Isabel Oakeshott: Economic Migrant, Tax Exile, Future Evacuee?

The commentators who fled Britain for lower taxes have built careers sneering at the country they left - yet still rely on it when the world turns dangerous.

Photo by Robert Bock on Unsplash

Yesterday, I wrote a post on BlueSky - a joke some may call it.

I wrote that the prospect of Isabel Oakeshott, economic migrant to the UAE and slagger-off-in-Chief of the United Kingdom potentially fleeing what is now a war zone back to the UK might produce in me a level of schadenfreude so intense that I would physically topple over.

It was sharp, unkind and it was also, I think, appropriate.

Now, I will say this - missiles are not funny. Foreign workers and paramedics and innocent civilians being killed is not funny.

As it stands, dozens of people have been injured or killed, airports have been shuttered and families are sleeping away from windows while interception systems have been lighting up the night skies for days now. There is, and never will be, nothing amusing about civilians living in fear for their lives while under drone fire.

Hypocrisy, however? That, my friend, is absolutely fair game - and it’s also at the centre of what I, and it appears many others, feel about Oakeshott and her Dubai based ilk.

Because there’s something that we have to be clear about here - Oakeshott did not move to Dubai because she was persecuted in the United Kingdom, nor did she immigrate to flee censorship or imprisonment. Despite what she may say, she certainly did not pack her life up for the desert because of political terror.

She moved, in her own words, for tax reasons, specifically VAT on private schooling - something that makes her, say it with me, an economic migrant.

She assessed the fiscal environment she found herself in in the UK, decided it was insufficiently favourable to her personal income, and relocated to a low-tax jurisdiction.

There is, at the crux of this, nothing wrong with this decision. Adults can live where they like - that’s not the issue.

The issue is tone and narrative.

For years now, Oakeshott and many of her ideological bedfellows have treated immigration to the United Kingdom as an intrinsically moral issue. We have been told time and time again that migrants are attracted by “pull factors”, that they strain public services and that Britain has become soft touch. We’ve been told that the people that come to the shores of this island are exploiting us - they’re “invaders”, they’re “economic migrants”.

These monikers of course don’t get applied to you if you move to Dubai - no, no. Brits moving to Dubai tend to be savvy. Strategic. Entrepreneurial. Expats, not immigrants. That particular asymmetry has always annoyed me.

Dubai specifically has become something of a bolt hole for a certain type of British commentator - people who wrap themselves ever so tightly in the rhetoric of patriotism while at the same time optimising their personal tax exposure. Out of one corner of their mouths we hear that they had to leave Britain because it’s “broken”, “in decline” or failing - while on the other side, we get told about the amazing life of not paying tax, while sipping cocktails on the terrace of a hotel overlooking a marina.

That’s great - but now that Marina is under missile interception arcs, putting us in the situation we now find ourselves in - that should our fellow countrymen in the UAE now need evacuation, who does the evacuating?

The British state, of course. Our armed forces. The Foreign Office. Civil servants. Diplomats. The exact apparatus of the supposedly broken state that so many of these interlocutors have routinely described as bloated, incompetent, parasitic, woke, the blob… the descriptors go on.

This certainly did not go unnoticed by a certain Sir Ed Davey who this week said, more bluntly than even I could manage that:

“We rightly expect our Armed Forces to protect British citizens around the world in crises like this. But that includes tax exiles like Isabel Oakeshott and washed-up old footballers who mock ordinary people pay our taxes here [in the UK]. So as we protect them, does the prime minister agree that it’s only right for tax exiles to start paying taxes to fund our Armed Forces just like the rest of us do.”

I personally, cannot improve on that.

Now, the issue isn’t about protection - British Citizens are British Citizens, and if they’re in a perilous situation and need protection and support, they should get both. Full stop.

But Davey’s point resonates so hard because it strikes at that imbalance that we’ve seen for years now. Where we’ve had commentators sitting on sunlit balconies telling us all how shit the UK is, and how we’re all dupes for still paying taxes who are now, when things are going tits up, asking for and expecting support.

I moved to the UK a decade ago from South Africa. I came for opportunity. Plain and simple. I am, one would say, one of those economic migrants as well. The truth is that there were opportunities in the UK that simply did not exist in South Africa - it offered a larger economy, a different political culture, a healthcare system that I wanted to work in and a chance to build a life with my husband that felt more stable.

When we moved, however, we did not spend our days on social media declaring just how terrible South Africa was and just how marvellous the UK was in comparison. That would have been tasteless, and something you simply don’t do. I hold a special kind of ire at South Africans sitting in Clapham telling everyone back home just how shit their lives are.

There are, of course, issues in SA - we lived in a constant state of vigilance that was exhausting, and the infrastructure collapsing around us on a day to day basis was incredibly frustrating to live through. Those realities influenced our decision.

But we never wished South Africa ill. We never mocked the people who decided to stay or who were not in a position to migrate. We refused to build our public identity around sneering at the place we came from.

I just got back from a week and a bit’s trip to South Africa, and I was genuinely happy that things had improved since I left. Me living in the UK does not require bitterness towards South Africa to justify my decision. You can leave a country for opportunity while still wishing it well. You can build a life elsewhere without constructing an entire persona based around the alleged decline of the place you left.

People migrate - it is one of the most normal human behaviours in history and it has been happening for millenia. People move for many different reasons - whether that be safety, work, education or love. All of that is legitimate.

What isn’t legitimate, however, is spending years building a media career on contempt for the country you left while simultaneously expecting that country to bail you out when things go sideways.

Oakeshott and her cohort didn’t just leave - they’ve made a performance of leaving. They’ve monetised their disdain. They’ve turned “Britain is broken” into content, into brand identity, into a justification for why they shouldn’t have to contribute to the society that educated them, that gave them opportunities, that provided the platform from which they now sneer.

And here’s the thing that really sticks uncomfortably in my throat:

The UK will help them anyway.

When the evacuation flights are organised, when the consular staff are working round the clock, when the armed forces are deployed - Isabel Oakeshott will be on those lists.

She’ll get the protection, and she’ll get the support. Not because she’s earned it through her contributions or her loyalty, but because that’s what the UK does. Because for all its flaws - and God knows there are many - this country doesn’t abandon its citizens when they’re in danger.

Even the ones who’ve spent years telling us how pathetic the rest of us all are for staying and paying our taxes.

That generosity, that fundamental decency, is precisely what makes the hypocrisy so galling. The “broken” state they’ve mocked will function exactly as it should. The “bloated” civil service will do its job. The “woke” armed forces will risk their lives if necessary, and in doing so, they’ll demonstrate something that Oakeshott and her ilk have never quite grasped: that a society’s strength isn’t measured by how low it can push its tax rates or how successfully it can be gamed by the wealthy. It’s measured by how it treats people when things fall apart - even the people who’ve shown it nothing but contempt.

That’s not weakness, that’s civilisation - and it’s something you can’t buy in Dubai, no matter how good the view from the terrace.