Paul Collier

Labour has sneered at talk of ‘Singapore-on-Thames’ as a post-Brexit economic model, while the tax-cutting wing of the Conservatives has embraced it with a passion. But neither seem to know much about how Singapore actually achieved its remarkable prosperity. Lee Kwan Yew, the country’s prime minister from 1959 to 1990 (and one of the greatest national leaders since 1945), transformed Singapore from corruption, division and poverty by moral, fiscal, social and market acts of genius which gave people a new sense of hopeful purpose. First, the moral genius. The population of Singapore was bitterly divided by racial and ideological antagonisms that had left the country isolated from its neighbours.

Soon, the short-term credit being lent abundantly to Britain’s small and medium firms to stave off bankruptcy during the shutdown will be due to be repaid. The prospect of this forcing many businesses to shed jobs by the thousands is rightly ringing alarm bells. The can could be kicked down the road for a few months by postponing repayment. But the people who kicked the can would still have to confront the problem. They would find that firms saddled with accumulated short-term debt, and revenues that remain reduced, will want to shed workers.

If you ever need a reminder of what northern Britain has achieved, I’d recommend a trip to York. The National Railway Museum brilliantly evokes the local creative energy that produced Stephenson’s Rocket which ran on the world’s first inter-city passenger railway and ushered in the railway age. Just over the River Ouse is the chocolate museum, which celebrates York’s chocolate-makers and their entrepreneurial legacy. It’s easy to be scornful about Boris Johnson’s talk of ‘levelling up’. Real levelling up would mean that for the foreseeable future, the North will grow faster than London, which seems almost unimaginable to Whitehall and in the City.

Brexit was a mutiny. Like all mutinies, it was driven by anger at authority rather than by a strategy for the future. To date, the consequences have been to deepen polarisation, but triumphant victory for either side is not the way forward. That there is no majority for any of the current options is entirely understandable: they are all awful. We can only break the polarisation with a new strategy. The Brexit mutiny should have been a wake-up call. Instead, the elite are angry that the mutiny was not suppressed, while the mutineers have become ever more distrustful. There is a way out of this nightmare. Why are all the Brexit options awful?

The Conservative party has to move beyond Brexit and leaders: what is it going to be about? I suggest it has to be about healing capitalism. Capitalism is the only system that is capable of delivering mass prosperity, but it cannot be left on autopilot. Once every few decades it veers off track and requires active public policy. In the mid-19th century, the old Tory party was revolutionised by Disraeli’s ‘one nation’ agenda, correcting the social catastrophes of early industrialisation. In the 1930s, there was no Disraeli: indeed, no political party rose to the challenge of mass unemployment, which was addressed as an inadvertent by-product of rearmament.

[audioplayer src="http://rss.acast.com/viewfrom22/howtofixtherefugeecrisis/media.mp3" title="Paul Collier and Douglas Murray discuss how to fix the migrant crisis" startat=32] Listen [/audioplayer]For all its difficulties, Europe is prosperous and safe: one of the best places on Earth. Many other societies have yet to achieve this happy state: some are murderous and poor. Two of the most troubled zones in the world are near Europe: the Middle East, and the Sahelian belt which spans northern Africa. Unsurprisingly, many of the people who live in these societies would rather live in Europe. Impeded by immigration controls, a small minority of this group are taking matters into their own hands, trying to enter Europe illegally by boat across the Mediterranean.

The response to the Ukip surge has reached the panic stage. Just as British business and academia chorused the economic benefits of Union in the final stages of the Scottish referendum campaign, now their refrain is of the economic benefits of immigration. A letter from ten chief executives in the Financial Times pronounced that unimpeded immigration from Eastern Europe is highly valuable. The previous week economists estimated that immigration from Eastern Europe had contributed £20 billion net in taxes. But Ukip supporters are no longer overawed by businessmen and dons, so what is to be done? Within the accepted rules of English social hierarchy, the tempting implication for the rest of us is condescension.