A Free Holiday Is a Free Holiday

I’ve always said that if someone offered me a free holiday to Dubai with spending money, I’d take it. Of course I would. I’m not an idiot. It’s free, it’s hot, and there’s a certain anthropological curiosity in observing the natural habitat of people who think tax is a form of persecution.

I’d happily wander around for a week or two, staring at gold-plated everything and wondering how many square metres of marble it takes before a building officially becomes a personality disorder.

That said, if you told me to pick anywhere on Earth, Dubai wouldn’t be troubling the top thousand.

Each to their own, but it looks dreadful. A desert theme park full of influencers, retired footballers, women with Botox lips and inflatable backsides, and the sort of people who describe themselves as “entrepreneurs” because they once sold protein powder on Instagram.

And then there’s the really alarming wildlife. People like Charlie Mullins, Richard Tice and Isabelle Oakeshott, wandering around like patriotic meerkats who somehow got lost in a duty-free lounge.

The Great Patriotic Exit

So it’s not terribly surprising that there’s a certain amount of schadenfreude doing the rounds.

For years we’ve been told that Britain, particularly London, has become a dangerous dystopian hellhole. Crime everywhere. Chaos in the streets. Civilisation apparently hanging by a thread. Which is why, naturally, the solution was to move to a luxury gated compound in Dubai.

Strangely though, the bit that often gets glossed over is the tax. The country that educated you, built the roads you drove on, staffed the hospitals you used and generally made it possible for you to become rich in the first place suddenly becomes intolerable the moment HMRC asks for a slice.

At which point the patriotic farewell begins. Britain is broken, they say solemnly, while boarding a flight to a place specifically designed for people who don’t want to contribute to any country at all.

The Awkward Rescue

Now, thanks to events in the Middle East, the government has had to launch what might be the most awkward airlift in modern history.

A rescue mission for people who moved abroad because Britain was apparently such a nightmare. And now the same people are essentially saying, please come and rescue me from this tax-free paradise and return me to the terrible country that insists on funding public services.

It does stick slightly in the craw. Just a bit.

A Brief Encounter With Perspective

One hopes the experience might produce the faintest flicker of perspective.

Running out of the Armani shop because someone lobbed a missile in the general direction probably does feel quite frightening. Not quite the same as watching your children get shot in the face in a refugee camp in Gaza, admittedly.

But it might, just possibly, introduce a tiny awareness that the world does not revolve around your property portfolio.

It’s a long shot, but stranger things have happened.

Patriots With Offshore Postcodes

Meanwhile king tax exile himself, Reform leader Richard Tice, is busy explaining that all of this is actually about freeing the Iranian people from tyranny.

Of course it is.

And Keir Starmer, apparently, has once again demonstrated his hatred of Britain by not immediately believing Donald Trump’s latest explanation for events. Which is outrageous when you think about it.

Why would anyone doubt the most prolific bullshitter on the planet?

The logic from Tice and his assorted grifters is essentially that questioning Trump is unpatriotic, whereas relocating your tax residency to Dubai is the highest form of national service.

The Not So Special Relationship

This whole episode also clarifies something about the famous special relationship.

It turns out it isn’t special at all. From Washington’s perspective the UK is basically a very convenient aircraft carrier that happens to have pubs on it.

Trump at least says the quiet part out loud. In his head Britain isn’t really a sovereign country. It’s more like a runway that doesn’t wobble when American jets land on it.

Selective Anti-War Campaigners

Then there’s the familiar crowd attacking Starmer from the other direction.

The same people who have spent twenty years screaming “war criminal” at Tony Blair are now furious that Starmer isn’t enthusiastically backing another military adventure.

Consistency has never been their strong suit.

Apparently illegal wars are unforgivable, except when the Americans are doing something exciting and we’re invited along.

The Wilson Precedent

And this idea that Britain must always follow Washington into whatever disaster zone comes next is nonsense anyway. Harold Wilson didn’t send British troops to Vietnam.

He looked at the jungles, the body bags and the steadily escalating catastrophe and decided that perhaps Britain didn’t need to join that particular adventure. At the time he was criticised for it. History has been a little kinder.

Starmer is no Churchill, let’s not get carried away. But if he manages the rare British trick of not marching obediently into someone else’s war, he might end up looking a bit like Wilson.

And if our parents had been shipped off to Vietnam in the 1960s, quite a few of us might not be sitting here today arguing about Dubai.