It's funny how times have changed.

In a Feb. 6 New Statesman article, people in Britain have apparently been entertaining the idea of making their country the "Singapore of the West".

How and why did Singapore go from becoming a colonial outpost to a relatively fashionable idea?

During the Brexit campaign, Singapore was held up as a potential model for Britain’s future as Britain's exit from the European Union shares a narrative superficially similar to Singapore's separation from Malaysia.

Singapore's subsequent prosperity in the face of adversity and eking out a decent living in the middle of a hostile region is a veiled threat by Britain that they too could do the same -- but at the expense of their neighbours.

All it has to do to capture the highly mobile global capital is to rework money laundering regulations and use the weak pound and lower corporate taxes to steal foreign investment from the rest of Europe.

Ta-da.

However, that's pretty much all there is to the "Be like Singapore" game plan as the article pointed out the obvious fallacies and shortcomings of relying on a caricature of what Singapore is as a way forward.

The ingredients in Singapore's secret sauce, which might be impossible to acquire overnight, include:

Singapore broke up trade unions.

Singapore is unapologetically interventionist.

Technocrats run the government, not buffoons.

The state is the biggest provider of housing.

The ruling government still has vestigial traces of left-wing, socialist leanings.

The sovereign wealth fund underwrites public finances.

Singaporeans have unusually high forced savings rates.

Immigration policy is a tool deployed in the name of social and economic interest.

Singapore's prosperity is entirely dependent on a functioning global economy and cannot afford to be insular or inward-looking.

Singaporeans are comfortably middle-class and not aspiring to become part of the bourgeoisie.

In other words, Singapore is more left and right and pragmatic than Britain will ever be.

Which is why Britain will, more likely than not, never be the Singapore of the West.

It can still try to though.

You can read the full article here.

Related article:

US demoted to ‘flawed democracy’, same as S’pore: Economist Intelligence Unit