Have Brits in the Middle East been abandoned?

0:02Sky News. The full story first.

0:11Sally Lockwood:Brits in the Middle East are increasingly angry at the government's attempts to get them home. And this is why.

0:21Sally Lockwood:How does a banana trigger a CIA-backed coup? Do AirPods herald the arrival of a new global order? What do LED lights say about the future of humanity? I'm Ed Conway, and in each episode of my new podcast, Stuff Matters, I take an object, crack it open, and reveal the world-shaping forces hidden inside. This is economics told through the things we think we understand. Search Stuff Matters on your podcast app to listen and follow.

0:55Sally Lockwood:Hi everyone, Neil here. and I'm just wondering if, like me, you might have spent any time recently just imagining what it must be like to be stuck in the Middle East. Yeah, pretty grim, isn't it? Well, the government's first chartered plane was due to return Wednesday night from Oman. It ended up being cancelled. And we're working as fast as possible to get our people out. As of today, over 140 ,000 individuals in the region have registered their presence. Still, other countries managed to start repatriating their passport holders well before the UK. So there's plenty of frustration, perhaps even anger.

1:33Sally Lockwood:We're also hearing that those who've made the region their home are considering leaving for good. So in just a moment, we're going to be heading to Dubai. Sky's Sally Lockwood is there. But what about those who've been lucky enough to get on a flight out? Well, here's the view from 35 ,000 feet.

1:51Hi Neil, I'm Poppy and I'm from Kent in the UK. I was stuck in Muscat in Oman when my flight from Singapore to Doha got diverted about an hour before we were due to land. I was due to then go from Doha to London. I was flying with Qatar Airlines and was stuck for four days, five days before we heard anything. I did register and paid£350 for the repatriation flight, but then I never heard anything back about that. Luckily, today, Thursday, I woke up and Qatar Airlines had organised a flight back to London and I'm now on that flight. I feel quite relieved. I was having quite an OK and all right time in Muscat, all considering, but I am happy to be going home.

2:33Sally Lockwood:So let's turn to Sky's Sally Lockwood, who's in Dubai. The last six days of this war, it feels a lot longer, and I almost can't imagine my old life that, you know, we had here six days ago because this has been all-consuming. You're a resident, you up sticks and moved to Dubai. What was it that attracted you to the place? What is your life like, or indeed, what was your life like before the bombs started flying? We came over here during my maternity leave for the winter to escape the weather because my husband's office is here. The majority of his work is in the Middle East. 80 % of the people he works with are in the Middle East and it made his life a lot easier being based over here during that period.

3:13And then when we got over here, we just had our first child and it is a really, really safe place to live when you've got young kids. And it was very appealing. But also, you know, the lifestyle that I can give my daughter where she's safe to just run in the street and she can be outside all the time and I don't need to worry about the same sort of security issues that I would have worried about living in North West London, which, by the way, I certainly miss and I love. I just weighed it up and I thought I'd be bringing them back to the UK just for my job. And so it was a decision that I really wrestled with, but we ended up making the decision to stay here because I felt that it was better for the both of them.

3:51And luckily, I managed to kind of make things work in my new chapter over here. I can use this as a great regional base. You can get anywhere in one flight virtually from the UAE.

4:02Sally Lockwood:Can I ask, do you actually still feel safe there? This is the first story I've really covered in the UAE since I moved to the region a year ago. I've been working for Sky in the region in and out of Israel and Qatar and Jordan, places like that, but I haven't had to really do any work from here until now. And I do think that things might change now. I feel like this could be a new chapter in terms of what my work life might look like here because of the geopolitics of the situation, I don't feel like we're going to go back to how things were. There are clearly lots of people who want to leave, but so far haven't been able to.

4:35Sally Lockwood:We have seen the first repatriation flight departing, but what do we know about that flight that was meant to leave Oman last night, but didn't very clearly? It was the first evacuation flight put on by the Foreign Office. And I was speaking to people on WhatsApp who were heading that way, who were heading for the Omani border yesterday, and they made it there. and they said it was just absolute chaos. One person who I was speaking to got there and was told she didn't have a seat on the flight. And then the people that did make it on described to Sky News that there were around four hours that it took to get everyone checked in.

5:14They were then bussed out to the aircraft and it was another hour and a half on the tarmac, at which point people were getting really agitated. There were people getting quite panicked, trying to bang on the windows. and then they got brought back to the terminal and were told that the flight wasn't going. And one person said that one of the reasons they were told it wasn't going was because the captain was over hours. We don't know, of course, exactly what was going on.

5:41Sally Lockwood:Sorry, Sally, you're going to have to say that again. So four hours of check-in, hour and a half on the tarmac, and what, the pilot's not allowed to do the job because he's gone out over his hours? We don't know the full extent of what was going on behind the scenes and all the logistics that the airport, the airline and the foreign office were having to deal with. Because, of course, this is a really active war zone at the moment. You know, even Oman has been targeted in the last week. The airspace is open one moment and closed the next. But certainly, I mean, these people, some of them were already really distressed, you know, after several days of really kind of scary scenes here in the UAE, things that they didn't expect to see on a holiday somewhere like this.

6:24and then they eventually make it to that flight that they you know are really psyched up for that many have spent hours trying to organize with honsula phone calls and i've spoken to so many people pulling their hair out not knowing what to do they probably felt elated that they'd got a seat on an aircraft and then this happens there is another flight going today but there are other people that have just taken matters into their own hands and one woman said to me you know we aren't even going to hang around wait for this evacuation flight anymore we have just booked a flight to Manchester via Saudi Arabia.

6:54So they have flown themselves to Saudi and then they're going to get into Manchester that way. And apparently there are routes at the moment via Riyadh or Jeddah and people are just having to be really creative. But I would say I don't want to over egg the fact that people are desperate and distressed, but some people are. You know, some people are really freaked out about what's happened and some people are really distressed because, you know, they came out on holiday. They didn't expect this. I've heard from mothers in the UK whose teenagers are out here and they're really worried and they just want to get them home and there are young people who haven't been through anything like this before and you know are really concerned.

7:29Sally Lockwood:So what has the government response been? I don't want to attribute blame here because this is a really volatile situation. Airlines are doing their best. I know the UK embassy is doing its best here. I'm in touch with them every day but it's not an easy situation. They've got tens of thousands of tourists who want to get back to the UK. And commercial airlines are trying to put on flights each day. But because we've got missiles and drones coming in every day, Neil, six missiles already have been fired at the UAE today, and more than 120 drones. And some of them have got through. I think one missile and six drones have got through.

8:07It's hard for airlines to plan in that sort of environment. So I heard from someone who was boarding a flight, an Emirates flight at nine o 'clock this morning and it was cancelled as they were getting on the plane.

8:16Sally Lockwood:I understand that everyone is behind the scenes working as hard as possible, but I suspect that a reason that so many Brits are frustrated is that they have seen other nations taking off with their nationals on chartered planes. Germany, Spain, a number of others have actually managed to do what we have not. Yeah, and why is that? I'd love to be able to give you the answer, but I would say I've got probably hundreds of people in my inbox and comments on social media contacting me, asking me for information because they either can't get through on consular lines or they just can't get a flight anywhere.

8:51There was one woman who was on the phone to my colleague Fiona last night in hysterics because her flight had been cancelled. She was just told by British Airways, we're not even moving the date of your flight, we're cancelling it and here's a refund. So she felt quite stranded. And then she got an update this morning and she's been rebooked on a flight on the 13th of March. I mean, that's more than a week away. And she's staying in a hotel that, you know, she could afford for a few nights, but she can't afford for two weeks. It's super expensive. And yeah, I think there are a lot of Brits here who do feel like the government haven't done enough and that they just haven't had enough support.

9:26And I'm not talking about British citizens, by the way, of which there are a lot living here. I'm talking about the people who are stranded here on holidays. they are contacting me asking for information because they don't feel like they're getting it elsewhere.

9:40Sally Lockwood:If Brits in the region, they're on holiday or therefore whatever, are dissatisfied with the way in which our government is acting, I wonder what our partners in the region are feeling about it. You know, those countries which are currently hosting, some of them even paying for the hotels that Brits are staying in right now. I wonder what they are feeling. Yeah, absolutely. I mean, the UAE government have been putting out advisories about how they're going to support tourists caught up in this situation. And very early on in the war, they put out a notice saying we are going to cover the costs of tourists who've been stranded here and delayed and had flight cancellations due to what's going on.

10:22And it gave the government here, you know, a lot of good PR because people were praising them, saying, oh, my goodness, this is such a wonderful thing that the UAE government is doing. But even that has caused confusion because there are people staying in hotels who say, well, I actually don't even know how this works. I don't know how I'm going to get my bills covered. And at the moment, I'm just sort of waiting to hear. I feel like the biggest problem at the moment is that there's an information vacuum. I don't feel like people are getting enough information as to what support they're getting and what is going to happen to them.

10:53And I think that has left people really stressed out. It's left people really anxious. And I think there's a sense of feeling trapped here at the moment that you can't just leave.

11:03Sally Lockwood:For all that there are clearly plenty of people clamouring to get out of the region at the moment. I mean, there are some who seem relatively happy with the situation. I mean, I've been following a number of influencer accounts, particularly exactly where you are, Dubai, who seem more than content to just wait it out. Yeah, absolutely. I mean, there's a lot of people, even on my residence WhatsApp group, you know, who have really drunk the Dubai Kool-Aid and they will not hear a negative word said about it. And even with, you know, missiles and drones flying into the airspace here and with the huge, loud thud of the air defence systems kicking in, which is quite scary.

11:41We hear them every day at the moment. They're saying, oh, well, you know, I still feel a lot safer here than I would with the knife crime in the UK. And, you know, there's comments like that going around. There's so many influencers who live out here and call the UAE their home. They really lean into the content creator sector over here. And they are posting very similar comments and videos about how this is still the safest place in the world to live. and I know that there's been a lot of cynical questions as to why they're all sort of saying the same thing. Look, you know, these influencers are not journalists.

12:17A lot of their content is commercially driven. Who knows why they're all posting that? But what I would say is there are also people who live here who are saying a similar thing and there has been a lot of praise for the fact that the UAE does have some of the best air defence systems in the world and they are keeping us safe right now. And personally for me as a resident, I'm really grateful for that.

12:41Sally Lockwood:Can I just ask you about that then, Sally? I mean, do you think then that amongst your friends in the expat community, there will be people giving genuine thought to remigrating, to heading somewhere else, if not the United Kingdom, but getting out of Dubai itself on a permanent basis? Yeah, you know, Neil, there are three types of people that you'll meet in the UAE at the moment. Those that feel completely safe and are very relaxed about what's going on think it will blow over and they are not going anywhere. And then there are people who are a bit freaked out and shaken up and want to go home.

13:13And I know residents who are crossing into Oman and Saudi today to try and get flights out. I know people who managed to book and get out through Abu Dhabi and they've been residents here for years. I'm hearing a lot more chatter in the last couple of days from residents who are looking to leave as well. I do think some of those people will maybe have a second thought about living here after this certainly we've interviewed people who've said that to us I think it'll be interesting to see how that transpires because people who live here really really do love it it's a great lifestyle and it's a lucky place to live in terms of being in the centre of the world geographically and it's very safe and it's sunny and all the rest of it but I am now hearing from people who are having second thoughts about whether they want to live here.

13:57Even I felt homesick in the last few days and kind of craved being back home in north-west London. And then there's the third demographic of people who are just waiting for the house prices to drop so that they can invest and get on the property ladder.

14:09Sally Lockwood:What about tourism? I mean, the buildings behind you suggest, you know, that Dubai has a thriving economy and could probably stand to lose a bit of the tourist trade. But do you think people are going to be returning to this region in the numbers that they have done over the past few years, given what we have seen? It's a good question. The tourism industry here is worth billions and billions of dollars to the UAE economy. And it is a super popular destination in the winter for people. I've heard from two different types of tourists in the last week. Some who say, no, of course I'll come back.

14:40And this is just a one-off freak incident. And others who say, you know what, I would give it a second thought now. And I think it really depends on what kind of character you are, perhaps what age you are, how intrepid you are, how worldly you are. I think there will be people who perhaps aren't the most intrepid of travellers that would have loved to have just come and spent a week in a five star hotel on a beach with home comforts around them and everyone speaking English. Who may now think, actually, you know what, I didn't realise Iran was so close. And I've seen those images of missiles being shot down.

15:14And I do think that will impact a certain demographic of traveller. Yes.

15:17Sally Lockwood:Just to conclude where we started, I just keep hearing from contacts out there that there is a level of dissatisfaction that goes beyond the minor, that people are saying that the British government has failed its citizens that have found themselves for whatever reason in the region. How fair an assessment is that? I mean, for tourists here, I think that the UK government could have done a lot more a lot sooner. I think there will be British tourists here who are saying that they feel failed by the UK government because we're six days into this war and many of them are still sitting in hotels, not sure who's going to pay the bill and with no flight booked.

15:59And for them, their lives are on hold at the moment and they feel, to a certain extent, a bit trapped. And I think for residents it's very different. And something I should also mention, Neil, which has really kind of hit a nerve with some people who live here, is that there have been a lot of comments about how the British expat community who've chosen to live over here tax free don't deserve to be bailed out by the British government or for them to come to their rescue. And what I would say about those sorts of comments is that has upset people here because they're not looking to be bailed out by the British government.

16:31They just want the ability to book a flight out to what is fast becoming a war zone for them and their children. And I think that sort of rivalry that we see between people who live in the UK and might be a bit bitter about people who live over here tax free. And then some of the comments you also read and hear from expats who've chosen to make the UAE their home, the way they talk about the UK and sound quite smug that they live over here. I think that has caused a bit of friction, if I'm honest. But what I would say is I think when it comes to criticism of British citizens living over here at the moment, I think it's slightly tone deaf to speak like that in the current climate.

17:08When, you know, even I'm watching my toddler freak out in the park when there's loud bangs of air defence blasts in the sky and fast jets flying overhead. And I think at the moment people just want to keep their families safe. They're not looking for anyone to bail them out. What people are going through here right now is something very few could have expected. But I certainly think for those tens of thousands of British tourists who are here, I wouldn't be surprised if many of them feel very let down by the British government at the moment.

17:39Sally Lockwood:Well, Sally, your family, your team, you all look after yourselves. We'll speak again. Thanks very much. Good to see you, Neil. Thank you. Governments always say their first duty is to protect their citizens. Moments like this are when that promise is tested. Downing Street says it's doing everything it can. For those still waiting to come home, that probably doesn't feel anywhere near enough. Remember, you can get in touch with This Is Why directly. Chris from Byron Bay says this, I hear there's unrest amongst Iranian supporters in Bahrain, culminating in anti-government protests. Can someone please cover the implications of Trump's actions on the governments of majority Muslim populations?

18:18Sally Lockwood:Chris, we will definitely have a look at that. On the use of British air bases by American forces, Joe Brannan emails. Why did Starmer buckle under pressure from Trump if you say you won't let the US have access to bases? Why not keep that position? Fair point, Joe. You can email me directly, why, at sky.uk. And do make sure to follow wherever you get your podcasts. We're back tomorrow.

18:45Sally Lockwood:How does a banana trigger a CIA-backed coup? Do AirPods herald the arrival of a new global order? What do LED lights say about the future of humanity? I'm Ed Conway, and in each episode of my new podcast, Stuff Matters, I take an object, crack it open, and reveal the world-shaping forces hidden inside. This is economics told through the things we think we understand. Search Stuff Matters on your podcast app to listen and follow.