The Telegraph on Sunday has an article suggesting we should look to Hong Kong as a blueprint for a post Brexit Britain (HERE) but it overlooks the fact that the colony was for a couple of hundred years the gateway to China and particularly so during the communist era. In fact as late as twenty years ago visitors to China routinely stopped in Hong Kong to obtained Chinese visas. We are a gateway into Europe while we remain a member of the single market and the customs union but after we leave? I think we will lose that advantage making a Hong Kong model all but impossible.
Others suggest we could become like Singapore but this city state was originally a trading base for the East India company and has grown rich more recently because it is a member of ASEAN, (motto: One vision, One identity, One community) a free trade area involving about ten South East Asian nations. We are leaving a free trade area. Singapore is also semi-authoritarian with limited press freedom and harsh punishment for minor crimes. It is undeniable that its wealth is to a large extent due to trade and the work ethic of its people but so is Germany yet no Brexiteer ever suggests we adopt that model. It must always be low tax, low regulation economies with poor social conditions and massive inequality that we should emulate.
That should tell us all we need to know about those calling for this sort of model.
