Callum Price: Davey’s downer on the ‘Dubai Deanos’ and why it’s such muddled thinking

Callum Price is Director of Communications at the Institute of Economic Affairs, and a former Government special adviser. 

When I was a child, I used to play Playmobil ‘cowboys and Indians’ with a friend every day at the after-school club (we were about 6 and it was the early 2000s, yet to be made aware of the cultural insensitivities this threw up). One day, my friend didn’t want to play anymore, because the club got a new SEGA Megadrive, which was obviously far more entertaining. I was gutted and rather petulant about it – until I too embraced the wonders of the SEGA Megadrive.

I was reminded of this recently when Ed Davey decided to use his intervention at PMQs as the war in the Middle East unfolded to take aim at those who have moved to Dubai and paid less in UK tax as a result.

Davey probably thought he was making a very sensible and patriotic point. Why should those who have left our shores be recipients of our support?

At first glance there is some instinctive logic to this. They aren’t paying in to the coffers, so why should they be able to take out of them?

However, as many others have pointed out, there are a range of problems with this logic; not least that no-one argued that those we evacuated from Sudan or Afghanistan at times of crisis should foot their own bill.

Not only that, but our entire welfare state system is built on the premise that it is there for British citizens when they need it. In an ideal world, everyone pays into it when they can, and gets out of it what they must. It might feel strange to consider RAF repatriation flights part of the welfare state, but the logic stands just the same.

If we want to be stricter about deciding who benefits from the Treasury’s coffers based on who contributes, then I’m sure many Conservative Home readers would happily partake. But it would surprise me if those who are using the Middle East crisis to take aim at ‘tax avoiders’ in Dubai would share those sympathies.

So, what is really behind the animosity directed at those who have emigrated to Dubai?

On the surface, it seems like a primarily aesthetic debate. The Dubai Deanos vs the British Patriots. To the former Dubai is a safe haven of sunny beaches and a (much) lower tax burden, much preferable to Broken Britain. To the latter, it’s a gauche and cultureless desert that could only appeal to the uncivilised.

I admit to personally being closer to the latter than the former on purely aesthetic grounds, but 240,000 Brits have moved there for something – friends and relatives among them. Can we not accept that people might seek to use their agency to go and find a better life for themselves and their families, even if it might not be our own version of a better life?

When we scratch beneath the surface it appears that many can’t, political elites and otherwise, which is a damning illustration of their attitude to prosperity. It is a sort of Dubai Derangement Syndrome; embracing decline because prosperity is gauche. The belief that having the gall to do something radical to improve your lot in life is an act of vile self-interest, and fundamentally un-British. Taking radical action to achieve something better is beyond the pale. We have it good enough and we should be happy about it.

It is the same philosophy that leads politicians to crow about ‘1.5 per cent growth, the fastest in the G7’ as a major victory: a broad comfort with mediocrity. It is managed decline, with a patriotic spin; accepting a lesser lot to spite those who have dared stray from the accepted path.

But we shouldn’t decry ambition, we should venerate it. In the week that Adam Smith’s Wealth of Nations celebrates its 250th anniversary, we should remember just how important self-interest is to a functioning economy, we don’t create wealth or deliver prosperity without it. So why make villains of those who are demonstrating these values?

On the contrary, we should be doing all that we can to get them back, so they can achieve their aims in Britain and we can bask in the reflective benefits of their ambition. Dubai has a lot going for it inherently; so does Britain. But we can do significantly better in the disputed ground in between, by fixing our fundamental economic problems.

If people were more able to easily find fulfilling employment, keep more of the money they earned from it, and spend it on more than just their energy bills and replacing the phone that got stolen at the bus stop, then Dubai and its competitors might become relatively less appealing. After all, at six years old I was able to embrace the SEGA Megadrive to keep playing with my friend – and it turned out to be quite fun too.

Mr. Davey, you may not like what Dubai has to offer, but don’t tarnish those who do with the brush of ‘tax exiles’ and ‘washed-up old footballers’. If we were able to attract their like and their ambition, instead of scaring them away, we would all feel the benefits.