The Times has reported this morning that:
Boris Johnson will hold talks with business leaders today about cutting red tape as ministers draw up plans to turn Britain into the “Singapore of Europe” now that it has left the European Union.
The prime minister will speak to 30 senior leaders about topics such as “regulatory freedoms” and reforming EU rules. Rishi Sunak, the chancellor, has been charged by Mr Johnson with leading a cross-Whitehall committee which will require departments to closely examine which regulations can be reformed.
The article adds:
A government source said that Mr Johnson was pushing for Britain to become a low-tax, low-regulation regime like Singapore. Last month Mr Johnson raised the prospect of tax cuts for entrepreneurs. He told a Facebook question-and-answer session: “We'll be looking at the tax environment and the regulatory environment and everything we can do to encourage and support business.”
Amongst those to be addressed are BT, BP, Tesco, Unilever and Jaguar Land Rover.
So, not to be too subtle about it the Prime Minister has three plans.
The first is it ensure that the level playing field conditions in the EU exit deal are breached as soon as possible, creating considerable problems for the businesses he will be addressing as they face the tariff barriers that this will create on top of the administrative ones that they already face.
Second, he is seeking to promote a ‘race to the bottom' in international regulation, so ensuring that it is generally undermined at cost to all it protects (otherwise known as you and me).
And third, in the process he seeks to do what all proponents of tax havens seek to achieve, which is to undermine the power of the democratically elected state in pursuit of the goals of the unelected financial elite.
Call it a fascist agenda if you like, because that's what it is.
As I have argued in my two books on tax havens, their use has always had one purpose at the end of the day, and that is to be the aircraft carriers for the assault on democratic institutions that provide the protection that the wealthy think impede their own well-being, which is defined by them as the preservation of their status.
There is nothing remotely entrepreneurial about this proposal.
There is not a thing in it that is pro-business.
There is overwhelming evidence that business benefits most when there is both regulation, ensuring a level playing field on which to compete exists, and consistency in that regulation that ensures that costs of compliance are minimised.
The stance Johnson is taking is diametrically opposed to both of these. That, of course, is why business always opposed Brexit; business knew the EU and UK membership of it supported their ability to deliver at lowest cost. Johnson's plans do the exact opposite. It is very unlikely that he will have a very receptive audience tonight.
But Johnson will not care, of course: his aim is to say one thing (that he's doing this to be pro-business) when he will actually be doing another (trashing democracy).
These are worrying times: the UK is now set on a path that sets us at odds with many countries, and with the well-being of the people of the world, with whom (and some may not like me saying this) real businesses (as opposed to financial services providers) have better aligned interests on this issue.
There may be trouble ahead.....
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This is just the sort of thing the EU was rightly worried about. If we breach our obligations, they will have no compunction about taking countervailing measures.
The UK is not Singapore. We are not a city state of 5.5 million people living in 280 square miles, on the doorstep of Malaysia and Indonesia. But nonetheless, I look forward to Johnson’s plans to copy Singapore’s model of nearly 80% of the population living in subsidised public housing.
🙂
And all the largets companies being state-owned or controlled
It’s unlikely that the UK will seek to copy the Singapore model of running a large net surplus in exports by depreciating the pound to discourage imports and keeping exports cheap.
That would certainly cause the EU big problems. The EU is dominated by big net exporters themselves and it’s not arithmetically possible for everyone to sell more to others than they buy from others.
So Germany and the wider EU need to have a net importer on their doorstep. That’s really all that matters to them. Not the details of how the UK runs its economy. That’s for us to decide via the democratic process and I, for one, will be arguing that Boris and Co have had quite enough of their own way recently and this has to stop!
So much to comment on in there. People have trashed the ‘Singapore on Thames’ idea for many reasons it will not work, due to geography, culture, governance and much more.
The bonfire of ‘Red Tape’ led, literally to the bonfire at Grenfell.
Why would any business belive for one moment anything this bunch of chancers says? Businesses have been well and truly shafted from the top of Scotland down to Brixham and West to Wales. It looks like the silence from business was a simple divide and rule technique, each was told a ‘special deal’ would be made to favour them and of course, no such deals were made.
I agree that they are itching to break the agreement ASAP to answer those concerns of friction, though we all know it will lead to more chaos.
If only people had warned of this over the past 4 years 😉
Because nothing says fascism like less regulation and lower taxes.
This is a parody, right?
No. It’s not
My meaning is abundantly clear from what I wrote
So is yours
German tax system under the nazis was a mess. The wealthy benefitted hugely from it.
What has hat to do with discussion here
One benefit of copying Singapore would be a rational approach to defence policy and defence procurement.
Explain
Possibly he/she means that we should buy more stuff; like the £90 million F35…..it’s so expensive that the cost of 48-planes-per-carrier means that the collective cost of aircraft exceeds that of the carrier. Not too reliable either…
https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2020/01/not-a-straight-shooter-dod-review-cites-fleet-of-faults-in-f-35-program/
Defence procurement = Buy expensive stuff that doesn’t work well ?
Defence spending……I certainly did not mean buying pointless aircraft for redundant carriers; I meant buying kit that works and is relevant to our needs and – as far as possible – making here.
Just like the Tories have selectively quoted Adam Smith, they now have to selectively quote from the way Government in Singapore is practiced.
As Steve Keen has observed, their selective Neo-lib reductionist bent just goes too far and creates just more problems.
I have to ask again, how come we became ruled by such stupid people?
It is a rather fundamental mistake to think that Singapore is ‘low regulation’. Possessing chewing gum will get you a large fine, coming out of your bathroom naked and being visible through the windows of your flat likewise. Others have noted most people live in council houses / flats. It is also basically a one party very paternalistic state. So highly controlled and regulated especially at a personal behaviour level. There is zero chance of that working in the UK. It works in Singapore because most people are maintained at a standard of living at or above what they consider acceptable. As usual the Tories latch onto a few bits they like and ignore the rest.
It might be informative to consider the case of Hout Bay in Cape Town where by late brother’s family live. It is enclosed by Table Mountain and the rest of the Peninsula mountains so there are only three routes in and out (and those are twisty, narrow and slow), so in many ways it is quite cut off. It is quite a large suburb now, but maybe 80% mostly affluent and white. It is also rather plagued by crime, and in the middle there is a large and growing shanty town with many thousands of African and Coloured residents. They eke out a rather precarious living as there is little in the way of welfare or other support in South Africa. Why are they there? Because the affluent population want cooks, gardeners, maids, etc, but they won’t pay enough wages that would allow any of those to afford property (which is very expensive) in Hout Bay, and nor for the most part will they fund the Council to provide sufficient affordable housing. So the solution advocated by many is to ‘clear the camp’, when the actual solution is to deal with the housing and wages issue. Commuting into Hout Bay is a non-starter due to distance, cost, time, traffic jams, and very little public transport.
So for the Tories maybe if they could turn the M25 into a fortified wall and evict the poor from London they could have their Singapore on Thames rich people only paradise, but even then they will still have the Hout Bay problem – they are not going to empty the bins and wait on tables themselves. I think these folk dream of some impossible elite nirvana which will actually turn out like a Johannesburg – Sandton gilded cage. Sandton is 2 acre deluxe mansions with swimming pools, double mercedes on the drive, etc. Looking more closely electrified security fences, barred windows, panic buttons in every room, private security patrols at every street corner, etc. My brother used to lie awake at night listening to the gun shots in the distance.
Dr Rideout, very interesting. I also used to live in Southern Africa, Southern/Northan Rhodesia as it was (Bulawayo/Ndola) and growing up there we had a ‘garden boy’ and ‘house boy’ who lived in a small single room kaya at the end of the garden. There were townships on the edge of town where families lived. The RSA was even to me at age 10 very strange and alien, we only went for the seaside at Durban (a 3 day car trip!).
We left in ’64 just before the independence of Zambia so coming to the UK in the swinging 60s was quite a culture shock. Luckily with the advent of YouTube, I can see what it’s like now and don’t recognise any of it (of course over 50 years ago now).
On topic, all these puff pieces put out are for the consumption of the faithful and the next day’s papers. None of it will come to pass not only for the practical reasons you state but there is no intention of following through.
[…] mentioned this morning the confirmation that the UK government has made that it plans to turn the UK into a tax haven. I […]
It is as I have been saying for a few years, the ONLY aim of BrexShit.
It is the reason we live in a coup state through the engineered election to install a working majority for Bozo to deliver SoT from whence to resist the ever closer Union of the EU and it’s ambitions to get multilateral with the rest of Eurasia and the other continents.
It is why the corporate fascists ‘Albert Speers, Agnelli types’ are setting up the ‘Cable News’ networks to multiply the propaganda and Narrative control, that Corbyn and co are fighting against :
‘ The broadcasting regulator, Ofcom, gave the go-ahead last month to Murdoch’s right-leaning news channel, which is expected to be on air for four to five hours a night. It is expected to compete with Andrew Neil’s GB News, with the pair racing to be the first on air.’
When we listened and believed our current MSM that has gaslighted us increasingly over a generation – we have walked into this with our eyes wide shut. All that we are told to believe to be true by them daily must be expected to be a LIE that serves and advances their agenda.
Any fight back is met by a steel hand as the actions against Assange, Salmond, Corbyn and Craig Murray this coming week shows.
So I am afraid that only a mass, grassroots , localised and self motivated groups which can coalesce into a nationwide uprising will stop and reverse this Back to the Past global robber barons endeavour. Like the GJ’s.
There will be many a political imprisonments and paramilitary violence against protests. Anything and anyone not approved will be pilloried by the new super media so the populace joins in. Including Professionals, Academics and Judges. It is happening already and will multiply.
As long as it is Johnson and his ERG hijacking power nothing will ever work for them. They have never had any coherent strategy because they are notorious for being undecisive, trying to make something work then it doesn’t then change it to something else then it never does. They just live in a fantasy land. It is becoming very clear, every single day, that they are an utter failure.
Today the fishing industries went to knock at their doors of Westminster then the meat industries followed and we shall see more businesses waking up to doing the same in the coming days and weeks then the re-opening businesses after the lockdown shall follow, then then invisible businesses too. Things are already piling up for Johnson and Co. at an alarming speed in a way they would no longer be able to cope with the the ongoing business complaints and demands for compensation etc, let alone be able to plan for and implement their so called Singapore on Thames.
Then the day of reckoning shall come when the pack of lies and problems would fall on their faces as they are getting exposed gradually.
https://brexitlies.com/
To paraphrase a conversation about the Great Economic Collapse 2008:
“at least we shall see the corrupt bankers and financiers in prison after this, won’t we” ?
“I’m rather afraid that all that will happen is that the poor and immigrants get blamed, as usual”
And, as we all know, a few bankers got fined, the customers paid the fines, and the poor and immigrants got blamed. And the bail-out money went into paying the bankers large bonuses for collapsing the global economy.
Nothing changes.