If you were paying attention to The Straits Times yesterday, one of their writers based in London wrote a pretty polarising piece, comparing the similarities concerning Brexit and Singapore’s independence in 1965.
Charles Tan explained that he voted to leave the European Union because he was smitten by the abstract concepts of national identity and the “uplifting message of optimism” despite the risks of exiting the politico-economic coalition. Furthermore, he was struck by the parallels between the Britain-EU relationship and the one between Singapore and Malaysia pre-separation.
“It was, in some ways, almost a triumph of hope over fear,” he writes in his piece.
Confounding it may be (clearly there are a lot more elements at play in the case of Brexit), but it’s a sentiment echoed by many others. Meanwhile, many more deeply disagree with such a jingoistic cognition — one of whom is Donald Low, who eloquently explained why the “somewhat seductive and instinctively appealing” view is downright wrong.
Read his viral post below:
