We have assembled an outstanding panel to look at where the country stands after six extraordinary months and what comes next.
David Waddell chairs. Sir Oliver Dowden brings the diplomacy. Dr Burcu Ozcelik brings the security. James Swanston brings the economics. Here is a little about each of them.
The evening is free and on the record, at the National Liberal Club, 1 Whitehall Place. Drinks from 6.00, panel at 6.30. Register at
https://events.emirateswire.co.uk/
The chair: David Waddell
David is a senior business producer and reporter at BBC News, where he produces Business Today and Talking Business. He covered the Gulf flight disruption and the Iran-related energy and shipping tensions of this year’s conflict directly, and interviewed many of the people who matter to the story we are asking on 9 September.
Sir Oliver Dowden KCB CBE MP: the diplomacy
Sir Oliver is Member of Parliament for Hertsmere and Chair of the UAE All-Party Parliamentary Group. Before returning to the backbenches, he was Deputy Prime Minister of the United Kingdom, Secretary of State in the Cabinet Office, and Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster under Rishi Sunak, with a continuous run inside the Cabinet Office from January 2018 to July 2024. He previously served as Secretary of State for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport. He read law at Trinity Hall, Cambridge, and came up through the Conservative Research Department and David Cameron’s Downing Street.
His UAE APPG chairmanship keeps him close to the substantive discussion of the UK-UAE relationship. The group’s work through 2025 and 2026 has covered bilateral trade, defence and security cooperation, and what Britain’s Gulf posture looks like once the immediate crisis phase settles.
I am asking him to speak to what has happened diplomatically since 28 February, and to what happens now. What does the UK-UAE relationship look like in a post-conflict Gulf? What has quietly changed inside it. Where does the GCC deal sit in the priorities? And the question I would most like his view on: the political shape of the settlement.
Dr Burcu Ozcelik: the security
Burcu is Senior Research Fellow for Middle East Security at RUSI. She holds a doctorate in Politics and International Studies from Cambridge, where she also took her MPhil, held a Leverhulme Early Career Fellowship, and taught Conflict, Peacebuilding and the Politics of the Middle East. She worked with UNDP and ran the MENA practice at a London-based advisory before RUSI.
Her recent work on Turkey, Iraq, Syria, Iran, and Israel gives her a broad regional view for placing the UAE’s story, and her published record makes her one of the sharpest security voices on the region working in the UK.
I am asking her to look at the security picture of what has just happened. What has the conflict revealed about the UAE’s threat picture and its response capabilities? How have relationships with the United States, Israel, and India shifted? Where do the Gulf neighbours stand with each other after the conflict, and where does the settlement leave the deterrent balance? What is she watching for over the next six months?
James Swanston: the economics
James is a Middle East and North Africa Economist in Barclays' EEMEA team, where he joined in March 2026 from Capital Economics. He studied economics at Bath and earned an MSc in Economic History at LSE, where he researched Egypt under IMF programmes. He spent nine years at Capital Economics covering MENA and the wider emerging-market landscape, and was named FocusEconomics’ top forecaster of the year for Kuwait, Saudi Arabia and Qatar. He has done deep-dive work on the debts of Dubai’s government-related entities and on Saudi-UAE tensions.
At Barclays, portfolio managers, sovereign clients, and the media now read his work. The panel questions are the ones he is now paid to look at closely: capital flows, tourism, property, banking, logistics, energy trading, free zones, Gulf risk pricing, balance-sheet effects on Emirati corporates, and policy signalling from the central bank and the Ministry of Finance.
I am asking him to walk the audience through the UAE’s economic terrain since 28 February, and to tell us where the pressure showed, where the resilience showed, and where the numbers surprised him. How does a bank economist read the settlement? And where does he think the UAE will land economically over the next twelve months?
The questions we are asking
The panel will take on the questions I set out to ask: how the UAE has managed pressure and change; what the new alignments look like; and what the settlement means for the UK's shipping, energy, and business relationships with the Gulf.
I look forward to the discussion and to what the audience brings.
The UAE and the Widening Gulf Conflict: What Happens Next? is on 9 September at the National Liberal Club, 1 Whitehall Place, London SW1A 2HE. Drinks from 6.00, panel at 6.30, close and networking from around 7.55. Free and on the record. Register at
https://events.emirateswire.co.uk/