EuropeanPowell Profile picture
Jul 12, 2022 19 tweets 6 min read Read on X
UK is fast heading towards a parallel of US evangelical libertarianism. Disenfranchisement of 'unsuitable' voters, suppression of working classes, limited access to educ, ruining local communities by savage spending cuts and environmental devastation (shit in rivers/coastlines).
The billionaire anti democracy movement & it's donor network has galvanized +450 r/w think tanks extreme partisan libertarian ideology which has its roots in early 20th century when Fred Koch sold crude oil separation techniques to Stalin and Hitler in the 1930s. #Libertarian
Economists Hayek, Friedman & Buchanan advised hiding their radical agendas in newly formed think tanks like the IEA, Heritage, Mont Pelerin CATO etc as they knew their proposals would not be accepted by the public and bring unwelcome focus on charity status of these think tanks.
UK is 5 mins behind US not 10 years due to accelerationism; an intensification of fatal right wing political strategies all part of the drive towards the evangelical Anglosphere achieving global dominance, it is replete with anti critical race theory & seeks to end democracy.
Tory hopefuls all shit, each one exemplifying Darwinian political system of self interested individualism above egalitarianism. Their 'low tax' mantra echoing key tenets of libertarianism; eg 'tax is theft of property' which is why Tories are allergic to wealth tax/welfare state.
Tories r dismantling UK's judiciary, rewriting Human Rights Act, stifling protest, deregulating 1000's of EU laws designed to protect citizens/workers rights. Holding corporations to account, ensuring they pay fair share of taxes, protecting the environment is anathema to Tories.
My thread on the despicable world of the ERG who will install a law breaking hard Brexit libertarian lunatic to inflict further economic terrorism on a public battered by Brexit and Covid, they need those corporate lawless charter cities fast.
Post Brexit will see the rise of lawless charters which Sunak, Romer, Thiel and Mordaunt are busy planning with frequent trips to the US funded by the tax payer. The ERG was formed 29 years ago, their endgame move is in play because Johnson proved too soft for their ideology.
I don't understand why this doesn't shock the public into all out revolt & why the opposition parties & msm aren't advocating & showing the public an alternative to the dystopia the Tories have been steadfastly building for decades. Post Brexit hell will be unleashed with new PM.
My🧵on Brexit Freedoms Bill & how it will accelerate the establishing of right wing charter cities in UK. This is a monetised coup, the most ruthless foreign multinationals are queuing up for chunks of your lives where you and your family will be customers for generations to come
@AnnAubert3 article on Charter Cities, please read and share, above all understand how serious the threat is to human rights which Suella Braverman and Dominic Raab are busy destroying so this dystopia can be fully realised.
yorkshirebylines.co.uk/news/brexit/br…
Your lives are being undone for foreign corporate takeover. Think the cost of living crisis is bad? Wait til Tories set up their Darwinian system; exclusion of the poor from their privately owned cities with brutalising commutes under modern day slavery
medium.com/@cormack.lawso…
'Quasi sovereign units located within existing states, which would be maintained by a foreign guarantor nation or nations establishing a legal and political system autonomous from the host state' @fslconsult This is happening right now! #BrexitReality
pressreader.com/uk/the-sentine…
Do people understand what happens when a country trashes laws it helped write to protect workers, the environment, policing bills/the judiciary itself? Mogg's bonfire of EU regs gives powers to ruthless corporations to make their own beyond Govt reach!
Charter cities can be good and they can be very bad, it depends on what sort of Govt is in power. Tories are busy preparing right wing lawless cities where ordinance is bypassed on building low income housing, 'Home-rule' on steroids, this won't cure poverty, it hides it away
In 2010 Tax Payers Alliance was already salivating at the prospects of eviscerating 'basket cases like Hull, Liverpool and Tyneside' where laws can be remade for shareholder values while abolishing welfare and moving poor voters to slums. Enter Brexit
verfassungsblog.de/the-danger-zon…
When people like Penny Mordaunt talk of a 'big money pot' for Tory constituencies, they will use it to keep the riff raff out, that's average working people born and bred in those cities being pushed out. A Neo Colonialist fiefdom with its own judiciary.
That's total privatisation, Charter Cities with own laws, eg Peel Group Liverpool, DP World London & other sites already being bought up. Private Healthcare, indoctrinated education, security forces, brutal commutes to work for slave wages in Mogg's 'cities shining with commerce'

• • •

Missing some Tweet in this thread? You can try to force a refresh
 

Keep Current with EuropeanPowell

EuropeanPowell Profile picture

Stay in touch and get notified when new unrolls are available from this author!

Read all threads

This Thread may be Removed Anytime!

PDF

Twitter may remove this content at anytime! Save it as PDF for later use!

Try unrolling a thread yourself!

how to unroll video
  1. Follow @ThreadReaderApp to mention us!

  2. From a Twitter thread mention us with a keyword "unroll"
@threadreaderapp unroll

Practice here first or read more on our help page!

More from @EuropeanPowell

Feb 8
Told you many times over about mass Compulsory Purchase Orders taking place across the UK.
Labour published a 192 page document on CPOs in Oct 2024.
CPO's apply to business, agricultural, and residential properties.
Connected to this is the duopoly's rollout of 74 deregulated SEZs and 12 Freeports.
For instance the Plymouth South Devon Freeport/SEZ is 75km in diameter.
This means big agri obliterates British farming and introduces US/Australian style intensive practices, absolutely awful.Image
The new law will allow officials to buy land under compulsory purchase orders without having to factor in the “hope value” – a massive price premium granted to any land on which developers hope to secure planning permission.
@LizWebsterSBF
theguardian.com/politics/2023/…
The Labour government’s first King’s Speech included a Planning and Infrastructure Bill which would aim to reform the law on compensation for compulsory purchase.
This is where land is acquired, without the owner’s consent, for a specific purpose in the public interest.
assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/media/6798c238…
Read 8 tweets
Feb 5
Palantir is a sinister spytech outfit owned by right wing libertarian venture capitalist Peter Thiel who said this, “The NHS makes people sick”
Palantir 'help' governments conduct law enforcement, warfare and policing.
Why was Palantir given the multimillion-pound contract to run the NHS federated data platform?
The UK Government has a troubling history of giving contracts to its friends. The head of Palantir’s UK operation subsequently made a donation to a Conservative Minister.
goodlawproject.org/update/nhs-sig….

In 2015 Palantir was valued at $20 billion, with Thiel being the company's largest shareholder.
Christopher Wylie, the former research director of Cambridge Analytica, said that several meetings had taken place between Palantir and Cambridge Analytica.

Palantir's ICM software is considered 'mission critical' to ICE.

Palantir's participation in COVID-19 response projects re-ignited debates over its controversial involvement in tracking illegal immigrants, especially its alleged effects on digital inequality and potential restrictions on online freedoms.

Peter Thiel funded Patri Friedman’s Seasteading Company which aims to turn the oceans into real estate via floating cities.

Billionaire Peter Thiel backed Próspera, a US company started by a group of extreme libertarians, also backed by former World Bank chief economist Paul Romer. (Romer was Sunak's mentor at Stanford University, he lectured on SEZs, and charter cities as neocolonialist regions carved out from a hosting country with separate laws and corporate sovereignty.
Collective sovereignty is people power, corporate sovereignty is the asset-class's power.
Próspera tried to establish a charter city run by a private governmentt on the Honduran island of Roatán. The Honduras Supreme Court shut down Próspera's plans because it violated Honduran citizens' sovereignty.
Próspera retaliated and invoked an Investor-State Dispute Settlement (ISDS) mechanism and is currently suing the Honduran Government for $11 billion, which is 2 thirds of the Honduran Government's annual budget. There are currently 5 ISDS cases against the Honduran Government.

ISDS is included in all post-Brexit CPTPP free trade deals.
x.com/EuropeanPowell…
ISDS has a domestic UK equivalent mechanism that is written into England's 48 Special Economic Zones and 8 Freeports, it is called the London Court of International Arbitration (LCIA), which is written into the 25-year licenses of all England's free zones.
Do you see how this is all shaping up for the complete corporate libertarian takeover of the UK?
The Tories initiated 74 SEZs and 12 Freeports which was approved and signed off on by Labour MPs, Mayors, councillors, Lords, and Baronesses who were active board members of Sunak and Truss's nationwide SEZs/Freeports consortia.

SEZs, Freeports, and charter cities are violent incursions into the public sector and the democratic infrastructure of nations, they carve out extra-territorial spaces for profit motives, often with astronomical sums of public funding, in the case of the UK via State aid.
All 74 SEZS receive £160 million in State aid multiplied by 74 = £11 billion 840 million.
Each Freeport receives £25 million seed capital (private investment) multiplied by 12 = £300 million
Yet, Sunak's flagship Brexit Freeport at Teesside has spent £560 million of taxpayers money, go figure.

The Labour Govt published a 192-page document on Compulsory Purchase Orders (CPOs) last October 2024, it was updated in January 2025.
CPO's apply to business, agricultural, and residential properties.
CPOs are grist for the mill in deregulated SEZs and Freeports.
The next stage in expansionist free zones is corporate land and property grabs, which are stepping stones to charter cities.
6000 people's homes to be demolished in a mass Compulsory Purchase Order in Birmingham. x.com/EuropeanPowell…
Guess what? Birmingham is host to 6 SEZs, Birmingham council was issued with a S114 notice in 2024, which is technically bankruptcy. 192 councils have higher debt rates than Birmingham.
inyourarea.co.uk/news/full-list…

The largest shareholders of Palantir in early 2024 were Peter Thiel, Blackrock, and The Vanguard Group.
Peter Thiel “ I no longer believe freedom and democracy are compatible”

@Keir_Starmer announced a govt partnership with Blackrock on X.
x.com/EuropeanPowell…

Starmer also announced that 700 corporate lobbyists were to be handed govt powers and that the UK government would take a ‘secondary position’.
This is exactly what right-wing libertarians have been incubating for over 70 years, to reduce Govt to the size of a mouse and drown it in a bathtub.

The UK is in serious shit.
jacobin.com/2023/11/hondur…Image
Image
Image
Image
"He was a beneficiary of donations from tech figure Peter Thiel, whose largesse that cycle also saw him bankrolling campaigns by JD Vance and Blake Masters."
theguardian.com/us-news/2025/f…
The zone is, in other words, a powerful disciplining tool that can be used to bludgeon states into adopting neoliberal policies. @graceblakeley
jacobin.com/2023/11/hondur…
Read 4 tweets
Feb 3
Here we go, Bristol is now inside a deregulated Special Economic Zone.
Seasteading companies are libertarian attempts at exit, they are notoriously anti-regulation, and at odds with protecting the ocean from crazy billionaires with nothing better to do than destroy the planet for profit.

“The Seasteading Institute is not going to be supporting projects that don’t protect the environment as long as I work here,” said Carly Jackson, Deputy Director of the Seasteading Institute, which is the ideological home for the movement. But when asked if she would support regulations in order to protect the environment, she said no. “It’s more a violation of my own values to try and control other people.”

The Seasteading Institute adopted 'climate change' as an issue it could address around 2016, when it traveled to Tahiti in French Polynesia to create a legal structure for ‘seazones’ that would have a “special governing framework.”
Once again @Guardian ignores the dangers of free zoning.
Raymond Craib wrote a book called Adventure Capitalism - A History of Libertarian Exit which spells out the libertarian aim to develop the ocean for real estate.
@horton_official
theguardian.com/environment/20…
"The goal is to live in the ocean, for ever. To have permanent human settlements in all oceans across the world"
Mike Shackleford, chief operating officer, Deep
Read 8 tweets
Feb 1
How far they have come...
Starmer stated back in 2022 that trickle-down economics “is a piss take”.
In 2021, Reeves stood in front of the Labour party conference and declared that she would be the “first-ever green chancellor”.
2024-2025
This year Reeves sacked the head of the regulatory body the CMA, and replaced him with the former head of Amazon UK, Doug Gurr.
In April 2024 6 days into office, Rachel Reeves refused permission for the National Audit Office to carry out an investigation into Englands 48 SEZs and 8 Freeports, despite a House of Commons committee report citing lack of transparency, ignoring the Nolan principles, and serious questions over value for taxpayers money.
Yet Starmer has just handed over corporate governance powers to 700 lobbyists from the most malign criminally corrupt companies on the planet, Blackrock being the cherry on top of the neoliberal cake.
When neoliberals talk of dismantling big government, and carving up nations into more manageable pieces under corporate rule, Starmer and Reeves have in a few months betrayed the Labour Party's core foundations of being a party for ordinary working people.
What comes next used to be the stuff of libertarian fringe fantasies, namely deregulated SEZs, Freeports, and charter cities that are going to create modern-day slavery for British citizens.
Read 4 tweets
Jan 30
My notes from yesterday's (29th Jan) public speaking event on SEZs and Freeports with @JimFunnel1 and @PlymouthGreens it was great with a very lively Q&A session.
Notes
I will talk about what you won’t see on the many council and corporate websites, that are backing Sunak and Starmer’s nationwide rollout of 74 deregulated SEZs and 12 Freeports.
You would think that the UK MSM would be on top of exposing the true nature of councils and companies embroiled in the setup of free zones. The complexity of free zones is their camouflage which needs proper and urgent scrutiny. The public and their respective communities are not being sufficiently informed about the impacts free zones are notoriously known for implementing. At their worst free zones remove the obstacles of regulation and democracy for profit gains at the expense of local community infrastructure and preservation of the environment.

What is a Special Economic Zone (SEZ)?
An SEZ is a designated region 'freed' from the host country's regulations, including suspension of the rule of law which is then tailored for financial gains, and extraction purposes, be that minerals, fossil fuels, or in the case of Dartmoor, Lithium.
The United States Geological Survey identifies “Dartmoor as one of the top five lithium-enriched granite areas worldwide. Dartmoor is now a part of The Plymouth and South Devon Freeport/SEZ. The granite in which the lithium-rich waters are found stretches from the Isles of Scilly 25 miles off the Cornish coast to Dartmoor in Devon.
The Dartmoor National Park wasn’t even aware of the fact it was incorporated in the Freeport/SEZ which is 75km in diameter. Corporations are trusted to ‘self-regulate' inside the boundaries of the SEZ, meaning they can create their own rules, this is known as Adam Smith’s ‘Invisible Hand’ something the EU implicitly rejects as antithetical to the Single Market.
SEZs can house a Freeport, an airport, whole towns, entire cities, and rural areas under a ‘private/public governed authority.’
The UK’s 74 SEZs range from 34 to 75km in diameter. Dartmoor is the biggest. SEZs are expansionist by nature, as businesses chase 10-year tax breaks, and a raft of deregulations that favour the private sector. Companies inside the boundaries of SEZs compete in an unlevel playing field without contributing anything to communities other than job displacement, modern day slavery, environmental pollution, and badly made products.
So, think of an SEZ as a room within a room, or a state within a state.

What is a Freeport?
Traditionally, a port is publically owned and regulated, and deals mainly with transhipment, importing and exporting goods around the world. Publicly owned ports come under port governance where local control over port infrastructure prevents profiteering.
Freeports are privately owned and are all about extending tax and customs advantages to businesses. Freeports come with relaxed laws and by extension relaxed enforcement of those laws.
In terms of what Freeports can achieve, there is no evidence to confirm that Freeports encourage economic growth or provide jobs for local people. Freeports in the wrong hands share similarities with organized crime syndicates. Illegal activity comes in numerous forms, weapons trading, drugs, stolen art, private banking, moving/storing of gold, money laundering, human trafficking, and the scrapping of minimum wage amd Human Rights abuses.
UK Freeports are run by stand-alone corporations with a future scope and incentive to expand into the surrounding SEZ territory.
All UK SEZs and Freeports were set up with secondary legislation, which means pretty much zero Parliamentary and public scrutiny.

Now for some numbers.
There 48 SEZs and 8 Freeports in England
18 SEZs and 2 Freeports in Scotland
8 SEZs and 2 Freeports in Wales
Bidding on all free zones took place between 2021 and 2022.
Labour MPs, Mayors, councillors, Lords, and Baronesses were active board members of Sunak and Truss’s nationwide SEZs/Freeports consortia.
Each SEZ recieves £160 million in State aid multiplied by 74 = £11 billion 840 million
Each Freeport receives £25 million seed capital which is private money multiplied by 12 = £300 million
Note that Sunak’s flagship Brexit SEZ/Freeport at Teeside has already spent £560 million of taxpayers money. Profits are split 9/10 in favour of the private sector.
Those figures are actually not big enough for long term investment, but are sufficient for a boom-and-bust approach.

What is the difference between Freeports/SEZs in the EU and the UK?
It comes down to EU regulations on State Aid where the European Commission is charged with ensuring that State aid rules are applied and observed equally across all the Member States to prevent fragmentation and distortion of its Single Market. The EU prohibits govts of member states from allocating public subsidies to companies of their choosing as a profit motive.
The EU cannot accept a country that has laws in place that create unfair competition by setting up an unlevel playing field.
This is why Keir Starmer says "There will be no rejoining the EU in my lifetime.”

Labour along with the Tories know that Brexit has rendered the UK capital hungry and desperate for growth. The duopoly are selling off UK sovereignty and vast swathes of territories to foreign capital such as Blackrock, DP World, PEEL Group, Deloitte, Exxon Mobil, Chevron and many more corporations with atrocious track records in fraud, tax evasion, human rights abuses, environmental pollution, weapons smuggling, stolen art, and all the while perpetuating the 40-year-old lie that is Foreign Direct Investment (FDI). All public services are privatized, councils are bankrupted and asset-stripped ready for private equity to step in and buy up, on the cheap, all public buildings, agricultural, business, and residential properties under mass Compulsory Purchase Orders (CPOs). Last October 2024, the Labour Govt department for Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government quietly published an update on Compulsory Purchase Orders, called Guidance on the Compulsory Purchase, it is 189 pages long.

What I call ‘Zone Fever’ was smuggled inside the Brexit Trojan Horse. The transition period after Brexit is currently busy with preparing the UK for total privatization.

It gets worse. What is ISDS and LCIA?
Investor-State Dispute Settlement (ISDS) allows corporations to sue Govts for billions in damages when a corporation believes its rights have been infringed upon; such as polluting the environment, shredding workers rights, and making faulty products. ISDS is a secretive corporate justice court that can bypass a country’s domestic courts and sovereignty, it was set up by The World Bank in 1966, it has a committee of 3 individuals, none of whom have a law degree. ISDS also has another UK equivalent known as the London Court of International Arbitration (LCIA), which is written into the 25-year licenses of all 86 UK free zones. ISDS is written into the UK's post-Brexit CPTPP free trade deals. Jacob Rees-Mogg’s Retained EU Law bill sunsetted 600 laws on 31st December 2023 with thousands more for the chop by 2026, the 3 main targets were employment rights, food safety and environmental laws. The REUL Bill is now in Keir Starmer’s intray.
Read Silent Coup - How Corporations Overthrew Democracy by @kennardmatt and @ClaireProvost for more on ISDS and SEZs.

What is the ideology behind Freeports and SEZs?
The current ideology embraced by Sunak, Truss, Starmer, and Reeves, hails from the US, the goal is to abolish the centralised state and replace it with more manageable small states all of which are privatised. This has its roots in empire-building and British colonialism from the East India Company in 1600 through to Hong Kong and Singapore in the mid-1800s, where the British installed dozens of Freeports, bringing with them their own laws, and courts, this was known as ‘China’s century of humiliation.’
In the 1980s Thatcher and Geoffrey Howe’s aim was to turn the UK into 1 big tax haven filled with dozens of free zones, subdividing the land for corporate rule, but they came up against the EU’s rules on State aid and SEZs.

What comes next after Freeports and SEZs?
Freeports and SEZs are stepping stones to charter cities, these are a type of city in which a guarantor from a developed country would create a city within a developing host country.
The public is basically paying for the privatisation of their own towns, rural areas, and cities.
Once the UK’s Freeports and SEZs have sufficiently established themselves, they grow by penetrating the social collective fabric of a region, a charter (private) city will eclipse and replace the ‘public city.’ Charter cities are hotbeds of corporate corruption as governance powers are fully handed over to CEOs, under ’localised freedoms.’ Cardiff would compete with Birmingham, Plymouth would compete with Glasgow, and so on, tax rates and laws between cities would wildly vary causing fiscal anarchy and societal chaos.

List of companies working with the 3 councils of Plymouth, South Devon and South Hams.
Babcock secures a multi-million pound contract in partnership with Devon defence vehicle designer and manufacturer Supacat. This contract will deliver 90 new jobs and enables Babcock to expand its operations in the Freeport’s South Yard tax site
Tax benefits are available at the Freeport’s 3 tax sites, located at:
South Yard, the centrepiece of the Freeport’s innovation hotbed, offering industrial units and a mezzanine office space within a purpose-built innovation centre
Langage, providing a variety of industrial units focused on advanced manufacturing and logistics
Sherford, aimed at logistics purposes, providing warehousing, storage, and engineering space.

Last October 2024 The Labour Goverment published a 189 page document on Compulsory Purchase Orders, CPOs apply to business, agricultural, and residential properties.

The rollout of Special Economic Zones (SEZs) and freeports in the UK has sparked concerns over the potential loss of public autonomy. Here are some key downsides:

Reduced Democratic Oversight: SEZs and freeports often operate under different regulatory frameworks, which might bypass standard democratic processes. This can lead to a situation where local and even national laws are less effective or applicable within these zones, reducing public and elected officials' oversight over economic activities, land use, and environmental regulations. The governance of these zones can be outsourced to private entities or special bodies, which might not prioritize public interest over corporate benefits.

Erosion of Public Control Over Land and Resources: These zones can lead to significant portions of land being controlled by private interests with minimal public input, potentially leading to a scenario where public land is sold or leased under favourable terms for private entities rather than for the benefit of local communities. There have been allegations and concerns about land deals in areas like Teesside, where public land was transferred to private hands at very low costs, suggesting a loss of control over public assets. Mayoral development corporations can bring about regeneration by assembling land and providing infrastructure over a wide area to secure or encourage its development by others. A Mayoral development corporation may do anything it considers appropriate for the purposes of its object (i.e. securing the regeneration of land in its area). Likewise, it may have powers to acquire land in its area by compulsory purchase.

Taxation and Financial Transparency: The tax incentives provided to businesses within SEZs and freeports can be seen as a form of corporate welfare, where public revenue is foregone in favor of private profit. This can lead to reduced public funds for services, and there's also the worry about these zones becoming havens for tax evasion or money laundering, further diminishing public financial control.

Impact on Workers' Rights: Deregulation in free zones often leads to a rollback of labour standards, potentially undermining workers' rights as companies could exploit the regulatory leniency to reduce wages or bypass labour protections. This has been a point of contention, with critics arguing that the drive for economic growth might come at the cost of workers' well-being.

Environmental Regulations: Freeports and SEZs deregulatory frameworks lead to ecological degradation or pollution, as the drive for economic activity overshadows environmental considerations. There have been reports of environmental concerns linked to freeport developments, like in Teesside, where industrial activities have been linked to marine life damage.

Economic Displacement: There's a risk that SEZs and freeports might not create new economic activity but rather displace existing businesses from outside the zones to within, leading to no net economic gain but rather a redistribution that favors areas with freeport status, potentially at the expense of other regions.

Public Autonomy in Policy Making: The concentration of economic activity and decision-making power in these zones could lead to a scenario where national or local economic policies are influenced or dictated by the needs and demands of these zones, reducing the autonomy of public institutions in shaping economic strategies that should serve broader public interests.
In summary, while SEZs and Freeports aim to spur economic development, the potential downsides include significant losses in public autonomy over economic, environmental, and social governance, with concerns about transparency, equity, and democratic control being paramount.

David Powell January 2025
The above notes are from a public meeting about SEZs and Freeports with the Plymouth Green Party on 29th January 2025, it's free to read on my Substack. Please subscribe and if possible upgrade to paid, I'm an unpaid volunteer who has been exposing SEZs for over 6 years.
💚
europeanpowell.substack.com/p/my-notes-fro…
Alternatively, a donation to my Ko-Fi online tip jar would be most welcome.
My research on Brexit, Freeports, Special Economic Zones and charter cities takes up many hours of dedicated work, my sole intent is to inform the public at large of the dangers of corporate governance. To date all my daily research is self-initiated and self-funded, recently I have spoken at anti-Freeports/SEZ events with grass-roots campaigners in London, Liverpool, Edinburgh, Inverness and South Devon, I can tell you that audiences are shocked and outraged at what's unfolding on their doorsteps.
Making a donation would be greatly appreciated we are breaking through to wider audiences.
Thanking you in advance!
ko-fi.com/europeanpowell
Read 4 tweets
Jan 26
Rachel Reeves embraces 'job displacement' in her 'zoning scheme'
Rachel 'I'm tough on benefit scroungers but love corporate scroungers' Reeves just said this "“At the moment, you’ve got people who live five or six miles out of Leeds or Birmingham or Manchester who aren’t able to take up jobs in those places"
Leeds, Manchester, and Birmingham are all now deregulated Special Economic Zones, signed off by Labour with the Tories during the bidding period which took place between 2021 and 2022.
Now read this from the UK Govt's website👇🏻👀
researchbriefings.files.parliament.uk/documents/SN05…
A common problem of deregulated SEZs is known as 'job displacement'. A common argument against Enterprise Zones is that they result in 'job displacement' rather than job creation – i.e., existing local companies relocate to enterprise zones to take advantage of financial incentives, keeping their existing workforce rather than firms from outside the area relocating and creating new jobs. A 2011 report by the Work Foundation found that “up to 80%” of jobs created by enterprise zones in the 1980s were in fact “taken from other places.”

Starmer's changed Labour Party is fundamentally dishonest about this whole SEZ policy, they say they inherited it from the Tories, which is a flat-out lie.
Read that ridiculous @guardian puff piece on Rachel Reeves 'zoning scheme' where she connives to mention 'zoning schemes' without referring to the collusion her changed Labour Party had with the Tories nationwide country changing SEZs experiment in corporate governance during the bidding process between 2021 and 2022.

A 2019 report by the Centre for Cities on Enterprise Zones in England found that between 2011 and 2017 found that the total new jobs were only around one-quarter of the estimates produced by the Treasury in 2011 and “at least one-third of the jobs created have come as a result of the move of businesses from elsewhere, rather than the creation of new posts in new businesses.” Jobs created Enterprise Zones were found to be “overwhelmingly low skilled” and Enterprise Zones have been unsuccessful in attracting high-skilled economic activity “that would help to change the economic make-up of the economies into which they have been placed.”
This is a corporate coup, Zone Fever was resurrected by the duopoly immediately after Brexit, UK SEZs had to abide by the EU's rules on State aid that prohibit member states from giving public money to companies for profit motives.
Once again from the UK Govt's website, 'The demise of EZs was attributed to the effects of delays owing to
European Commission State Aid regulations'
theguardian.com/global/2025/ja…Image
Image
Image
One of the key risks in Freeports and SEZs is that the same secrecy around the storage of art in Freeports can potentially apply to DRUGS AND WEAPONS because of "confidentiality, the high level of monetary transactions, the unfamiliarity of enforcement agencies with values and the portable nature of art itself all contribute to the art market being a suitable vehicle for illegal activity.
As other money-laundering techniques are coming under closer scrutiny, it has been suggested that smugglers, drug traffickers and arms dealers are increasingly turning to the art market" .
In 2010 the Financial Action Task Force on Money Laundering, an intergovernmental body based at the headquarters of the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) in Paris, published a report claiming that free-trade zones, which include free ports, were a 'money-laundering and terrorist-financing threat' partly due to inadequate safeguards, relaxed oversight and weak inspections.
Clamping down on problems such as tax evasion and money laundering has become a matter of the utmost urgency. In this context, the Panama Papers drew attention to the dubious role of free zones, and in particular of free ports, as repositories of artworks and other valuables.
Some media reports pointed to the connection between the international art trade and offshore secrecy, for example suggesting that 'arts buyers and sellers use the same structures to remain anonymous in the global financial system as dictators, politicians and fraudsters'.
The UK is the second largest exporter of arms in the world, and is home to the largest number of private military and security companies in the world. europarl.europa.eu/cmsdata/155721…
All my research on SEZs and Freeports is voluntary, I'm writing on average 4 hours a day across X, Bluesky, and Substack (as Europeanpowell).
I do this because I am absolutely appalled and dismayed that the Tories and Labour are carving up Britain into 86 free zones, corporate fiefdoms, and states within states while the MSM sits back and ignores the fact that Zone Fever is the real reason behind Brexit and the USA's increasing vassalisation of the UK. Please support me and buy me a Ko-Fi.
Thank you❤️
ko-fi.com/europeanpowell
Read 4 tweets

Did Thread Reader help you today?

Support us! We are indie developers!


This site is made by just two indie developers on a laptop doing marketing, support and development! Read more about the story.

Become a Premium Member ($3/month or $30/year) and get exclusive features!

Become Premium

Don't want to be a Premium member but still want to support us?

Make a small donation by buying us coffee ($5) or help with server cost ($10)

Donate via Paypal

Or Donate anonymously using crypto!

Ethereum

0xfe58350B80634f60Fa6Dc149a72b4DFbc17D341E copy

Bitcoin

3ATGMxNzCUFzxpMCHL5sWSt4DVtS8UqXpi copy

Thank you for your support!

Follow Us!

:(