Faced with a choice between admonishing her foreign secretary or damaging UK strategic interests in the Gulf, in which she had just personally invested such capital, Theresa May saw only one option – to cut Boris Johnson adrift.



Thursday’s slapdown will do him little good in cabinet, or benefit his standing in the Gulf, to which he now travels, no doubt offering his trademark apologies and explanations to the Saudi royal family.

It is understandable how Johnson came to say what he did on the conference circuit in Rome, and indeed, at one level it was admirable. He was following the Arab League secretary general’s denunciation of the way in which Iran in particular was exploiting the Sunni-Shia divide, and using religion for political purposes. Johnson found himself violently agreeing with this analysis partly because he had just been in Cyprus, where he had noticed the willingness of its leaders to take risks for a settlement.

By contrast, Johnson has been struck by a dearth of big leaders in the Middle East capable of reaching out across religious and ethnic divides.

Perhaps in an attempt to be interesting – always a fatal error in diplomacy – he went further than he should have in saying Iran and Saudi Arabia were exploiting this leadership vacuum and acting as puppeteers in the region. Not for the first time his delight in the English language let him down.

He was speaking a truth, what would almost be commonplace in any international thinktank seminar, but one that foreign secretaries dare not speak in public.

It was an error in multiple ways, with legal, political and, for Johnson, personal implications.

As the opposition and human rights groups were quick to point out, if Johnson truly believes Saudi Arabia and Iran are creating wars by exploiting vacuums in the region, it raises questions about the morality of the UK’s steadfast support of the Saudis in Yemen. The UK not only provides arms to the Saudis, but its military cell in Riyadh counsels the Saudi-led coalition on its targeting procedures, and makes its own battle-damage assessments of Saudi raids. Although specific targets are not chosen by the UK, British forces are intimately involved in what Johnson has now called a “proxy war”.

Unlike the more robust political debate about Saudis in Washington, discussion in the UK has often been an exercise in walking on eggshells. The Foreign Office minister Tobias Ellwood has indeed criticised the Saudi air raids in Yemen in parliament, and called on Riyadh to be quicker to establish public inquiries into its errors. He says this because it is what he believes but also because, faced with a court challenge from human rights groups over the sale of UK weapons, it is imperative that the government is not deemed wilfully blind to a pattern of Saudi behaviour. Johnson’s remarks will have emboldened the human rights lawyers.

The timing of the remarks last Thursday was politically poor. May was preparing to visit the Gulf Co-operation Council early this week, and Johnson himself is scheduled to make the keynote address at a high-profile security conference in Bahrain this weekend.

Johnson will also know that, unlike in the US, there is no possibility the UK is going to withdraw from its long-term strategic embrace in the Gulf. The UK has 1,500 military personnel and seven warships in the region, and is due to spend £3bn in the Gulf on defence in the next decade.

At one point the Gulf might have feared that the Iran nuclear deal presaged a loosening of the UK’s ties with the Saudis, but the clear anti-Iranian instincts of Donald Trump mean that is highly unlikely. Across the fields of intelligence, defence and trade – the three pillars of any diplomatic relationship – the ties are strengthening.

The episode will also renew questions about Johnson’s suitability for diplomacy. Doubtless his humour does not always travel well, but in the short period available to him, friendships, the gold coinage of diplomacy, have been struck, not just enmities.



His task is not made any easier by the fact he has been forced to talk in code on the pre-eminent UK foreign policy issue facing the country, Brexit, due to the absence of a government policy.

Pending that policy, his chosen theme, expressed well in a speech to the international affairs thinktank Chatham House, is that the UK will not be defined by Brexit, but will be an outward-looking global player. For the moment, Johnson feels like the living embodiment of a country that has long lost an empire but has yet to find a role.