The Left hates Singapore because of anti-capitalist dogma, not evidence
In 1965, Singapore went through its own “no-deal Brexit”: an illtempered split with the Malaysian federation. The smart money, back then, was on Malaysia. Foreign policy experts and FT columnists assured one another that the city-state was too small to make a success of independence.
In the event, 1965 was the beginning of Singapore’s take-off: the moment when, as its founding premier
Lee Kuan Yew was later to put it, it “plugged into the international economic grid”.
I spent last week in Singapore, marvelling at its cloud-capp’d towers and gorgeous palaces. Free-marketers have always loved the place: a swampy equatorial island, dependent on imports even for its food, water and electricity, that has raised itself to the highest degree of opulence through unrestricted commerce.
Leftists conversely tend to dislike it, seeing it as some sort of Dickensian sweatshop. Which is bizarre because, on almost any metric, Singapore looks after its poor better than Western countries do. State education and public transport are outstanding. All citizens have a form of health and social insurance through mandatory savings accounts. Satisfaction with Singapore’s healthcare system, according to the King’s Fund, is 86 per cent, as against our 57 per cent. Infant mortality is 1.7 per thousand to our 3.9. Life expectancy has risen since 1960 from 66 to 83 in Singapore; the equivalent rise here was from 71 to 81.
At the same time, Singapore has assimilated a huge number of immigrants, doubling its population in 30 years. It is arguably the most successful multi-ethnic society in the world, though its intellectuals have recently started fretting about what they call “Chinese privilege” – proof that Singapore has picked up the Anglosphere’s bad ideas along with its good ones.
The ruling People’s Action Party still considers itself socialist, though it has redefined that word to mean compassion, rather than state intervention. Singapore’s leaders believe, as John F Kennedy once put it, that the best route out of poverty is a secure job. It’s true that there is a cost: some elderly Singaporeans do menial work because they can’t afford to retire. But, overall, it is better to be poor, frail or elderly in Singapore than in most places.
Competitive taxes and light regulations do not, as Corbynites imagine, mean low wages. On the contrary, Singaporeans have the eighth-highest income on the planet. As the brilliant Sir James Dyson told me last week, no one can accuse him of investing there because of cheap labour. But high wage costs are more than balanced by business-friendly regulations, low taxes and a strong legal system.
By all means criticise Singapore for its relative authoritarianism (it has little time for gay equality, for example), or for its lack of political pluralism. But how odd to attack an economic system that delivers in practice because it seems too capitalist in theory.
If Britain leaves the EU with no deal, it will follow Singapore in unilaterally removing most of its tariffs and assuming control of its technical standards. Singapore has trade agreements with Europe, Japan and the United States, but has avoided being drawn into the regulatory orbit of any of them. It determines its standards in a remarkably pragmatic, sector-by-sector way, despite pressure from both Washington and Beijing to side with them.
Britain should aim to do something similar. It might, for example, suit us to match EU food safety standards, but to incline towards the United States when it comes to e-commerce and data – areas where Europe is over-regulated. This would mean opting out of the EU’s heavy-handed data protection rules, the GDPR, as well as rejecting digital taxes. The key thing is to make a genuine virtue of independence.
We could do a lot worse than to launch our independent trade policy by negotiating a comprehensive mutual recognition agreement, covering goods services and qualifications, with the most open economies in the world, namely Singapore, Australia and New Zealand. Get the start right, and the rest will follow.