After more than a decade as a diplomat, you must get pretty familiar with packing up your worldly possessions.
As Iona Thomas prepares to vacate her leafy Karori residence after the best part of four years as the United Kingdom’s representative in New Zealand, the scene is surprisingly calm – deceptively so, she concedes.
“The packers come tomorrow, so upstairs is looking slightly less organised than this, with piles of stuff everywhere, but it will all get done.”
Among the gifts being taken back to London by the British High Commissioner are “some lovely woven kete” gifted to her by iwi in Gisborne – a city she has visited a number of times, after her predecessor Laura Clarke delivered an expression of regret in 2019 for the killing of local Māori after Captain James Cook’s arrival 250 years earlier.
“That’s really special, because it’s both very New Zealand, very indicative of the culture, but also the relationships that we’ve developed there,” Thomas says of the kete.
After previous postings in Pakistan, Afghanistan and Libya, her time in New Zealand has brought challenges of a rather different nature: “You think you know what a scone is, then you actually discover it’s actually got lots of cheese in it, rather than being eaten with jam and cream.”
But she has nothing but warm words for the UK’s relationship with its former colony, having been struck by the sheer breadth of ties – from trade and security to sporting and cultural connections, not to mention scientific collaboration.
While some New Zealanders see the country’s geographic isolation as a negative, Thomas believes the need for self-sufficiency has driven innovation in areas including space and agritech.
She has become very familiar with New Zealand’s many and varied industries, having toured the country to sell the benefits of the two countries’ free trade agreement signed just months before she arrived in Wellington.
Thomas already sees plenty of evidence for the deal’s success, for example increased levels of New Zealand beef, lamb and dairy heading to British shores and a 110 percent rise in services exports headed in the other direction. But there are still some small and medium-sized businesses failing to take full advantage of tariff reductions, along with UK companies who could offer their expertise on New Zealand infrastructure projects.
Currently unknown is to what extent two-way trade will be affected by the ripple effects of the ongoing US war in Iran, with key shipping routes at risk and rising fuel prices cutting into exporters’ margins.
As someone familiar with the complexities of war in the Middle East, how worried is Thomas about the ongoing conflict?
“It shows how interconnected our global supply chains are and how much what happens in one part of the world impacts on another part of the world, which is why the relationships between the UK and New Zealand are so important, because we will be touched by things that happen not in either one of our countries.
“Being able to work together to stand up for the rules-based system, to look at things like supply chains, to think about how we can de-escalate, is really important.”
‘The world is only becoming more interconnected, whether that’s technology, whether that’s trade, whether that’s geopolitics, and so solving those problems together is the only way forward.’
Iona Thomas
It is the rules-based system that will be the main focus of her next job, serving as the British Foreign Office’s director of multilateral affairs. It is a homecoming of sorts for Thomas, whose first posting was to the country’s United Nations mission in New York.
Where some are already proclaiming the demise of the rules-based order, Thomas is less willing to record a time of death. Multilateralism remains critical, she says, but it must be made to work better – for donors and recipients alike, as well as for the politicians who need to justify their governments’ investments into the UN and the World Trade Organisation, for example.
“The world is only becoming more interconnected, whether that’s technology, whether that’s trade, whether that’s geopolitics, and so solving those problems together is the only way forward …
“The UN in Geneva sets the rules for how telecommunications work … how they work when we go to other places, and that is of general relevance to everybody. So it’s making sure that we do tell that story and explain to people, so they don’t see it as just some esoteric discussion that is actually divorced from real life.”
Where some see the rise in so-called minilateral and plurilateral agreements – where smaller groups of like-minded countries strike deals – as a threat to the multilateral system, Thomas argues they can exist in parallel, with more ambitious nations moving further and faster before bringing others into the fold.
One of the challenges in need of a global solution is climate change, an area of emphasis during Thomas’ time in New Zealand. Asked to name some of the high points of her stint in Wellington, she mentions work on the Transforming Island Development through Electrification and Sustainability initiative, a joint UK-New Zealand effort to fund renewable energy projects in the Pacific through a combination of public and private financing.
Another “proud moment” was watching Christopher Luxon’s trip to the UK roughly a year ago, when he and his British counterpart, Sir Keir Starmer, described the relationship as the best it has ever been.
It is a relationship – not looking backwards towards our shared history, but forward to the opportunities ahead – that Thomas believes is critical to tackling some of the challenges facing both countries.
Thanks Sam for a great piece.
Thomas is right, the rules-base system isn’t dead and deserves support – but we need to get better at communicating how and why it helps underpin everyday life for everyday people. Her point “making sure that we do tell that story and explain to people, so they don’t see it as just some esoteric discussion that is actually divorced from real life” is spot on – am in total agreement.
Yes indeed. Without our rules based system we would not have the international internet, airlines, shipping, trading, finance, NGOs and many other services and organisations that we rely on daily. While some key powers have abused the system to devastating effect, there are many other parties (including countries and corporations) who benefit from the system and are maintaining as much of it as they can.
We need to learn to work around the spoilers and work with the cooperators to maintain and advance our societies.
Well said, Gray: “We need to learn to work around the spoilers and work with the cooperators to maintain and advance our societies.” I’ll vote for whoever is committed to supporting that initiative.