Tony Blair

Number one...

He said, everyone's going to speak English in Singapore.

Now, there were lots of people who said to him at the time, no, no, we've been thrown out of Malaysia effectively.

We're now a fledgling country, a city-state country.

We need to have our own local language.

We need to be true to our roots and everything.

He said, no, English is the language of the world and we're all going to speak English.

That's what happens in Singapore.

Secondly, he said,

We're going to get the best intellectual capital and management capital from wherever it exists in the world, and we're going to bring it to Singapore.

And again, people said, no, we should stand on our own two feet.

And you're also bringing in the British who we've got all these disputes with.

And he said, no, I'm going to bring in the best from wherever they are, and they're going to come to Singapore.

Today, Singapore exports intellectual capital, right?

And the third thing he did was he said there's going to be no corruption.

And one of the ways we're going to do that is we're going to make sure our political leaders are well paid, which the Singapore leaders are the best paid in the world by a factor of about 10 for the next person.

And there's going to be zero tolerance of corruption.

Zero tolerance of corruption.

And those are the three decisions that were instrumental in building Singapore today.

No, you definitely can.