Who cares about vacuous influencers whose ghastly apartments in Dubai are being struck by Iranian missiles, wiping the smile off their botoxed lips? Not many of us, to judge by social media, and a few newspaper columns too, over the past few days. Retaliatory strikes by Iran have unleashed a tide of gloating. To give a flavour, one writes: ‘Don’t all those lovely influencers move to Dubai because it is supposed to be so safe? I’ve never been struck by an Iranian missile on my way to Asda.’
Your average influencer may lead a pretty empty life, but they are still UK citizens and we owe them a duty to protect their lives, by evacuating them if necessary
What a revolting attitude. Your average influencer may lead a pretty empty life. Many have allowed themselves to become propagandists of an authoritarian regime, still spouting the line that the UAE is the safest place in the world even while the bombs are falling. And yes, they enjoy a tax regime which those of us stuck back in Rachel Reeves’s fiscal disaster zone can only dream about. But they are still UK citizens and we owe them a duty to protect their lives, by evacuating them if necessary.
There were plenty of UK citizens living empty lives of leisure in India when independence and partition unleashed a wave of violence, but we didn’t turn our backs on them. Every earthquake, and every coup, catches out idle and hedonistic Brits, but thank God the Foreign Office doesn’t subject UK citizens to a virtue test before doing what it can, any more than the NHS turns away patients who have brought illness on themselves because of their poor lifestyles.
UK citizens in Dubai are not victims of their own hubris – even if they may be hubristic. They are collateral damage from a brutal Iranian regime which is lashing out at any country within striking range, even if they are not involved in the strikes by the US and Israel. If Iran had the missiles to do so, it would now be raining them down on London, never mind Keir Starmer’s pedantic observation of Lord Hermer’s interpretation of international law.
Dubai-resident influencers first started to irk the rest of us when, during lockdown, they used their social media ‘careers’ to sidestep travel restrictions which applied to mere holidaymakers. But even if you can’t forgive their smugness, only a tiny proportion of UK expats in Dubai are influencers. There are an astonishing 240,000 UK citizens living in the UAE. Not all are wealthy. Many are young professional people who have no interest in pouting with a cocktail and splashing themselves across Instagram. They include teachers, engineers, doctors, IT workers; many of them simply trying to earn a decent living which they find difficult back home.
Iran may or may not continue to blast the Gulf states, but now it has established them as a target, the UK government is potentially facing a huge crisis in evacuating vast numbers of UK citizens, on a scale not seen before. It is about time we focused on that rather than sniggering at the discomfiture of a few Instagrammers.
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