According to Mr Johnson’s figures, the number of Indians applying to study in the UK dropped nine per cent this year and is forecast to fall a further 25 per cent next year. Of the 110,000 foreign students in London alone, 9,000 are from India, where Mr Johnson is spending this week trying to build business links with the capital.

In interviews ahead of a speech to prospective students at Amity University, the equivalent of Oxford or Cambridge, Mr Johnson said he was worried the “mood music” from Whitehall was putting the very best off applying.

He said: “We are going to set up with Government an Education Exports Commission to look at the issue to make sure we get the right message across so that if the Government decides to make changes to the visa regime it doesn’t do damage to a sector in which London is so strong and it is so valuable.

“The vast majority of Indian students do get a visa, 75% of them get one pretty much straight off. It’s more of a perception at the moment.

^{During Boris Johnson’s visit to Delhi he handed over the London 2012 Olympic cauldron petals to Indian Olympians (PA)}

“The policy on visas is, in my view, sending out the wrong signal. There are so many stipulations that we are starting to lose business to Australia, America and Canada.

“As I have written several times to the Home Secretary, we need to see a strong statement of welcome to make sure that the visa system is not a deterrent to international students.

“The extra stipulations such as the need to have a salary of up to a certain amount before you are allowed to stay on mean we need to be very careful that we are not doing stuff that actively deters foreign students and at the moment the policy seems to put people off. Why are we doing this? We shouldn’t be losing this market.”

He added: “It’s very important for our higher education economy that you have foreign students who contribute £2.5 billion a year in fees. Now that helps to subsidise the rest of the university sector – helps to pay for everybody else’s education.

“It’s a great idea to have a London that is open to that kind of business. I am saying to Government ‘Don’t do things that is going to cause unnecessary alarm and prejudice against the UK’.”

Source: PA

This is a country of 1.2 billion, set to overtake China as the most populous place on earth – and unlike China, they are all so young. Half the population is under 25. In fact, one in 11 of the entire global population is an Indian under 25. Think of the size of that market, the things they can buy now, the things they will want in the future.

India may have slowed in its frantic growth rate of three years ago – down to a mere 5 per cent from 8 per cent per year. But that is still about five times faster than us or any other EU country. The Indians are young, aspirational, dynamic, democratic, with a gloriously uninhibited press. With the eurozone seemingly heading for a permafrost of gloom, India is the place we should be doing business.

We need to act fast, because we have ground to make up, and we cannot take anything for granted. Young Indians these days are like any other global population that finds itself in the throes of embourgeoisement: they are gripped and excited by America and American brands – Google, Coke, Nike, Starbucks, you name it. The biggest foreign food supplier in India is Domino’s Pizza, an American firm.

Forty years ago – perhaps even 30 years ago – bright young Indians might have thought first of finding a first-rate university education in London; and they still do. But we are facing stiff competition from the US. It is time – humbly but sincerely – to remind young Indian brainboxes and investors of the advantages of the UK.

In the postcolonial epoch, I am afraid trade between our countries had sunk – by 2010 we were doing more business with Sweden! But it is growing again, fast, and the opportunities are immense. Of course we can’t trade on sentiment, or the concept of a “shared history” (a history that will mean little to many Indians under 25); and yet it is still true that there is a natural fit between Britain and India, a cultural and commercial fusion that is growing the whole time.

You can see it in cuisine, where restaurants serving Indian food employ more people in the UK than coal, steelmaking and shipbuilding combined. You can see it in literature, where British publishers introduced such talents as Vikram Seth and Arundhati Roy to the world. There is a fusion in film, where it is not entirely clear whether films like Slumdog Millionaire or Bend It Like Beckham are British or Indian or Brindian. We have more Bollywood films made in London than anywhere else outside India. We have seen the fusion in music, where the bhangra sound was taken from India to Southall, given a bit more of a beat and re-exported to India.

Above all, we can see the fusion in business. Look at the alliance between BP and Mukesh Ambani’s Reliance, or at Vodafone’s takeover of Hutchinson. Or look at that very Jaguar, product of an Indian-owned firm that is made by Brits and exported to China; or look at the JCB 3DX backhoe loader, a British machine made by Indians and exported to Africa.

As India expands, we need to build these partnerships. In the next 20 years, there are perhaps 30 Indian cities that will be putting in metro systems – think of the opportunities for the dozens of British engineering firms currently engaged on Crossrail, the largest such operation in Europe. We have services from law to health care to planning that could be of use to India in its amazing programme of urbanisation.

India should be one of this country’s key partners for all sorts of geostrategic reasons, and David Cameron was dead right to make this his first port of call in 2010. But it is the economic partnerships that offer the most extraordinary prospects. Imagine selling a Jag to one in every 100,000 Indians. That’s a lot of Jags, and a lot of jobs.

Mr Johnson called for an end to such gloomy talk just hours after Mr Cameron said he would continue to take “big, difficult decisions” on the deficit, while helping businesses to grow.

The Prime Minister promised to sweep away rules, reviews and checks that are holding companies back.

The Mayor, who is tipped as a potential future leader, urged the Government to go further in its efforts to support an “age of enterprise” by cutting personal tax rates and exempting new homes from stamp duty.

He told business leaders the Coalition should collect more money from companies such as Google instead of considering “absurd” plans for a mansion tax on individuals. “We should have taxes that are low but fair and it is absurd to be suddenly whacking up taxes on cash-poor people who happen to inhabit expensive houses in London when firms like Google are paying zero,” he said.

“Neither arrangement strikes me as being fair and so Google and co face a very clear choice — they can either change their tax arrangements or do much more to serve our society by visibly taking on 18 to 24-year-olds who are out of work.”

He said high personal tax rates in Britain mean that Andy Murray pays a greater proportion of his winnings to the taxpayer than any tennis player in the world. “I am afraid that high rates of personal taxation are likely to make us less competitive,” he will say.

“In the 19th century London became the biggest and richest city on earth because of its openness to trade and to talent.

“I am worried that we are losing some of that openness at a critical time.”

The Coalition is still considering Lib Dem proposals for higher taxes on the rich. Speaking on the BBC’s Andrew Marr at the weekend, Vince Cable, the Business Secretary, insisted it is being taken seriously at the highest levels of the Government.

This is a budget so riddled with fraud and malpractice that in 18 years it has never been given a clean bill of health by the European Court of Auditors. Bear in mind, moreover, that this Court is itself an EU institution, with nothing like the resources it needs to invigilate the local politicians, farmers, business people and all-purpose crooks who are in receipt of funding from us all.

According to this toothless Luxembourg watchdog, there are at least 5.2 billion euros that go astray every year — and the proportion is rising again, not falling. The bureaucrats speak plaintively of a certain Spanish sheep farmer they came across. “A farmer was granted a special premium for 150 sheep. The court found that the beneficiary did not have any sheep. The corresponding payment was irregular.”

Irregular! It wasn’t irregular — it was a swindle. It was theft from you and me. You only have to imagine the ludicrous scene, of Luxembourg officials scrabbling over some dusty Spanish hillside in search of 150 non-existent merinos to see that they have only scratched the surface of the abuse.

There are fields that are forests that are meant to be farmed. There are forests that are meant to be fields, and we are paying subsidy for both. Last year the Commission itself confessed that EU spending on Romania — €515 million — had been almost all the subject of fraud or abuse of one kind or another. Hand on heart, said Brussels, it looked as though only about 10 per cent of the cash had got through to legitimate destinations. The EU budget will never be properly policed because the cash doesn’t properly belong to any nation — it belongs to “everybody”. And since it belongs to everybody, each individual country cynically reasons that there isn’t that much harm if its own citizens quietly loot as much of it as they reasonably can.

Which leaves it to the central EU institutions to try to police this Ottoman structure. They don’t have a hope. It is no particular comfort to learn that the Health Commissioner, a Maltese called John Dalli, has just resigned under a cloud, amid allegations of an attempt to rig a decision in favour of some Swedish snuff tycoons. Meanwhile, here are the officials of the EU Commission, arriving in Athens in their taxpayer-funded executive jets, with their message of hardship for the people of Greece. They wag their fingers at the Greeks, and tell them that they must mend their ways.

They must stop the waste and the fraud, says the EU Commission, before they have any hope of more bail-out funds. And yet these same EU officials preside over a vast and larcenous abuse of public funds, and now have the effrontery to tell us that they need a massive above-inflation increase to pay, inter alia, for the great unreformed caravanserai between Brussels, Luxembourg and Strasbourg.

There is absolutely nothing to be lost from a veto. It may be impossible to cut the budget, since there is no other country actively proposing this excellent option. But there is no reason at all why EU spending should not be frozen exactly where it is.

The worst that can happen is that the existing budget will be rolled over, a month at a time. It is time for David Cameron to put on that pineapple-coloured wig and powder blue suit, whirl his handbag round his head and bring it crashing to the table with the words no, non, nein, neen, nee, ne, ei and ochi, until they get the message.

This is a budget so riddled with fraud and malpractice that in 18 years it has never been given a clean bill of health by the European Court of Auditors. Bear in mind, moreover, that this Court is itself an EU institution, with nothing like the resources it needs to invigilate the local politicians, farmers, business people and all-purpose crooks who are in receipt of funding from us all.

According to this toothless Luxembourg watchdog, there are at least 5.2 billion euros that go astray every year — and the proportion is rising again, not falling. The bureaucrats speak plaintively of a certain Spanish sheep farmer they came across. “A farmer was granted a special premium for 150 sheep. The court found that the beneficiary did not have any sheep. The corresponding payment was irregular.”

Irregular! It wasn’t irregular — it was a swindle. It was theft from you and me. You only have to imagine the ludicrous scene, of Luxembourg officials scrabbling over some dusty Spanish hillside in search of 150 non-existent merinos to see that they have only scratched the surface of the abuse.

There are fields that are forests that are meant to be farmed. There are forests that are meant to be fields, and we are paying subsidy for both. Last year the Commission itself confessed that EU spending on Romania — €515 million — had been almost all the subject of fraud or abuse of one kind or another. Hand on heart, said Brussels, it looked as though only about 10 per cent of the cash had got through to legitimate destinations. The EU budget will never be properly policed because the cash doesn’t properly belong to any nation — it belongs to “everybody”. And since it belongs to everybody, each individual country cynically reasons that there isn’t that much harm if its own citizens quietly loot as much of it as they reasonably can.

Which leaves it to the central EU institutions to try to police this Ottoman structure. They don’t have a hope. It is no particular comfort to learn that the Health Commissioner, a Maltese called John Dalli, has just resigned under a cloud, amid allegations of an attempt to rig a decision in favour of some Swedish snuff tycoons. Meanwhile, here are the officials of the EU Commission, arriving in Athens in their taxpayer-funded executive jets, with their message of hardship for the people of Greece. They wag their fingers at the Greeks, and tell them that they must mend their ways.

They must stop the waste and the fraud, says the EU Commission, before they have any hope of more bail-out funds. And yet these same EU officials preside over a vast and larcenous abuse of public funds, and now have the effrontery to tell us that they need a massive above-inflation increase to pay, inter alia, for the great unreformed caravanserai between Brussels, Luxembourg and Strasbourg.

There is absolutely nothing to be lost from a veto. It may be impossible to cut the budget, since there is no other country actively proposing this excellent option. But there is no reason at all why EU spending should not be frozen exactly where it is.

The worst that can happen is that the existing budget will be rolled over, a month at a time. It is time for David Cameron to put on that pineapple-coloured wig and powder blue suit, whirl his handbag round his head and bring it crashing to the table with the words no, non, nein, neen, nee, ne, ei and ochi, until they get the message.

You know, I am afraid that they still don’t get it. The people at the BBC show no real sign of understanding what they have done wrong, let alone making amends. We have heard an awful lot in the past 24 hours about the personal calvary of George Entwistle. We know of the agony of Lord Patten, who has told us that the resignation of Entwistle was “one of the saddest evenings” of his public life. We have been told of the grief of hundreds of BBC journalists, the anxiety, the anger, their fear for their jobs. Everyone at the BBC is agreed on one thing: that it is a “tragedy”. Yes, it is a tragedy for the poor old BBC.

To call someone a paedophile is to place them, these days, in a special category. We loathe paedophiles, as a society, because we know more and more about their crimes. They groom and manipulate vulnerable young people. They are cunning, plausible, selfish and ruthless. They cause appalling physical and psychological pain to children – people who should be getting protection and support.

Paedophiles, therefore, do the rest of humanity a sort of service, because they confer moral superiority on absolutely everyone else. A convicted paedophile is a “nonce”, and a “nonce” is the person that every other prisoner – burglar, rapist, murderer, you name it – can spit on and feel good about it. Paedophiles are there to be jostled, beaten up and shanked in the showers, and the rest of the prison population will whistle and look the other way.

If so, it shows utter contempt for its listeners and for the intelligence of the British public. On the afternoon of Friday November 2, it was “tweeted” that a senior Tory politician was to be exposed on Newsnight as a paedophile. It wasn’t a vague allegation about a “ring” of paedophiles. It was about a particular individual, who was supposed to have committed a series of specific and vile crimes against a former occupant of the Bryn Estyn children’s home in Wales. “McAlpine” was the name of the mystery millionaire who had surfaced in the 2000 Waterhouse report into the scandal. “McAlpine” was the name the programme’s makers fed out to various Left-wing tweeters and bloggers; and within hours of Newsnight’s bizarre broadcast, people such as Sally Bercow and George Monbiot were pointing the finger at the bewildered and utterly blameless figure of Alistair McAlpine, 70, who is spending his retirement running a B&B in southern Italy.

You can’t really blame the tweeters and the bloggers. “McAlpine” was the steer they were given, and it was Alistair McAlpine that Newsnight had in its sights. It was no protection of McAlpine that he wasn’t explicitly named in the first broadcast – and it should be no defence of Newsnight, either. A twitstorm, a blogstorm, an internet hurricane howled around the former Tory treasurer. The whole of Fleet Street started to torment their readers with ever more prominent stories about this Top Tory Paedo, while those who used the web could see who was intended. The Prime Minister was dragged in, and immediately instituted an inquiry.

The whole thing became so unbearable that Lord McAlpine was forced to break cover, and point out that Newsnight was wrong. It was not just wrong: it was a slander more cruel, revolting and idiotic than anything perpetrated by the News of the World. The programme makers hadn’t taken account of the real anxieties about the reliability of their witness, as expressed by Sir Ronald Waterhouse, who led the inquiry into Bryn Estyn. They hadn’t shown him a picture of McAlpine. They hadn’t even put the allegations to McAlpine! Unbelievable! And why not? It was, as they say, a story that was too good to check. It wasn’t just that it showed Newsnight taking up the cudgels against paedophiles, after the embarrassment of the axed Savile exposé. It went one better. It pushed all the buttons. It was like a dream come true for any vaguely resentful and Left-of-centre BBC producer. It was a chance to pour unlimited ordure on a man who – in their book – jolly well had it coming. He is rich, he is a toff, he is a Lord, he is a Tory, and – joy of joys – he is an EX-AIDE TO MRS THATCHER.

The journalism was so shoddy, so cretinous, so ready to let the wish be father to the thought that the Beeb really now has to show that Newsnight was not acting with malice. The BBC cannot minimise what the programme has done. There will be people out there who will continue to believe that there is no smoke without fire, that Newsnight would never have broadcast such allegations unless there was something in it. The BBC owes it to McAlpine to grovel and keep grovelling until the public gets the message. Everyone associated with the “paedophile” segment on Newsnight should be sacked instantly. Then Chris Patten should make a penitential pilgrimage to McAlpine’s Italian B&B, on his knees and scourging himself with a copy of the BBC charter. This tragedy is not about the BBC; it is about the smearing of an innocent man. The BBC needs to grasp that first.

This is the stage at which you would expect people to start to rally behind the incumbent, to stick with what they know, and to decide that Obama may not have been as dazzling as he promised, but he has been far from disastrous and deserves another term. It is Romney, therefore, who needs to show something extra – and I suggest that extra ingredient is a sudden flash of global statesmanship, a surprising and gratifying awareness of the granular detail of American foreign policy.

Look at the world, rather than Ohio, and there is nothing remotely close about this race. If the population of the planet were allowed to vote on its most powerful political post, Obama would win by a landslide. According to a recent study by UPI polling, Obama has support running at an amazing 90 cent in France, and he is almost as huge throughout the rest of Europe. Denmark, Finland, Germany, Iceland, Ireland, and, yes, the UK – we are all apparently firmly in the Obama camp, with about 70 per cent support. The incumbent would romp home in Australia, China, Latin America, Canada, Mexico, and virtually the entire Middle East. He would win in 31 out of 32 countries, in fact, and the only nation to come out quite strongly in favour of Romney is – as you may perhaps have guessed – Israel.

The reasons for this are intuitively obvious. The world as a whole is leery of Republican foreign policy, because it is associated – rightly or wrongly – with a general willingness to bomb Middle Eastern countries. The yellow-bellied world has listened carefully to what Mitt Romney has to say about Iran, and decided – rightly or wrongly – that it sounds worrying. In Israel, of course, they have listened to Mr Romney’s talk of military action against Iran and think that it sounds very positive.

Now, Romney can respond to this in two ways. He can take it as a badge of honour that the world so clearly favours Obama; indeed, he could stress that he will be a president for Americans and not for foreigners. Or else he could say something that shows America is listening. He could show that America is not the arrogant hyperpower her enemies suggest, but a country that understands her place in the comity of nations, a country that is willing to muck in, a country that is willing – in the immortal words of President J F Kennedy – to pay any price, to bear any burden in the cause of reconciliation.

Mitt needs a last-minute symbolic act of American humility and goodwill, and the one I propose is relatively painless. He doesn’t need to sign up to the International Criminal Court, or the Kyoto Protocol on climate change. He doesn’t have to close a single military base, and he doesn’t have to resile one bit from America’s amazing and arrogant doctrines of extra-territoriality on everything from extradition to personal taxation.

With one small but significant stroke he can outflank Obama on the environment and stand shoulder to shoulder with the majority of the world’s law-abiding nations, from Sweden to Kuwait to Brazil. He can abandon the flagrantly illegal stance of previous US administrations, and do the right thing by the hard-pressed London motorist.

Romney should announce now – just as those febrile Ohioans are making up their mind on that secondary but still important question of whether or not the Republican will bring reassurance around the world – that as soon as he sits down behind that desk in the Oval Office, he will sign the order for all American diplomatic vehicles in London to pay the congestion charge. He will instantly write a cheque for the fines that US vehicles have incurred, now standing at more than £7 million, in the course of about 61,000 infractions since the scheme began. And if he does, Mitt will have my support.

Mind you, I would support Obama if he did the same.