There are lots of reasons why Britain should not be helping prop-up Singapore’s authoritarian regime, whose low-regulation economy is admired by many Brexiteers.
Singapore doesn’t have a free press. While it does have elections, the same party – indeed the same family – have dominated since 1959, limiting the growth of opposition parties, and freedom of expression, assembly and association.
Its justice system still uses both capital and corporal punishment: while I was there in the autumn, signs on metro station escalators warned that upskirting had recently been banned (good), on punishment of caning (less so).
In the run-up to the 2023 Singapore presidential elections, the government “harassed, intimidated, and persecuted civil society activists and independent media practitioners,” according to Human Rights Watch.
The same year, it executed a record number of people for drug-related offences. One evening, my family and I were approached by a robot cop.
And yet the elite police force in Singapore, responsible for guarding politicians, political policing, and ‘counter-terrorism’ – which is to say, the officers responsible for preventing proper democracy from developing – are recruited by the British army.
Singapore pays Britain to supply it with a praetorian guard – the Gurkha Contingent – which is commanded by an ex-British army officer and ex-public school boy (Canford, in Dorset). Out of a total professional police force of around 10,000, about 2,000 are Gurkhas.
These Gurkhas live in their own barracks – Mount Vernon Camp – with their families, supposedly to “ensure their neutrality”. In reality (as one Singaporean put it to me), it is to ensure they are loyal to the state, and not the local population they police.
The risk being that local police officers, in any democratic uprising, might side with democracy.
I asked the Ministry of Defence why Britain still recruits Gurkhas to serve as Singapore’s political police.
The only answer they gave is that Singapore pays – a fact which Declassified revealed back in 2020.
And which doesn’t seem sufficient: it would be surprising if Britain supplied – say – the similarly authoritarian Moroccan government with political police, even if it paid.
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All aboard
It’s not just the Gurkhas. Under the 1971 five power defence arrangements, Britain – along with Australia and New Zealand – maintains a special military relationship with Singapore, with troops often training together.
The Navy is looking to intensify this relationship, and, in 2023 – as part of the post-Brexit attempt to reconnect with former colonies – Sunak’s government announced a new ‘strategic partnership’ with Singapore, including a “first of its kind partnership between Singapore’s new Digital and Intelligence Service and the UK”.
Britain also has a naval base in Singapore, which, since 2021, has been the primary logistics hub for two British navy offshore patrol ships – HMS Spey and HMS Tamar – the first Royal Navy vessels stationed in the region since the handover of Hong Kong in 1997.
The deployment is because, according to the head of the Navy, the region is “crucial” to Britain’s prosperity and security.
Yet the real reason must have something to do with the cultural legacy of the British empire, which explains why Singapore speaks English, has an English-style legal system, has a campus of Dulwich College, and posters for British universities everywhere.
Financial hub
But what’s particularly interesting is Singapore’s present, and future. Singapore – like many other former, and still kind of British territories – is a vital node for the twin towers of global capitalism: offshore finance, and the oil industry.
We travelled to the island state after a period in Vietnam and Laos. And the contrast, with the latter, in particular, was extraordinary. In Laos, GDP per capita is around $2,000. In Singapore, it’s $85,000.
And what quickly became clear is that this isn’t just a contrast. It’s a process. It’s not that Laos is poor and Singapore is rich. Singapore is rich because Laos – and Indonesia, Malaysia, the Philippines, Vietnam and Cambodia – are poor.
Like a plug hole at the centre of Southeast Asia, it sucks wealth from the region, hosting the financial institutions and corporate headquarters which skim profit off the labour across Southeast Asia.
As HSBC Singapore says, it is the “Regional Hub for Global Businesses,” where corporate executives live, unfettered by demands for tax from the countries in which they do business.
Partly, this wealth is used to build a luxury playground for the super-rich. But mostly, it’s then sent off to join the electronic herd thundering around the world – and, occasionally – puddling in other offshore spaces, most of which are also British or semi-British.
Singapore – population 6 million – is ranked fourth in the Global Financial Centres Index. Two of the three cities above it – London and Hong Kong – are also part of Britain’s vestigial financial empire. The British Chamber of Commerce – Singapore has thousands of members.
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Black gold
Similarly, Singapore is an important node in the global oil trade. Firstly, because it sits on the Malacca Strait – the world’s second busiest shipping channel, a long-term centre for piracy, and a crucial bottleneck for oil tankers, including those transporting wares for BP and Shell.
Secondly, as James Mariott, an oil expert at PlatformLondon and co-author of the book Crude Britannia, tells me, Singapore hosts a vast oil-products storage terminal – one of the main places in Asia where black gold is stashed when prices dip.
Third, because it’s a major fuelling port for ships – a massive maritime petrol station. And fourth: it’s one of the world’s most important oil trading hubs. As Marriott puts it, oil trading – buying and selling ownership of barrels of oil, or derivatives built on them – “is the most lucrative part” of the oil industry.
There’s also the fact that Singapore is in a different time zone from the other hubs, in Europe and North America, which makes it important to oil traders.
Another key factor is that the authoritarian government imposes a low-tax, low regulation, pro-corporate regime, on which international capital thrives.
Singapore-on-Thames?
As a theme park – a place for Westerners who can afford to spend a few days with our young daughters enjoying the attractions – Singapore was extraordinary. But if we stayed out late in the evenings, we’d sometimes glimpse the flipside: after dusk, trucks carrying lines of migrant workers wind their way along the streets.
The supposed utopia operates by hiding tens of thousands of migrant labourers in vast, cramped dormitories away from the central areas, often far from metro or bus stops.
And thousands more commute from Malaysia every day – a dystopian vision of the emerging future, where wealth is extracted into luxury offshore havens, protected externally by violent borders, and internally, by growing authoritarianism.
Officially, Singapore gained independence in 1965. But if we want to understand how the British state uses former imperial connections and ongoing military deployments not just to support British capital, but to prop up the increasingly offshore corporate-capitalist system, then Singapore is a good place to start.
