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wo centuries ago this year, Sir Stamford Raffl es claimed the tropical island settlement of Singapura as a trading post for the British East India Company on the maritime route to China. As recently as 60 years ago, it was still only a crown colony, offering few natural resources other than a strategically located harbour. Today, it’s a sovereign city state, the second-richest nation by gross national income per head (more than £70,000, according to the World Bank) and a global leader in education, technology and sustainability.


If anyone sinking Singapore slings at the ivory-fronted hotel named after Raffl es were to look towards the opulent Marina Bay Sands resort – three skyscrapers topped by what appears to be an ocean liner – another symbol of this nation’s dizzying ascent may spring to mind: Crazy Rich Asians. The hit 2018 romcom has taken nearly $240 million (£184 million) at box offi ces worldwide on a budget of $30 million. Focusing on the Gucci-clad, gimlet-eyed ambition of Singapore’s “chuppies” (Chinese yuppies) and “henwees” (high-net-worth individuals), it features socialites who wouldn’t bat an eyelash at spending $30,000 on plastic surgery for their pet fi sh. “Every time I visit Singapore I’m struck by how cutting-edge it is. No one worries about the past,” says Joan Braca, president of food and beverage solutions for Tate & Lyle, which established its Asia Pacifi c hub here in 2013. “As a small island, it has to look both outward and forward, which makes it a great centre for innovation. In both government and business, things happen quickly here.” Singapore’s astuteness and dynamism haven’t been lost on Jeremy Hunt, either. “There could be few better instructions for us as we make our post- Brexit future,” the foreign secretary wrote in the Mail on Sunday during his visit in January, impressed by the state’s far-sighted investments in education and infrastructure. Other prominent Brexiters – for instance, Tory backbencher Owen Paterson and Leave.EU donor Peter Hargreaves, co-founder of Hargreaves Lansdown – have also argued that the


UK should follow Singapore’s lead in wooing foreign investors with a hi-tech, low-tax economy. “When people claim that this model can be replicated by the UK, they are showing some naivety,” argues Dario Acconci, MD of the South East Asian operation of Hawksford, a company that helps foreign fi rms to set up in Singapore. “This nation is almost a sociological and genetic experiment conducted by Lee Kuan Yew,” he says, referring to the pragmatic authoritarian who, as Singapore’s fi rst prime minister, led its meteoric rise between 1959 and 1990. “It’s a young, small republic. You can’t apply his approach to a country with the UK’s history, size and political diversity.” While economic advancement has not been matched by sociocultural progression – there are restrictions on press freedom and LGBT+ rights, for instance – Singapore holds many attractions for British fi rms. The standard corporate tax rate is 17 per cent, compared with 19 per cent in the UK, but a temporary rate of fi ve per cent is available to foreign fi rms establishing bases here. The talent pool in this hi-tech gateway to China is well educated too. Not for nothing has Sir James Dyson – a vocal Brexiter – chosen to “future-proof” his company by moving its HQ here from the UK. Singapore is terrifi c for tech-heads. Robots clean the carpets at Changi Airport; the world’s fi rst driverless taxis entered operation here; and 110,000 lampposts are soon to join the internet of things. They will feature equipment that could enable them to work as weather stations, speed traps, navigation aids for autonomous vehicles, facial-recognition cameras and even noise sensors capable of detecting car crashes. Such advances have led the World Economic Forum to rank Singapore as the “most digital-savvy country” in its latest Global Information Technology Report.


Sweet spot: Tate & Lyle set up premises in Singapore in 2013. Its president of food and beverage solutions, Joan Braca (left), says the city state is a ‘great centre for innovation’


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