Thread by @EuropeanPowell

When Keir Starmer’s government announced its AI Growth Zones in January 2025, I saw zero press coverage of what this actually entailed, just the usual MSM puff pieces parroting Labour's “jobs”, “innovation”, and “future-proofing Britain” bullshit.
But the real story was hidden in plain sight: this wasn’t just about AI, and it wasn’t just about technology. It was about hardwiring a corporate-first model of anti-governance into Britain’s economic geography by stealth.
europeanpowell.substack.com/p/industrial-s…

They arrive silently, no fanfare, no public debate, no parliamentary scrutiny. But across Birmingham, Cornwall, Dorset, Norfolk, Suffolk, and beyond, a corporate takeover is underway. Freeports, Investment Zones (SEZs), and AI Growth Zones are not just coexisting, they’re consolidating into a single threat: Industrial Strategy Zones (ISZs).

AI Growth Zones (AIGZs) are being grafted onto that same legislative machinery. They weren’t created by an Act of Parliament. They don’t have their own dedicated statute. They simply slot into the deregulatory superstructure that Freeports built, this is the perfect Trojan Horse for the post-Brexit corporate coup.

Legislation: The Trojan Horse Has Arrived
Primary Law (Finance Act 2021) quietly authorized the creation of “special tax sites” — Freeports and Investment Zones — wielded by Ministers to carve out deregulated economic sanctuaries.
Secondary Law (Statutory Instruments) delivered the actual designations, tax breaks, customs carve-outs, and sunset provisions. These weren’t widely debated or reported—legislation without limelight, designed for stealth.
AI Growth Zones (AIGZs) didn’t need new laws. Instead, they hitch a ride aboard the deregulation express—leveraging existing Freeport/SEZ frameworks.
Industrial Strategy Zones (ISZs) are the final consolidation. Published as a bland administrative paper in June 2025, it merges Freeports, Investment Zones, SEZs, and AIGZs into one integrated engine of corporate-first governance.

Here’s the truth: these zones attract corporate investment—but at what cost? Social housing displaced, fragile communities uprooted, public land handed over, all for speculative growth. And often, these once-vacant lands were employment or residential zones in the first place.

In June 2025, the government quietly published the Industrial Strategy Zones Action Plan. The paper’s language was dry and technocratic: “streamlining”, “merging”, “aligning regional growth initiatives”. In practice, it was a blueprint to roll Freeports, Investment Zones, and AI Growth Zones into a single branded mega-framework — Industrial Strategy Zones (ISZs).

Britain’s AI Growth Zones didn’t emerge in a vacuum. They mirror a Silicon Valley playbook: deregulated testbeds, light-touch oversight, and corporate-government partnerships built on vendor lock-in. Palantir’s quiet embedding into the NHS, the Ministry of Defence, the dluhc, the Police Force, and even the Cabinet Office is a case study in how US tech can burrow deep into the UK state without the kind of public consent or debate that would accompany a new public contract law.

This isn’t about a sovereign UK growth model. It’s about alignment with Silicon Valley and the US political-economic paradigm. The graft of Palantir into the NHS, MoD, police, and Cabinet Office demonstrates how vendor lock-in advances under the radar.

When the EU convened its AI Safety Summit in April 2025, the UK and the US both refused to sign its regulatory framework. US Senator JD Vance mocked Brussels’ proposals as “woke regulations”, and Westminster dutifully stayed in Washington’s shadow. That wasn’t just about AI rules, it was a signal: the UK is aligning with the US growth-first, regulation-later model, no matter the risks to privacy, security, or sovereignty.

In practice, AIGZs have been a thematic wrapper (AI/compute) laid on top of the place-based machinery already built for Freeports/Investment Zones (planning flexibilities, NICs/tax reliefs, capital grants). The ISZ Action Plan (June 2025) is making that explicit by merging the brands and standardising incentives and oversight under one umbrella. That means the real legal levers are still the Finance Act 2021 powers, the Free Zones customs regs, and the stream of SIs designating special tax sites.
youtu.be/3VJT2JeDCyw

Teesside’s Freeport debacle has already seen £560 million of taxpayers money transferred into private control with minimal transparency, it is not an aberration. It is a corporate political model in full onslaught against the commons. Add AI Growth Zones into the mix, and you’ve built a taxpayer-funded sandbox for corporate consolidation, with no hard requirements for public value, environmental protection, or fair labour practices.

Tax reliefs cost real money. HMRC publishes annual tax-expenditure tables; freeport/investment-zone reliefs are listed among “non-structural tax reliefs”. While single-line totals are spread across instruments, HMRC also reports uptake—e.g., ~1,200 employers claimed secondary Class 1 NICs relief in freeports in 2022–23; the first Investment Zone tax sites went live 8 April Subsidy control after Brexit.
The Subsidy Control Act 2022 replaces EU state-aid. Reliefs and grants inside Freeports/Investment Zones still have to pass Subsidy Control tests (and in some cases be referred to the Subsidy Advice Unit), but the regime is lighter-touch than EU state-aid, which is partly why these zones proliferate. 2024, with similar NICs relief now available there.
gov.uk/government/sta…

There’s also the resource footprint. AI data centres, the kind ISZs will court, are notorious for their colossal electricity and water demands. With the UK grid already under strain, local communities could find themselves subsidising infrastructure for corporate tenants while facing higher bills and rationed capacity. In coastal freeport zones, environmental degradation from industrial expansion and dredging is already documented; AIGZs threaten to extend this to new geographies.

The taxpayer is expected to fund the majority of infrastructure upgrades, grid expansions, and land remediation—while corporate tenants reap tax holidays, cheap land, and monopoly rents. This corporate welfare system, enabled through post-Brexit state aid deregulation, is the essence of ISZs.

And if local regulations or future governments attempt course correction? Complex ISDS mechanisms and buried arbitration clauses are already in play. Public land, public money, and private profit with public risk and no accountability.

If we don’t shine a light on this, through rigorous journalism, legislative scrutiny, grass roots activism and local resistance, Britain’s future will be shaped not by democracy, but by boardroom strategy. And no one will notice until it’s already locked in.

I am a volunteer exposing the duopoly's post-Brexit corporate coup over the UK via deregulated free zones.
Reminder
Secondary legislation was embedded in the free zones policy, no Parliamentary debate, no public consultation, no press conferences.
This is why most people have not heard of free zones, you have to ask yourselves why that is.
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Thank you.
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