No crying foul over public sector budget cuts. 'You need help, our role is to enable your success and what's a couple of thousand square hectares between friends?' Jurong Island cost the government $4 billion dollars: 10 years on the tenants contributed $38 billion to the national coffers.
That's what we should be benchmarking against under the new Conservative government. Not literally – it's hard enough to attract young professionals to the average industrial estate, let alone an artificial manufacturing island in the Thames. But Cameron's second term has to bring a more heart on sleeves industrial strategy if we're to achieve the hallowed goal of rebalancing UK plc.
Credit where it's due, as Mike Turner of GKN points out (see p16), the Coalition made a solid start. There've been more apprenticeships, Catapult centres and the first explicit industrial policy since the 1970s. We'll always remember 2010-15 as when Whitehall dropped the cold shoulder and invited us back in to Number 10 for an aperitif. Thanks for the snifter, but now it's time for a Singapore Sling to really get this party started.
Here's an island nation with a legacy of skills shortages and a manufacturing base that historically contributed just 12% of GDP. Singapore's government and industry fought back. Together they threw the kitchen sink at becoming a global hub for knowledge-led sectors. A bold target was set to grow manufacturing to 25% of national GDP.
Efforts are supported by fierce public:private co-investment and hustling for foreign direct investment. And when an international OEM comes to Singapore, it establishes joint training centres with local firms as a quid pro quo for tax incentives. Full-bloodied training programmes are also in place to equip nationals with the skill-sets most in demand among manufacturers.
It's meant Singapore has hurtled for the line with all the muscularity of an Olympic-class sprinter. Britain, meanwhile, resembles a reluctant dad with a history of hamstring tears limbering up for the school sports day parents' race. It's a race we can still win. But only, Mr Cameron, if we get pumped up for it.
