LETTER: Conservatives aren't tigers

THE Conservatives have come up with the concept of "tigerism", supposedly copying the Asian tiger economies which are held to be "deregulated, low-tax, free-market" and emphasise law and order and self-reliance ("Major puts a tiger in his think-tank", 10 December).

Not so easy. East Asian economies may have low taxes, strong law and order and exalt self-reliance and "family values". But their governments strongly intervene in economic strategy, picking winners and maintaining extremely close links with major private companies, which are often protected at home and helped abroad. Hardly deregulated economies. Some may have law and order but expect anti-individualistic social conformity in return. They may have low direct taxes, but they impose heavy saving-to-income ratios on their citizens, or aim to do so. That economic miracle par excellence, Singapore, does indeed have a low tax regime, but the government is more than prepared to guide the direction in which discretionary income is spent if that is what their idea of a successful economy requires: eg cars cost five times their open market value. They may have private monopolies, but they invest massively through them in infrastructure, controlling the companies either through the toleration of bribes or through tight, even draconian regulation.

So there is no simple and coherent set of policies which are consistent with right-wing ideology, leave alone with the wishes of voters. The Tories had better do some fieldwork before they start sprouting ill-grounded nonsense about the empirical bases of their pre-determined and ideology- driven policies.

Dr Chakravarthi Ram-Prasad

Trinity College, Oxford