In a few weeks, Singapore observes the 200th anniversary of Sir Stamford Raffles’ arrival. The spot where he landed is marked with a statue – arms folded, looking out to sea – while the 52-storey headquarters of a local bank towers behind him. It’s a popular selfie spot.
Singapore’s government plans a series of exhibitions and historic walking trails that will turn the spotlight on the island’s long and successful history – both before and after the imperial adventurer strode ashore and planted the union flag in January 1819.
Back in Britain, the Tories are marking the Singapore bicentennial in zanier fashion. The British government is reviving the idea that a post-Brexit UK will be freed to play an enlarged role in world affairs, once again floating the idea of a Singapore-style economic model but coupling this with talk of new military bases overseas.
Jeremy Hunt, writing in the Mail on Sunday, declares admiration for Singapore for plugging into the “international economic grid” after independence in 1965: “there could be few better instructions for us as we make our post-Brexit future”, he writes. Hunt urges a strengthening of Britain’s links with some of the world’s most dynamic economies. Gavin Williamson, interviewed in the Sunday Telegraph, calls for Britain to be a “true global player” after Brexit with an enhanced military role in south-east Asia and the Caribbean.
Both interventions combine a grain of sense with a dose of disturbing fantasy. It is true that Singapore – along with Taiwan, South Korea and Hong Kong – reaped huge benefits from globalisation in the 1960s. And the rapid growth of Asia’s middle class today makes this region fertile ground for Britain’s services sector. It makes sense for Britain to combine an economic tilt to the Pacific with a stronger defence role, too. From Singapore to Australia, the west’s military partners in the region would welcome a strategic counterweight to China.
But Britain in the 21st century is a very different place from 1960s Singapore. Led by a government ruthlessly focused on growth, Singapore made enormous gains from export-oriented industrialisation – but this took place with two conditions that modern Britain lacks.
First, much of the rest of Asia was turned inwards, either under communism or, as India and Malaysia did, emphasising import substitution – the practice of producing goods at home to increase self-sufficiency and reduce reliance on imports. Britain does not enjoy this advantage over its European neighbours; German carmakers and Italian fashion designers are already plugged into the global grid. Second, Singapore’s industrialisation was fuelled to an extraordinary degree by migrant labour, with foreign workers growing from 3.2% of the labour force in 1970 to 34.7% in 2010.
Hunt is right to draw attention to Britain’s peerless reputation as a global supplier of higher education. The UK is home to three of the world’s top 10 universities. But his government’s attitude to migration – foolishly insisting on counting overseas students towards the net migration target – risks doing needless damage to this sector. The UK could be pushed into third place as a global destination for overseas students, behind the US and Australia, while Canada is rapidly catching up in terms of student numbers.
Meanwhile, more than four decades after Britain’s comprehensive withdrawal as a military presence in the region, Theresa May’s government is stepping up defence ties in the Middle East and Asia. In April, Britain opened a permanent naval base in Bahrain – the first such base east of Suez since 1971. The UK will open a military training base in Oman in March 2019.
There is a plausible argument for this engagement – if economic power is shifting east, then so are Britain’s strategic interests. China’s economic rise has been accompanied by an increasingly assertive attitude in the vast maritime region that Beijing regards as its backyard. This has presented countries such as Singapore and Australia with a tricky challenge. For both, China is their biggest trading partner while they look to the US as a partner for security. As tension between Beijing and Washington grows, countries that look both ways will come under increasing pressure. They will need all the friends they can get.
But Britain lacks the appetite to be a global military power. After Iraq and Afghanistan, the challenge of winning domestic support for military intervention abroad is immense, as David Cameron discovered over Syria. And our capabilities are modest: Britain’s surface fleet shrank from 78 vessels in 2013 to 72 vessels in 2017. Though the fleet is now growing again, it will remain below the 2013 figure. The defence select committee reported a few years ago that the surface fleet was “way below the critical mass required” for the tasks confronting it.
If the Tories are serious about a pivot to Asia, their actions must chime with their rhetoric. Britain could make itself far more attractive to international students by restoring their right to work in the UK after graduation. A genuine military revival east of Suez requires increased naval capability, or greater discretion over which tasks the navy is asked to do. There is scope for a true “look east” strategy, but it would involve making difficult choices.
