well as the previous Government, should have been doing more of this years ago. UKTI has been operating around the world since 1999 but the manner of our cap-in-hand trip last week revealed a harsh truth: that we need India more than India needs us.

If further proof were needed, then have a look at India's newspapers. They were dominated by the US defence leak, a falling-out between Bishen Bedi, India's former Test captain, and Muttiah Muralitharan, the recently-retired Sri Lankan spinner, and numerous other matters of Indian politics, such as its attitude towards the Burmese junta.

The visit of the British Prime Minister, along with 39 business leaders including the chief executives of Vodafone, Barclays and the Premier League, didn't merit many column inches. It was a big deal here but nowhere else.

It will pain us to admit it but India's economic rise has coincided with our demise. The role reversal is nearly complete and we have much to learn from our former colonial subjects.

Perhaps, now, India will begin to adopt more of the culture of Britain, the junior economic partner, as we once did from them. Will Indians now spend their weekends by going out to an English restaurant, as envisioned on the British-Asian sketch show Goodness Gracious Me, and ordering "the blandest thing on the menu"?

THE coalition has pledged to raise the default retirement age. So, too, did Labour at the last election. Many older people want to work for longer. Many more don't want to, but think they'll have to do it anyway.

So it sounds like there is some kind of consensus. Except in business where the Institute of Directors, the Confederation of British Industry and the British Chambers of Commerce have complained that the change, due by October next year, is coming too soon. Where have they been for the last decade?

Business groups may have legitimate gripes about the burden of red tape, or the difficulty of getting a loan from the nationalised banks, but they are on weak ground when it comes to the retirement age. They should have seen it coming.

Britain doesn't have much money. Nor do many of its workers. Sadly, the workforce has to change to reflect this.

Business complaints about the changes to the retirement age recall those made more than a decade ago when Labour brought in the minimum wage. It would be the end of the world, we were told. It wasn't. It's time to get real.

TONY Blair was less than chuffed about his old friend Peter Mandelson's decision to rush out his memoirs before the former PM. But was he really surprised?

The former spin supremo was merely doing what he has always done – getting his message out faster than the competition. It's not his fault that Blair's solemnly-titled tome, The Journey, will not emerge until next month, four months after the election, showing a lawyer-like slowness compared to The Third Man's sprint to the printers.

For Mandelson, who has spent much of a lifetime in communications, getting his version of events on to the bookshelves first was simply another in a long line of scoops he has orchestrated.

The main question left unanswered, of course, is whether this is Mandelson's greatest PR coup – or simply his last?