Anton Savage: Keir Starmer should take a leaf out of Lee Kuan Yew’s book
Risking his reputation for the sake of a few dresses is something the first prime minister of Singapore simply wouldn’t have countenanced
Originally published in the Business Post.
Kier Starmer could learn much from Lee Kuan Yew. If you’re unfamiliar, Lee Kuan Yew was the man who guided Singapore from third world to first.
In recent years, the government of Singapore has not been easy to publicly praise – the tendency to execute drug importers and beat people with canes has (rightly) drawn criticism from all and sundry. But their tendency toward autocracy and brutality doesn’t change the reality of the economic and societal miracle their first prime minister brought about.
In the early 1960s, Lee Kuan Yew found himself in charge of a country of two million people, dumped out of Malaysia to fend for themselves, clinging desperately to the last vestiges of British colonial involvement for military protection and economic survival.
Within a few years of their independence, the British prime minister Harold Wilson informed the city state that the UK would be withdrawing all forces within the decade, channelling money to its problems at home, not a continued presence east of the Suez.
Singapore found itself undefended, surrounded by potentially unfriendly neighbours, in a part of the world shredded by global conflict, with no significant economic drivers. Few analysts gave them much prospect of survival, never mind progressing to be a global centre of industry.
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