The Workers' Party has become a bit of a comedy troupe over the past decade, undermining itself in its role as a representative of the local opposition.

Between the lies, scandals and silly ideas proven wrong five minutes after they were aired, the number of topics it is able to speak on without sounding either incompetent or hypocritical is shrinking every month.

After Kenneth Tiong gave his show in Parliament, Harpreet Singh posted a comment about ministerial salaries from outside of it, accusing the PAP of struggling to attract the top talent not because of the money but the perceived groupthink and resistance to different ideas:

In itself, the argument is not immediately invalid and could be examined on its merits. It's not a baseless, venomous, populist attack a'la Ken Tiong.

It does, however, have a few fundamental weaknesses.

First of all, Singapore government is widely considered one of the best if not the best in the world. Not by locals but by foreigners. It regularly tops international rankings, and if you don't trust these, all you have to do is look at objective economic and social data to see how well-managed the country has been.

It keeps growing, when most of its peers are not. It has no debt to speak of, it doesn't run on deficit spending like nearly all other developed nations, records very low crime, remains spotlessly clean and enjoys top tier infrastructure, education and healthcare.

There is, arguably, no other country in the world which matches Singapore's achievements across all of these categories at the same time (save, perhaps, for the Gulf monarchies of UAE or Qatar, which have near unlimited resources to plug any gaps).

That alone vindicates the PAP, its governance practices and the ideas behind them.

If Harpreet Singh, or anybody else, wants to make an argument that different ideas should be allowed into the inner circle, he would do better to first find examples of where in the world they have proved themselves.

This is because of argument no. 2 – Workers' Party is in no position to lecture the PAP on policy or talent acquisition.

The party has regularly embarrassed itself by peddling proposals that were either disproven a while later (like the HDB oversupply fears) or had already failed around the world (like Jamus Lim's wealth tax).

But even funnier is the fact that the party telling the PAP how to attract smart people, has long been struggling to find suitable candidates itself.

Now, I understand that recruiting big names might be harder for an opposition party in Singapore, but its pull is so weak that it has only ever been able to contest a handful of constituencies, and even then finding itself forced to field candidates with no meaningful experience and/or controversial opinions.

Of course, the best example is Raeesah Khan – whose CV and personal views had been known before she was offered a GRC spot. She ended up lying in Parliament, which set off a domino that nearly brought the entire party down.

But it's not like the party leadership has learned from the lesson. During GE25 it fielded i.a. Siti Alia Mattar, a housewife and WP volunteer, whose main motivation for the run was Workers' Party's position on Palestine.

And let's not pretend that even its new MPs like Andre Low, Eileen Chong or Abdul Muhaimin, are high-flyers with stellar careers.

Workers' Party couldn't even recruit a dozen decent names who would back its ideas in Parliament, but is now lecturing the PAP on attracting top talent to run the country?

MPs might not be making as much money as ministers, but surely almost S$200,000 per year is not unattractive (now going up to S$260,000). This puts them in the Top 10% earners in the country.

So, given the money shouldn't be an issue, before the Workers' Party tries to admonish the government, it should first reflect on why so few good candidates want to represent it in Parliament.

Perhaps it's the atrocious quality of its policy proposals, most of which have been poorly copied from the manifestos of the Western Left. Or the fact that if you dare to question the leadership, you might find yourself booted like Daniel Goh.

But it's the PAP that's guilty of "conformity of thought"?