In defence of Brits in Dubai

It has been an unpleasant few days for Brits living in Dubai. Just as they were under fire from Iranian missiles targeting the United Arab Emirates, they found themselves under attack on the home front, too. Leading the rearguard action was one Ed Davey, leader of the Liberal Democrats.

Rising to his feet in the House of Commons on Monday, Davey launched a bizarre assault on British citizens living in the Gulf. Dismissing them as ‘tax exiles’ and ‘washed-up old footballers’, he implied that the UK government’s willingness to evacuate them from a warzone should depend on them ‘paying taxes’ in Britain – ‘just like the rest of us do’. Davey at least conceded that the Foreign Office has a duty to assist Britons abroad, but it was an unedifying spectacle nonetheless. Historic, global events were unfolding. Yet here was the leader of a major political party, using the occasion for moral grandstanding – not against Iran, or even against the American airstrikes they were responding to, but against his fellow citizens who happened to have been caught in the crossfire.

Davey’s complaints have since been echoed across the media. Speaking on Times Radio, columnist Giles Coren said that it had been ‘impossible to weep’ for those under attack in Dubai. ‘They are, when it comes down to it, influencers – the most hated people in Britain’, Coren intoned. Daily Mail columnist Sarah Vine was similarly nonchalant about their plight. ‘The chickens have come home to roost’, Vine wrote. She seemed to take an almost sadistic pleasure in the fact that ‘celebrities / influencers / OnlyFans porn actors’ seeking a ‘tax-free existence’ now wanted help from ‘the good old British taxpayer’.

The irony of Dubai-based tax exiles demanding state handouts may be amusing to the pundit class, but there’s not much evidence of this actually happening. As journalist Isabel Oakeshott – one of the ‘exiles’ targeted by Davey in his strange outburst – put it, there just aren’t that many expats begging to be flown home. There are, roughly, 250,000 Brits living in the United Arab Emirates. And yet, according to the UK government, about 100,000 Britons across the whole of the Middle East have registered for help – many of whom will have been in the Gulf states on holiday or on business, rather than permanent residents.

Instead of attacking Brits who live in Dubai, politicians like Davey would do well to ask why they might have left the UK in the first place. He would surely struggle to argue with their reasons.

A record 110,000 16- to 34 year-olds left the UK in the year to June, suggesting that life is not exactly a box of chocolates in their home country. Many of them have been saddled with university debts of more than £50,000 for a largely second-rate, online education. Rubbing salt into the wounds is the fact that the graduate job market has bottomed out, with job offers at their lowest point in 13 years. Meanwhile, industrial jobs that would once have sustained Britain’s working and lower-middle classes no longer exist – instead, they have been sent offshore, largely thanks to the green dogmatism of politicians like Davey. In 2022, the Lib Dem leader said he was ‘proud’ of his role in throttling British gas extraction, despite the damage this has done to the UK economy. Can he really be critical of those who have followed the money and opportunity that Britain once had?

Nor can moderately wealthy Brits be criticised for leaving the UK for Dubai. Keir Starmer’s Britain is not, even for them, the easiest place to be. Buying a home and raising a family is difficult these days for the middle classes, too. Meanwhile, despite an ever-increasing tax burden, there has been a noticeable deterioration in public services – especially in the NHS. Dubai, where there is no income tax and no welfare state, might not reflect Davey’s ideal society. But it can at least be said that you get what you pay for.

Of course, underlying the attacks on Britons in Dubai is a condescending class hostility. It is not simply the lack of taxes these Britons pay that annoys the media class – it is their perceived lack of taste. Dubai, essentially, is Essex on the Gulf. The cultural elites loathe the nouveau riche as much as they hate white-van man. ‘Schadenfreude’ – pleasure in another person’s misfortune – was the word Vine reached for to describe her feelings on seeing her countrymen and women being bombed. It’s a certain type of Brit who goes to Dubai (and she really seems to have been keeping extensive tabs on this) and so that’s why they supposedly had it coming.

The first repatriation flight touched down at London Stansted Airport from Oman in the early hours of Friday morning. Already, a reported 4,000 Brits have returned home from the Gulf via commercial flights. We should be happy they have returned home safely – whether they are the wheelchair-bound young woman, Amelia Reid, who was stranded in Dubai while holidaying with her boyfriend, or yes, even one of the ‘OnlyFans porn actors’ looming so large in Vine’s mind.

British citizens are British citizens, come what may. No matter how much tax they pay or whether you approve of their lifestyles. Now that some of them are home safe, perhaps the political class will launch a charm offensive to try to keep them here? Although after the past week’s wailing, that might be an uphill battle.

Hugo Timms is a staff writer at spiked.