A few dozen Sikh separatist activists are protesting noisily outside the central London hotel where the target of their ire is staying. On a quiet Sunday morning, their chants echo through Westminster and St James’s Park. But it is going to take more than that to put India’s steely and erudite foreign minister off his stride. S Jaishankar has been on something of a grand tour of the west — and at quite a time.

I have been taking “the pulse at the epicentre of the alliance”, he says after slipping unobtrusively into the restaurant at the Taj Hotel. It is hard not to conclude that he has enjoyed his peripatetic 2025 immensely. 

Jaishankar is India’s longest-serving foreign minister since the independence leader Jawaharlal Nehru, who was prime minister and foreign minister for 17 years. In his nearly six years in office he has been a leading voice in arguing that the “liberal rules-based order” is biased and in need of a shake-up. Now he has had a ringside view for some of its most destabilising moments since it took shape 80 years ago.