Thread by @GeorgeMonbiot

1. Let's take a look at what the government means by #deregulation.
Does it mean making life easier for people who are struggling to get by?
Not a bit of it.
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2. People who need state benefits, refugees seeking asylum, even people seeking probate on a dead parent's will, find themselves meshed in an impenetrable thicket of red tape.
Has it got better? No, it's got worse.

3. But let's say, to take an entirely random example, you're a ferry company that wants to sack its crews illegally and replace them with underpaid agency workers.

Or a water company that wants to pump raw sewage into a river....

4. Or a waste disposer who wants to dump hazardous materials in an unlined pit.
Or a Tory donor who wants a state contract for unusable PPE.
Or a conman who wants to deprive pensioners of their life savings....

5. Instead of red tape, you'll find a red carpet laid out for you.
You'll find that monitoring and enforcement have mysteriously melted away.

6. When the government talks about deregulation, it doesn't mean that your life or mine will be simplified. It doesn't mean releasing *us* from state power.

7. On the contrary, it is re-regulating our lives, through oppressive legislation like the Police Bill and Nationality and Borders Bill, with extreme prejudice.

8. It means that powerful commercial and political interests will be released from democratic and legal constraints.

9. It means that those interests will be allowed to lord it over us in ways we would never consent to, if it were put to a vote. It means that they can profit at our expense.

That's not a perverse consequence of the deregulation agenda. It's the point of it.

10. Granting undemocratic and extra-legal power to favoured commercial interests was the point of Brexit.
It's the point of freeports.
It's the point of the current government.