In a fast changing world, enduring relationships built on trust and common interests matter. This year we celebrate 100 years of UK relations with Saudi Arabia, where I currently live and work, and an amazing 200 years of relations with Bahrain, my first posting as a baby diplomat 35 years ago and host to this week’s UK-GCC Summit between the Prime Minister and the leaders of the Gulf States.
A huge amount has changed in the Gulf over the last generation. The Gulf States have built world class infrastructure, much of it in partnership with British business people and professionals. The pace of human change has been just as fast. Over ten years ago during my posting to the UAE, the founding head of Dubai’s tech hubs in Internet City and Media City, a man with a PhD from Manchester, recalled to me how as a boy he used to leave his uncle’s goat farm to swim in the creek and first met British boys whose mothers shared biscuits with him. During my time in Qatar a few years ago, I saw the leadership there set the plans not just for LNG gas projects that today supply around a fifth of the UK’s needs, or establish a Financial Centre with strong support from the City, or build a world-class hub airport with British engineering, but also how they looked ahead to preparing the country’s youth to make a positive leadership and social contribution in the new economy they were forging.
Travelling last week in Saudi Arabia’s Nejd heartland, the Governor of one province told me how two of his grandparents had fought on different sides during the struggle to unify the Kingdom (Britain supported the winning side.) He went on to describe how today the highly educated new generation of this traditional society continue to keep up their customs while taking part in Saudi Arabia’s ambitious Vision 2030 plans to transform the economy away from dependence on oil and government largesse, and to drive forward social change in the process.
I knew what he meant since two days earlier I had helped to launch a Hackathon between 400 talented young people from the UK and Saudi Arabia, with tech, life sciences and entrepreneurial skills, to seek creative solutions to healthcare challenges of today. They worked together in mixed teams of men and women, British and Saudi, with different skillsets but united by shared goals. These days women are over half of all graduates every year in the Emirates and in Saudi Arabia, and play an increasing role in business and in public life. It is the same story, with different details, all over the Gulf. And everywhere British businesspeople, experts, universities and other institutions are partnering with leaders and citizens to bring this about.
Britain too has changed massively to adapt to new global conditions while preserving our commitment to peace and security, to the international rules-based system, and to our history as an outward-facing trading nation. Our Gulf partners appreciate the leading role that the UK continues to play as a permanent member of the UN Security Council, of NATO, of the G7, the G20 and the Commonwealth. They know that our commitment to extensive security cooperation with them and with our other international partners remains steadfast, with significant deployments of British forces in the Gulf. They know that the UK is the only major country in the world to meet both the
NATO target of spending 2% of GDP on defence and the UN target of spending 0.7% of our GNI on development. The Gulf States are also major donors, and our cooperation with them on regional and international stabilisation and development issues continues to grow. The Gulf States are valuable security partners, who have helped the UK to foil a number of terror plots. And we continue to work closely together to face challenges to regional security from Da’esh extremism and Iran’s destabilising behaviour.
The Gulf is already the third largest export market in the world for the UK, after the US and the EU. We are looking to build on this through an even stronger trade and investment dialogue.
Trade and security is the focus of discussions between the Prime Minister and Gulf Leaders at the Summit in Bahrain this week. The intention is not just to celebrate our shared history and current levels of cooperation, but to build on them including at the leadership level through the establishment of regular structured annual talks, recognising that the security of the Gulf is very much tied up with the security of the UK, and that our post-Brexit trading relationship with the Gulf can be a powerful force for free trade and enhance prosperity for citizens in the Gulf and in the UK. A secure and prosperous Gulf will also support increased openness in civil society and accelerate the economic empowerment of women.
It’s an exciting time to be working in the Gulf – a place that like Britain is also open to the world, a place where people don’t just talk but like to get things done, a place where people embrace change while cherishing their own history and traditions, and a place where trust is earned – in politics as in business – by building up a track record over time of delivering on your commitments.
Biography
British Ambassador to Saudi Arabia
Mr Simon Collis CMG joined the FCO in 1978 and after studying Arabic has served mainly in the Middle East and South Asia. His first posting was to Bahrain. He has been British Ambassador to Iraq, Syria and Qatar. He was British Consul-General in Dubai and in Basra. He has also served in Tunis, New Delhi and Amman.