Perhaps people who haven't lived abroad recently don't realise that things have changed and people are not "remote from reality". You see these days we don't have to wait six months for a copy of The Times and letters from home to arrive by sea and land. We have internet, on-line papers, TV, radio, Skype, webcams. We travel a lot and many of us spend several weeks a year in the UK. In fact since we travel around the UK visiting family and friends, we may see and hear more than people who only live in one place.
Perhaps the OP is getting us confused with people who really did "flee" or with exiles in outposts of the Empire?
It really isn't like that any more, you know.