Two Tory dreams. First ‘Singapore on Thames 1/n

Singapore is lauded by the Tories as being a low taxation enterprising nation with small government and high productivity 2/n

The Singaporean government owns most of the land and property in Singapore. The rental that citizens and companies pay flow to the government Singapore is not a low tax economy, it is a low income tax economy 3/n

The Singaporean government is business friendly and simultaneously highly interventionist. Government departments exist to encourage business development and provide education and business advice support. These departments shape industrial and business strategy for the nation 4/n

Singapore is highly entrepreneurial and simultaneously highly planned. The Singaporean government plans for the long term and is highly interventionist in using tax breaks to encourage the investment that meets the long term vision 5/n

Tory policy, deeply neoliberal at this time, is as different from the Singapore strategy as it is possible to get. The Tories don’t understand Singapore at all. The same can be said for ‘Silicon Valley on Thames’ 6/n

Silicon Valley exists because of two significant factors … 7/n

The immense public investment by the US government in military R&D that creates a rich source of IP for entrepreneurs to exploit 8/n

And the sophisticated financial ecosystem that has evolved around entrepreneurship and supports entrepreneurs in the USA 9/n

We have neither of these in the UK. We do have works class creative minds but without the other two factors we cannot achieve this Tory dream 10/n

When a UK company is world beating, like ARM, which supplies world beating high performance computer chip designs used by Apple et al what do we do? 11/n

The short term neoliberal financial model lead the UK Gov to allow the to sale of the company to foreign investors to make a quick buck rather than build a global scale strategic asset that ARM could have become 12/n

So just like the Singapore example, the Tories don’t have a clue how Silicon Valley is successful. In both cases it’s an example of ignorant aspiration with no chance of coming true. We need better leaders. Now.