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@karenneemcnally

https://twitter.com/karenneemcnally/status/1607723227434090496

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EuropeanPowell

@EuropeanPowell

Jan 7

Updates on Forest City 1
1. Paul Powlesland has confirmed he IS a board member of ACDC - the company receiving 80 acres worth millions. He previously forced me to publicly apologise TWICE for saying this. I was telling the truth. He concealed it.
ribaj.com/intelligence/b…
2. @horton_official 's quote from The Guardian's article dated 23rd Nov 2025 - 'Malik’s almost 800 supporters span the political spectrum, including Green party campaigners and leaders of rightwing thinktanks. He’s also enlisted Paul Powlesland, a nature campaigner and barrister, to join the board of the Albion City Development Corporation, which is overseeing the proposal'.
theguardian.com/environment/20…
3. I've now learned Dame Patricia Hewitt was the Secretary of State for Health from 2005 to 2007, and a member of the Labour Party - she is a key signatory lending establishment credibility to Forest City 1 - Hewitt is Shiv Malik's MOTHER-IN-LAW. This family relationship has never been disclosed in any promotional materials.
4. So the "cross-party support" includes:
Malik's mother-in-law (undisclosed)
Board member presented as independent watchdog (undisclosed)
Libertarian think tanks (disclosed)
80 acres for founders (admitted)
Where's the transparency?
5/ Malik has called me a "liar" and a "grifter" for exposing Forest City 1's charter city structure.
But HE conceals:
His mother-in-law's support
Powlesland's board position
The appointed trustee governance
The SEZ exemptions sought
6. The Guardian never disclosed:
Hewitt's family relationship
The governance structure details
The SEZ exemptions
The 80-acre founder gift
This isn't journalism, it's PR for insiders.
7. When "independent supporters" turn out to be board members and family, "transparency" looks very different.
Suffolk deserves the truth about who profits and who controls Forest City before decisions become irreversible.
Suffolk is not just a housing proposal.
It is the dress rehearsal for the privatisation of British geography.
And the left-wing signatories, however well-meaning, are currently the most effective part of the camouflage.
Forest City 1 Reality: The Community Land Trust (CLT) model is presented as progressive; residents gaining “genuine ownership.” But examine what this actually means: residents purchase property within a corporate-controlled jurisdiction operating under special legal status. Their “ownership” exists within a framework controlled by the Albion City Development Corporation (ACDC).
I have written several articles about Forest City 1, Suffolk. Please read, subscribe and share.
Forest City: The Ideological Coalition That Should Never Exist
open.substack.com/pub/europeanpo…
Forest City 1 (UK) as NRx Prototype: A Critical Analysis
substack.com/@europeanpowel…
URGENT WARNING: Forest City 1 and the Charter City Agenda
europeanpowell.substack.com/p/urgent-warni…
Suffolk's Forest City and the Ghost of Próspera: Why Britain Should Learn From Honduras
europeanpowell.substack.com/p/suffolks-for…
LBC’s Forest City Lovefest: How the Spiked Network Sold a Libertarian Dream as Community Housing
europeanpowell.substack.com/p/lbcs-forest-…

If Forest City proceeds, here’s what you’re accepting:
1. Democratic Accountability Becomes Optional
Appointed trustees with binding charters replace elected local councils.
2. Your Villages Have No Guaranteed Veto
The Secretary of State in Westminster decides your community’s fate, not you.
3. Private Corporations Get Permanent Governance Rights
Through appointed trust boards and 25-year SEZ licenses.
4. Tax Revenue Is Negotiable
“Canary Wharf style” exemptions mean businesses don’t pay what everyone else pays—and you make up the difference.
5. Planning Law Is Bypassed
Development corporation powers override normal democratic planning processes.
6. Basic Services Could Be Weaponized
Próspera charter city (Honduras) cut off water when residents resisted. Who controls your water, electricity, internet in a privately-governed zone?
7. It Sets A National Precedent
If Suffolk accepts this, charter cities spread:
- “Tech City North” (Manchester corridor)
- “Green City Wales” (Cardiff corridor)
- “Innovation City Scotland” (Central Belt)

On 5 December 2025, LBC’s Ali Miraj gave Austin Williams 45 minutes of unchallenged airtime to promote Forest City 1, a proposed million-person city on 45,000 acres between Newmarket and Haverhill in Suffolk. Listeners heard about Tesla robo-vans, nuclear reactors, 400,000 affordable homes, all delivered by private visionaries “independent of the state.”

What they didn’t hear could fill a book. And what was deliberately left out exposes this for what it really is: a coordinated libertarian network using progressive language to advance a charter city experiment that would strip democratic control from Suffolk communities.
Miraj introduced Williams simply as “architect, author, and director of the Future Cities Project.” That’s like introducing Rupert Murdoch as “a media professional”—technically true, but missing the entire story.

Austin Williams is a founding member of the LM network, the libertarian group that emerged from Living Marxism magazine after it went bankrupt in 2000. He’s been a regular Spiked contributor since 2002, writing dozens of articles celebrating deregulation, dismissing sustainability as anti-human control, and praising authoritarian development models that bypass democratic accountability.

But here’s where it gets interesting: Spiked is funded in part by the Charles Koch Foundation, the billionaire libertarian network that bankrolls free-market think tanks worldwide. And Fraser Myers, Spiked’s deputy editor, is a public signatory to the Forest City 1 petition. So is Austin Williams himself.

This wasn’t journalism, it was an infomercial delivered by one Spiked network member, broadcast without disclosure, for a project publicly backed by another Spiked network member. The circle is complete.

Read 9 tweets

EuropeanPowell

@EuropeanPowell

Jan 1

2024 was the year when Starmer's government sealed the fate of the electorate's future by partnering up with the most powerful corporations on the planet, handing over governance powers to corporations under localised freedoms in +140 free zones, which as of Jan 1st 2026 still remain vastly under-reported.
PPP on steroids.
Thread
Here's my guide on how to halt the corporate capture of the Commons👇🏻
substack.com/@europeanpowel…

These corporations have now been given access to the UK's critical infrastructure, which they describe as new, additional assets to their financial portfolios.
Both the Tories and Starmer's Labour continue to sell the lie that PPP, disproportionately dominated by corporate interests, is something that will help the vast majority of people. This couldn't be further from the truth, as corporate profits surged to utterly obscene levels, while public services, already in a perpetual state of permanent atrophy, are dismantled.
substack.com/@europeanpowel…

Where do deregulated free zones come in?
Imagine a map of the UK, visualise vast regions ring-fenced as Special Economic Zones, Food Enterprise Zones, freeports, University Enterprise Zones, Industrial Strategy Zones, and AI Growth Zones.
These are known as carve-outs, they form a patchwork of deregulated enclaves with separate laws and regulations to the host country.
The UK Govt lied about these zones having the same laws and regulations as non-free zone regions.
substack.com/@europeanpowel…

Read 9 tweets

EuropeanPowell

@EuropeanPowell

Dec 27, 2025

The Corporate Carve-Up of Britain: 12 Actions to Fight Back Against Enterprise Zones
What You Can Do About UK Enterprise Zones
Labour’s Industrial Strategy Zones are accelerating the transformation of British democracy into corporate fiefdoms. Here’s what you need to know and what you can do about it.

Britain is being carved up. Not through dramatic privatisation announcements or controversial legislation, but through a quiet, systematic network of over 140 enterprise zones that operate outside normal democratic control, offer corporations tax breaks worth billions, and are now being consolidated and expanded under Labour’s Industrial Strategy.
Thread

These aren’t marginal experiments. They cover food production, universities, defence, AI development, data centres, and entire regional economies. They use public money to subsidise private profit while bypassing the democratic oversight that would normally apply to such spending.

The model is simple: designate an area as a “zone,” suspend normal planning rules and democratic accountability, offer corporations tax breaks and regulatory freedom, and lock in these advantages through 25-year contracts that outlast multiple governments.

Labour’s merger of Freeports and Investment Zones into Industrial Strategy Zones isn’t a technocratic reorganisation, it’s a rapid acceleration. More zones. More corporate power. Less democratic control.

But resistance is possible. These zones depend on public money, political protection, legal frameworks, and community acquiescence. All of these can be challenged.

Read 18 tweets

EuropeanPowell

@EuropeanPowell

Dec 17, 2025

Results of UK Freeports under the duopoly (2021-2024)
The underwhelming performance patterns of previous free zones under Thatcher and Cameron continue the neoliberal zonification of the UK under the Starmer Government's 'newer/rebranded' Freeports programme.
In 2022, the UK Govt estimated freeports would create 214,000 jobs, but as of February 2024 only 4% of that target had been achieved.
A 2024 House of Commons report shows freeports missed their job goals by 77% to 96%.
The British public is being scammed yet again, as State aid post-Brexit is being extracted hand over fist, the illusion of corporate welfare for economic growth does what it was always designed to do, destroy the commons and usher in a corporate political model of governance while extracting public money with malice.

What’s happening is a repeat of the first rollout of free zones under Thatcher, which were a disaster, the excuse was the EU prevented 'real growth' due to restrictions on State aid, but given the scandalous results at Teesside, exposed by @PrivateEyeNews , £560 million in taxpayers money was splurged on Teesside Freeport, (22.4 times the original amount of £25 million).
This raises serious questions about the efficacy of free zone policy, by repeating the same mistakes again and again.
There is no other way to interpret what has transpired, a corporate political heist of public money under the guise of ‘economic growth’, so-called Brexit freedoms have literally lined the pockets of a few businessmen, such as those at Teesside, which was after all, the flagship Brexit Freeport of Rishi Sunak.
These are important concerns that are well-supported by both the documented historical evidence.

Here are the patterns for all to see:
The Repetition of Failed Policy
A cycle of repeating demonstrably ineffective policies. The evidence shows:
1980s Enterprise Zones → 2011 Enterprise Zones → 2021 Freeports → 2025 Industrial Strategy Zones
Each iteration underperforms against targets, yet the policy gets rebranded and relaunched.
The core problems remain constant across all iterations.

The Teesside Case
The Teesside situation saw £560 million spent (22 times the original allocation) exemplifying critical risks:
Deadweight: Activity that would have happened anyway
Displacement: Simply moving economic activity from one place to another rather than creating new activity
Capture by existing interests: Benefits flowing to landowners and existing businesses rather than creating genuinely new economic opportunities

The Office for Budget Responsibility (OBR) expects Freeports "to generate little additional activity, with most of it being displaced from other areas"

Read 6 tweets

EuropeanPowell

@EuropeanPowell

Dec 2, 2025

Why Are Governments Racing to Implement AI Without Protecting Citizens?
A thread on four essential books that explain what's really happening, and why you should read them all.
Want to understand why governments worldwide are falling over themselves to implement AI at Silicon Valley's pace rather than building citizen protections?
These four books together reveal the disturbing answer: We've already lost the plot.
🧵

The Age of Surveillance Capitalism by Shoshana Zuboff (2019)
Zuboff showed us HOW this happened: Tech companies learned to claim human experience as free raw material, turning our behavior into prediction products sold in futures markets.
Governments didn't regulate this because they didn't understand it until it was too late.
Zuboff's warning: Surveillance capitalism creates "extreme concentrations of knowledge and power free from democratic oversight."
By the time regulators noticed, these companies had become more powerful than most governments. They now SET the terms, not follow them.
This book explains the foundation of tech's unchecked power.

Technofeudalism by Yanis Varoufakis (2024)
Varoufakis goes further: Capitalism is DEAD. We now live under technofeudalism, where Big Tech owns private cloud fiefdoms and we're all digital serfs.
Every click, every scroll—we're laboring to increase their power while they extract rent from their platforms.
Here's the key insight: Governments can't regulate what they fundamentally misunderstand.
They still think in terms of "markets" and "competition." But Varoufakis shows platforms have REPLACED markets. There's no "free market" to protect anymore—just cloud lords collecting tribute.
This book explains why traditional regulation keeps failing.

Read 8 tweets

EuropeanPowell

@EuropeanPowell

Nov 28, 2025

URGENT WARNING: Forest City 1 and the Charter City Agenda
This is not a housing development. This is a pilot project for privatised governance.

Forest City 1 is the first of a planned network of privately controlled charter cities on British soil - 45,000 acres of Suffolk farmland to be transformed into a governance experiment by a consortium of right-wing libertarian ideologues. More developments are in the pipeline. The supporters behind this scheme are not confused property developers. They are the architects of Britain's post-Brexit zone archipelago and charter-city governance model.
Forest City co-founder Shiv Malik contacted me directly, offering to "answer my questions." I did what any responsible citizen should: I asked him for clarity about land ownership, democratic control, SEZ plans, governance, displacement, investor benefits, and transparency.
He answered.
And what he admitted — 'in his own words' — is more damning than any critic of charter cities could invent.
forestcity.uk
Thread

THE PLAN IN PLAIN TERMS
Forest City's backers have already confirmed in writing they will pursue:

Canary Wharf-style tax exemptions – removing taxation from vast tracts of British land
Building-tax exemptions – no council tax, no business rates, no democratic accountability
Government Development Corporation – unelected bureaucrats, not residents, will control all land distribution
Permanently appointed land-trust board – no elections, ever (justified because "democratic choice often runs counter to long-term interests")
80 acres gifted to the private consortium as profit – public land transferred to private hands as payment

This is not speculation. These are their stated objectives.

Q — How does Forest City fit into Suffolk's existing SEZ infrastructure?
A — It's strategically positioned within Suffolk's Investment Zone corridor.

Suffolk has established Investment Zone sites along the A14, A12, and A11 transport corridors.
Forest City, positioned near the A14 between Haverhill and Newmarket, would occupy approximately 182 square km (45,000 acres) — roughly 4.8% of Suffolk's total land area — right in the heart of this existing SEZ infrastructure.

UK Investment Zones are designed with a tax incentive boundary limit of 600 hectares (6 square km), but surrounding this area is a wider investment zone "core" and an even broader "ecosystem" collectively known as a "cluster." As the government's own policy prospectus states, "we do not expect this activity to be limited to a fixed red-line boundary."

Forest City's 182 square km is 30 times larger than the nominal 6 square km Investment Zone limit.

Read 14 tweets

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