Sunak’s Freeports and SEZs have a worrying legacy behind them that goes back to British colonial rule of Hong Kong, Friedman’s Mont Pelerin Society and transatlantic interests in maintaining extreme capital accumulation at the expense of democratic oversight.
The 99 year lease on the New Territories was about to expire in 1997, libertarians were panicking, Thatcher hoped that China would renew the lease on this exceptional zone to preserve international liberty and capital gains off shored to Bermuda, a compromise was reached.
The British claimed Hong Kong as the prize of the 1st Opium War in 1842, the spoils of which were a harbour named Victoria that was transformed into an economic hub serving the drug trade.
The British used this as an example of the civilised world where capital no matter where it came from was framed as an achievement of individual enterprise outside the law, that is quite the take on redistributionism.
The 2nd Opium War of 1860 instigated by Britain and France led to the Brits claiming Kowloon. In 1898 the Japanese took Taiwan as their booty from China. Other European countries followed suit and the Chinese coast was peppered with +80 Freeports.
These were all zones of exception to Chinas’ laws and governed by extraterritorial interests who even had their own courts. Foreigners inhabiting these zones enjoyed territorial sovereignty beyond the reach of the host country.
This period of colonial rule over hong Kong has been termed as Chinas’ century of humiliation’, it’s laws forcibly established by foreign interests known as the ‘unequal treaties’.
The parallels with Brexit are being played out right now as a deregulation frenzy on protectionism.
Naturally, environment and workers rights are up for grabs, binning food safety standards means importing contaminated produce to feed the new domestic and foreign workforce. This how you maintain control via total subjugation, the core of Sunak’s Freeports and surrounding SEZs.
Enterprise zones create patchworks of semi-sovereignty hosting corporate enclaves freed of the burdens and oppressive constraints of democracy. This is what Sunak, Truss, Hunt, Mogg, Mordaunt, Raab, Dowden, etc are now experimenting with in post Brexit UK.
Tories know illegality begets wealth. Freeports under lax standards are a smugglers dream; arms trafficking, stolen art, drugs, embezzlement, appalling working conditions, all buoyed by an endless supply of domestic and migrant workers who support their families under tyranny.
In order to keep a workforce in place, FOM is halted, in order to ensure the workforce kowtow to the capitalist whip, the public sector and its attendant services must be liquidated and privatised, in order to prevent class actions the judiciary must be right leaning and bought.
Hong Kong saw 1m refugees and migrants provide a labor force overseen by the British after taking it from the Japanese in 1945. Consider why George Eustice has been banging on about the domestic workforce not stepping up to fill the blackhole left by an exodus of EU workers...
The 75km ‘Investment zones’ heralded by Truss and illegally expand from +/-43km that Sunak ‘scrapped’ have been quietly picked up by Jeremy Hunt, the public land in these zones is being sold off hand over fist to both domestic and foreign interests. #BrexitReality
What do you think is going to be built on razed land in Sunak's SEZs? Big agri/tech/warehouse accompanied by shitty workhouses for a new influx of economic migrants working side by side with a desperate domestic workforce trapped in the Brexit UK.
Public services and a deliberate lack of investment are already crumbling esp post Covid, proves beyond any measure of doubt that libertarian economic war is being stealthily waged on a Brexit beleaguered UK. The zone is well underway and CCA's are complicit in building them.
This🧵draws parallels between Truss' model of investment zones to those installed in Shenzen, China, another model of capitalist achievement lauded by the libertarian right. Even Chinese citizens needed visas to enter the quarantined ‘corporate zone of economic experimentation’.
Inside this zone, local entrepreneurs were left to self organize as corporate management had been handed Govt powers. The zone had a huge influx of foreign investment as land and labor were aggressively commodified.
1987 an inland market was set up, a deluge of venture capitalists descended onto Shenzen, huge swathes of land were taken from rural usage and transformed into private property, this was one of the biggest transfers of public wealth to private hands in modern history. UK next!
Here’s what’s happening in post Brexit UK, its citizens have been reduced to the role of mere spectators of their own fate.
Here's some detail behind that last tweet on how Brexit UK rehash's it's own examples from its colonialist history of besieging a country primed for economic governance with its own laws and courts set apart from the host nation. Do you get it now?
The period of colonial rule over Hong Kong has been termed as Chinas’ century of humiliation’, it’s laws forcibly established by foreign interests known as the ‘unequal treaties’. Now think of Mogg's 50 year waiting period for Brexit dividends but only for minted feudal overlords
This is what happens under r/w libertarianism, a privately elected Govt dictate 'economic governance'. A refusal to balance wage share with profit share, this is what Truss attacks as 'redistributionism'.
The UK desperately needs a new social contract. theguardian.com/business/2023/…
Corporate profits played a large part in rising prices, companies pushed up prices to maintain their profit margins, “greedflation”. Paul Donovan-UBS Wealth Management "a social media campaign led by heads of US and eurozone central banks would kill such profiteering stone dead.
Where the fuck is the opposition on this?
30-40 years of successful egalitarian economics meant growth and prosperity for all, not the already minted. This is disaster capitalism and it is out of control.
The Great British PPE Heist sung to the Cabinets tune of The Winner Takes It All
£17.3bn Covid contracts awarded by July 2020
£17.1bn Value of those awarded with no competition
Ayanda - Tom Horlick £20.3m, Andrew Mills £32.4m, Nathan Engelbrecht £11.6m
>
Tanner Pharma - Banks Bourne £45.7m
Meller Designs - David and Michael Meller £16.4m
Uniserve Group - Ian Liddel £20m
Randox Laboratories - Peter Fitzgerald £15.9m
Primer Design - Graham Mullis £8.5m
Serco -Rupert Soames £3.85m
Deloitte Partners -£854,000 profit share per partner
PPE was stored in a ‘deep storage’ warehouse... making it difficult to distribute stock rapidly, logistics arrangements were not geared for an immediate response and some PPE had passed its expiry date or did not meet current safetystandards
This🧵examines the r/w libertarian Chicago School of laissez faire capitalisms' influence on Thatcher and its impact on Chile. In 1981 Hayek wrote to Thatcher urging her to adopt the economic reforms forced onto the Chilean public by Pinochet>
>This opportunity to rid the UK of the egalitarian Keynesian economy of the past 30-40 years was too radical for Thatcher, she wrote back that Britains democratic institutions could not allow such radical transgressions of Britains Constitution. She later caved of course.
Thatcher in her 3rd term was losing popularity, she was not about to lose the next GE by adopting Hayek and Friedman's economic reforms despite their appeal to her free market leanings.
'Votes are more equally distributed than income' Allan Meltzer, friend of Friedman.
Unelected Sunak appoints 'independent' minister to oversee ministerial conduct...himself.
Enter the Kafkaesque world of 'undeclared declarations' on par with 'legalized lawlessness'
The Tories economic war is fronted with its own installed protectors. bylinetimes.com/2023/04/19/ris…
While details of Rishi Sunak’s involvement with his local rotary club, brass band and community pub are included on the ministerial register (overseen by Sunak's own appointed lackey), significant details of his own personal financial investments, and those of his wife, are not.
According to Sunak, the fact the he is a patron of his local brass band is judged to be a “relevant” interest relating to his role as a “privately elected PM”, the fact that his wife is now set to potentially massively financially benefit from a Government policy, is not.