Connections, highlights and forecasts: British high commissioner Laura Clarke makes some parting remarks before her departure for the United Kingdom.

• Author: Clarke, Laura

My first major speech in New Zealand was at an NZIIA conference in February 2018: my brief was to consider whether the rules-based order was fit for purpose. So it is nice to be doing my final speech with the NZIIA--and I would like to pay tribute to the institute and all its members for the part it plays in maintaining a focus on international affairs.

In my speech on the rules-based order in 2018 I started by revealing how I first met my kiwi husband, and how his chat up line, at my housewarming party in Hackney, was about Francis Fukuyama and the end of history: the thesis that liberal democracies had won out, that the period of ideological contestation was over ...

So I thought I could return to the theme of geopolitics in this speech, to give an updated take on the rules-based order in this increasingly dangerous world--and talk about the United Kingdom-New Zealand relationship in that context. But I started writing that speech and, to be honest, it was a bit boring. I have given speeches like that before, and they are out there on the internet to be read.

And then my ten-year-old daughter has just finished filming Netflix's first ever interactive, 'choose your own adventure' style romcom, where you choose what path the story takes next. So I thought, if this was an interactive, choose your own adventure speech, and if our starting point is that party, twenty years ago, in my house in Hackney, with the kiwi actor chatting me up with his hot takes on international politics, which direction would my audience want the speech to take next? Should we take the international politics route? Or the love affair: the beginning of a beautiful relationship with Aotearoa New Zealand? Judging by Twitter, where my tweets on substantial policy issues get barely a nod, while tweets about cats or hair or kids elicit quite a bit more interest, I decided we would go romcom, rather than war and peace. This will be more Rose Matafeo's Starstruck than Band of Brothers.

So I am going to outline my connection with New Zealand, the highlights of my time here and where I think the United Kingdom-New Zealand relationship is now.

Kiwi connection

Back to Hackney, and how meeting that kiwi actor sparked a love affair with this country on the exact opposite side of the world. As a student of international relations, then a young British diplomat I began to take an interest in New Zealand that was disproportionate to (please forgive me) its presence in my masters curriculum.

I came on holiday here nine times. We kayaked the Abel Tasman, sky-dived over Fox Glacier, walked the Routeburn Track, got engaged in the Bay of Islands. We brought back one child after another after another. People would say: do you think you will ever come and live in New Zealand? And we would joke that we might when they make me British high commissioner. It was a joke because it seemed so ridiculously unlikely: I did not really fit the mould, back then, of British high commissioners to New Zealand.

But then the stars somehow aligned (not least as I told everyone who would listen that this job had my name on it) and I got the job. And it has been every bit as wonderful as I hoped, both professionally, and personally for us as a family.

Relationship objective

My job here (beyond, of course, my Pitcairn responsibilities) has been to do all I can to strengthen the United Kingdom-New Zealand relationship. Beyond, that is, the very basic contribution of marrying a kiwi, and adding three more kiwi-Brits to the world.

I have said before that a few decades back there was a sense of benign neglect, in both directions, between the United Kingdom, Australia and New Zealand. We were like old loyal friends who took each other somewhat for granted. That is not to deny that there was a huge amount going on: the family and people-to-people connections, the OE, sporting rivalry, co-operation in the Commonwealth, in the Five Eyes....

But underneath the surface there was some longstanding hurt: a sense--that has been raised with me countless times--that the United Kingdom turned its back on New Zealand when it joined the EEC in 1973. Deeply felt grievances about which airport queue kiwis joined at Heathrow--which seemed not to recognise that we are family. Hurts, too, about historical wrongs, from first encounters and British colonisation. And a sense that the United Kingdom had stepped back too much...