Singapore is often depicted as an authoritarian dictatorship come economic paradise. Conservatives like to fantasise about Singapore, seeing it as the prime example of a small state, low-tax, low-regulation economy that they would like to emulate.
But Singapore’s success has been driven by an idea that is antithetical to the Conservative mind: that the state can be as efficient and effective as the market.
Singapore is not the neoliberal paradise it has been heralded as below are four policy areas we could learn from: –
A sovereign wealth fund to accompany fiscal policy: the Singaporean state asserts its primacy in the island-state’s economy. Compulsory purchase-orders are common; the state frequently buys private turf for the public good. Singapore has built one of the world’s richest sovereign wealth funds, Temasek, which is accountable to Singapore’s Ministry of Finance. It helps to finance the state’s long-term infrastructure projects and, in many ways, resembles the UK’s Green Investment Bank, which the Conservatives sold off in 2015.
With politicians, “What you pay is what you get”. Singaporean politicians are paid considerably more than their Western counterparts. To reduce corruption Lee Kuan Yew, Singapore’s first Prime Minister, pegged public salaries to the private sector. His motivation was to incentivise the most talented people to pursue a career in politics, judging that an improvement in the quality of governance justified the higher wage bill. The Singaporean Prime Minister earns more than £1,000,000 while a minister earns over £600,000. If a similar approach were taken for local government elections in the UK, we might encourage a higher level of scrutiny and interest in local government elections, attract more candidates and provide well-paid jobs across the country, rather than pension pots for Tory councillors.
The home ownership rate in Singapore is 91%. More than 80% of Singaporeans live in housing built by the government, which also provides financing to help them access It. Singapore’s Housing and Development Board wouldn’t be a bad place to look for inspiration as we struggle to confront our own housing crisis. It was influenced by the UK’s own Addison report, published by the Liberal MP Dr Christopher Addison in 1919.
Most controversially, stringent press regulations. Lee Kuan Yew was once questioned by an American correspondent on Singapore’s restrictions on the right to free speech. He responded, “we will not allow the media to play the role of judge, jury and executioner as it does in America”. As a result, Singapore has no press barons. Singaporean media companies are required to be PLCs, and the size of the stake someone can own is capped to prevent media tycoons from buying a media outlet and using it to control the mediascape. In Singapore, a wannabe politician would never be able to make a name for themselves by inventing falsehoods to sell stories because the Singaporean government fiercely defends itself in the courts of law. It has successfully sued The Economist, The New York Times and Bloomberg for libel. By contrast, the European Commission has refused to take a similar approach to the many falsehoods peddled about it. Look how that turned out.
Lee Kuan Yew was prone to point out that many of the anti-democratic measures he was criticised for came from the British legal system Singapore inherited. The difference was that he used them.
* David is the former Parliamentary Candidate for North Dorset. He helped write our party's response to the government's National Data Strategy and has recently moved back to his hometown, Cheltenham.
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6 Comments
The UK has a sovereign wealth fund, it is known as the national debt and is rather negative, already blown by an inefficient govn over the past decades. The question is how Singapore manages to have such low tax rates, pay its politicians generously, provide a huge swathe of public housing AND end up with a huge wealth fund whilst having close to zero natural resources? It might have something to do with the capitalist nature of most of its popualce and their aversion to printing money to prop up the welfare state.
“A sovereign wealth fund to accompany fiscal policy”
Yes Singapore has one of these. It also has a National Debt of 126.3% of GDP.
https://www.ceicdata.com/en/indicator/singapore/government-debt–of-nominal-gdp
Puzzled? Well that’s because the true nature of any National Debt and the reasons why anyone would want to run a “sovereign wealth fund” are rarely, if ever, explained by the economic mainstream.
A SWF is only needed by countries like Singapore, Norway and Australia (temporarily) which have lots of money coming into the country from net exports. In the latter two cases, there are or were from oil and mineral sales, which could cause the exchange rates of the national currencies to skyrocket. To prevent this happening, a SWF is used to export capital. As we don’t have that particular problem, we don’t need a SWF. Period.
A SWF is also, perhaps surprisngly, a way of increasing the National Debt. Australia had the “problem”, ten years or so ago, that it was selling so much coal and iron ore to the Chinese that its economy was overheating. It ran a budget surplus. The neoliberals considered this to be a good thing! The money men knew better. They wanted to buy up Government debt which the neolibs were on their way to abolishing. Solution: Put the surplus into a SWF so that the Govt then has some debt which can be sold.
Again we don’t have that particular problem.
I’m not clear from this what aspects of Singapore the Conservatives (and which Conservatives) are saying we should emulate.
And I dread to think what kind of press we would get as a party if we had a policy that the government should sue the press.
Joe Otten – I even imagine them reintroducing Sedition as a crime.
The Brexiteer line is intended to demonstrate that a smallish country off the coast of a continent can have a glorious future. The argument is wholly ignorant in terms of economics, geography and history.
If people are interested in Singapore, I strongly suggest that they take a look at our sister-party there, the Singapore Democratic Party, and its Leader Dr Chee Soon Juan, who is one of the bravest and most committed liberals I have met.
“Conservatives like to fantasise about Singapore, seeing it as the prime example of a small state, low-tax, low-regulation economy that they would like to emulate”
Is this really true? Can you provide any examples? The “Singapore-on-Thames” cliche is, in my experience, mainly used, disapprovingly, by those of a pro-EU disposition. As the OP goes on to explain Singapore is in % terms a large state with high levels of regulation.
As such it might appeal to Labour supporters more than Tories. One of the arguments for socialism is that having the means of production in state hands would mean there would be less need for taxes on the poor.