Want to know what London will be like in 20 years? Go to Singapore

In a shopping arcade in the Little India neighbourhood of Singapore I talked about shirts with a Tamil stallholder with hennaed hair. “This linen one I’m wearing,” I said, “I bought in Vietnam. Ho Chi Minh City.” “I been there,” said the stallholder. “You like it?” “Not really. Too many motorbikes. People begging. Everybody want something from you. You don’t get any of that here.” We – my guide, Wong Wee Tee, and I – walked out of the arcade and there, on a three-lane highway, was a double-parked car, its hazards flashing. Wee Tee, who could tell from the licence plate that the driver was Malaysian, was indignant. “You would never get a Singaporean behaving like that. I want to tell him: 'This is not a parking lot!’,” she said. Then, aware that she had perhaps gone over the top, she added: “Please don’t write that I am nationalistic!” [caption id="" align="alignright" width="350"] Singapore's central business district at night. Photo by Carl Ottersen.[/caption] This was my first morning in Singapore and it was kind of what I had been expecting. The city-state at the southern tip of peninsular Malaysia is a gleaming monument to free enterprise with a compliant citizenship that gets ticketed for spitting out chewing gum, jaywalking – and, presumably, double-parking. The people seem happy (certainly they do in Little India) but are too conformist for their own good. And in any case there’s a dark, authoritarian side you scarcely hear about because they keep a lid on it. Thank goodness we’re not like that. Only the thing is, I think we are. In the course of four days I saw more and more parallels between modern Britain and this former British colony that the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge are scheduled to visit next week. It’s like a tropical London, 20 years down the line – corporate, glitzy and exclusive. Wee Tee, who may have been patriotic but was also charming and sincere in her views, was anxious that I di