Taking my family to Iraqi Kurdistan last year raised the eyebrows of friends who haven’t cottoned on to the fact that it is the safest part of Iraq by a country mile. Getting there has certainly become easier since the 1990s when a long trek through Turkey or a clandestine boat ride from Syria was needed. My first trip was in 2006, travelling through Dubai and finally landing near midnight at a former military airfield in Erbil to a phalanx of television cameras. (Visitors were very unusual.) Our Labour Friends of Iraq delegation stayed at the one five star hotel, where we met union leaders from across the country to discuss how to help revive a once powerful movement. Contact with Britain was by satellite phone, roads were basic, sometimes awful; our drivers bought petrol from boys with jerry cans and sneaked a smoke while circling the cars.

Back then a Communist leader explained the problem for a place emerging from poverty, isolation, sanctions, civil war and genocide: ‘we don’t have a bourgeoisie, can we borrow yours?’ (I paraphrase slightly.) This inspired me to encourage commercial, cultural and political connections between the UK and Kurdistan, and to help form a new all-party parliamentary group. The Kurds welcome external experience and expertise, especially from Britain – English is the second language for many, with two of their 26 universities operating in English. I’ve returned 14 times since, and to see its continuing journey to prosperity, pluralism and democracy has been a privilege.

Now I can fly to Iraqi Kurdistan via Vienna or Istanbul, and direct flights from London may soon make visiting easier still. I touch down at an international airport; the world’s fifth longest runway can take any plane – a strategic bonus for a landlocked place. Smartphones are everywhere and connectivity encourages accountability. The roads have improved – I remember the civic pride when the new underpasses opened in Erbil – but they are congested; there has been a tenfold increase in car ownership and public transport is scant. Erbil is no longer a dusty provincial town but a bustling city thanks to double digit economic growth; living standards are up but so is inequality. Tourist architecture meanwhile is rudimentary. The Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG) is trying to overcome this, part of its plan to diversify the economy. The hope is that western visitors will join the millions of Arabs who already flock to the area to escape the summer heat.

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