EuropeanPowell Profile picture
Slade School of Art UCL. Senior lecturer Fine Art, Royal Academy, The Hague. Political activist. Green Party member. Please support me via Ko-fi!
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Dec 15 12 tweets 5 min read
It’s official. Labour ALREADY has a worse track record on corporate lobbying than the Tories did.
Of 12 recommendations for government transparency and the lobbying register on Spotlight on Corruption’s ‘scorecard‘, the Tories fully met three, while Labour has fully met just one proposal.
thecanary.co/uk/analysis/20… Look at the tables for from Spotlight on Corruption, Labour appalling lack of transparency.
The ethics committee also said that the government should incorporate all transparency releases into a single searchable database. Labour may have backtracked here and has made no public commitment to such a database.
spotlightcorruption.org/wp-content/upl…Image
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Dec 14 4 tweets 2 min read
UK farmers mean absolute zero in the US/UK free trade deal, Starmer will like the spineless servile lackey he is, throw the UK under the US bus, destination Vassal State.

theguardian.com/politics/2024/… Trump already pressuring UK to agree Free Trade deal, Starmer will dance to his tune because Blackrock will order him to do so as well.
Watch Trump and Musk's 'free cities' turbocharge in 2025, UK 74 SEZs will follow suit and become charter city/company towns and privatise citizenship, 1 vote will equal 1 share. UK totally fucked under Zone Fever.
Dec 14 5 tweets 2 min read
Want to know how and why the left has been extinguished from Starmer’s ‘changed’ Labour Party? Find out which politicians from Cons and Labour are members of the British American Project (BAP) set up in the 1980’s, the group does not formally disclose its funders or members.
A key component of the establishments smear campaign against Jeremy Corbyn was a secretive US embassy group formed in the early 1980s called the British American Project whose focus was to curtail anti-American drift' in The Labour Party.
In June 2019, then US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo visited the UK and was recorded saying privately: “It could be that Mr Corbyn manages to run the gauntlet and get elected. You should know, we won’t wait for him (Corbyn) to do those things to begin to push back. We will do our level best. It’s too risky and too important and too hard once it’s already happened.”
declassifieduk.org/the-secretive-…
‘BAP’s aim was to push British progressives into a pro-American political position at a time when the CIA was worried about the strength of the Labour left and its ‘anti-American’ views’.
declassifieduk.org/the-secretive-… Three senior Labour politicians have recently joined a secretive lobby group which was set up in coordination with the US embassy in London to cultivate the British left Four senior members of Boris Johnson’s administration were also made fellows this year while working inside the UK government.
The BAP’s aim was to push British progressives into a pro-American political position at a time when the CIA was worried about the strength of the Labour left and its ‘anti-American’ views.
Nov 30 7 tweets 3 min read
UM, so that growth thing Reeves and Starmer are constantly banging on about, who is that for exactly?
The mortgage payments of half of UK homeowners will rise over the next three years, leaving 4.4 million households facing extra pressure on their finances, the Bank of England has said.
theguardian.com/business/2024/… Policymakers also released the results of their first stress test into the shadow banking sector. It found that hedge funds, pension funds and other companies in the largely unregulated sector were at risk of amplifying market shocks and triggering a £17bn asset sell-off.
The exercise, the first in the world by a central bank, tracked how non-bank financial institutions – often referred to as the shadow banking sector – would react in a short and sharp shock affecting financial markets.
Step up Starmer & Blackrock Ltd, the UK is going to be privatized as zone fever carves up the UK into 86 free deregulated zones with tax breaks for companies set at 10 years including licenses for a quarter of a century.
Game Over Brexit Britain
x.com/EuropeanPowell…
Nov 25 12 tweets 3 min read
Dear UK people, Starmer has announced that he and Blackrock have formed a government partnership, why the hell are you not reacting to this news? Do you realize what this means? The UK is going to be privatised! Councils defunded, NHS defunded, public services defunded, military heavily funded, welfare benefits defunded, the wealthy heavily funded, Net Zero defunded, 86 free zones funded, it all adds up and points to one thing, total privatisation.
researchbriefings.files.parliament.uk/documents/SN05…
Nov 20 8 tweets 3 min read
The MSM will continue to fail in its duty of responsibility to the public over revealing what's really behind the duopoly's 86 deregulated SEZs, Freeports (soon to be Free cities, now Trumop is back)
Within the pages of William Rees-Mogg and James Davidsons 1997 book 'The Sovereign Individual - How to Survive and Thrive During the Collapse of the Welfare State' was a template that saw the birth of a new exit space for libertarians to virtually occupy, it was a digital public space that was rapidly privatised, the internet.
The intention was to destroy the nation-state by subverting the freedoms of online public access by corporatising and politicising them for exorbitant profit.
Digital regulation was and still is in its infancy, the rise of the internet proved to be the perfect transition period for venture capitalists to exploit. In this scenario, the elites would delete national identity, along with a proclamation that they didn't owe ordinary citizens 'anything'.
Ordinary citizens were regarded as both 'parasites and predators' on taxes and profits, the redistribution of wealth under the terms of the social contract was to be torn up along with the shredding of the EU's protectionist laws and regulations under the still ongoing REUL Bill, (remember Sunak's video where he paper shredded EU/UK laws and regulations?)
es paid rent to Amazon, Google, Bezos, Zuckerberg, and Musk. Frontier capitalism has morphed from physical land grabbing to digital land-grabbing, we now have cloud capitalism and digital techno feudalist overlords.
Nov 9 5 tweets 4 min read
Deloitte's revenue in 2023 was $64.9 billion, here's a page from their website gleefully eyeing the UK's 74 SEZs and 12 Freeports and the numerous tax breaks for corporations.
Deloitte has an atrocious track record of hacking employees data, theft of intellectual property, serial fraud, filing misleading reports into the Tobacco Industry, added credibility to the tobacco industry's effort to undermine the Australian Government's plain cigarette packaging legislation
In September 2017, The Guardian reported that Deloitte suffered a cyberattack that breached the confidentiality of its clients and 244,000 staff, allowing the attackers to access "usernames, passwords, IP addresses, architectural diagrams for businesses and health information".
The Securities and Exchange Commission announced on 29 September 2022 that Shanghai-based Deloitte Touche Tohmatsu Certified Public Accountants LLP (Deloitte-China) had agreed to pay $20 million to settle charges relating to failures in complying with requirements for auditing US companies in China and Chinese companies in the US.
Deloitte was awarded a $44 million no-bid contract by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) in the United States to build a website to manage scheduling, inventory, and reporting for COVID-19 vaccination. However, the website functioned poorly, leading very few states to adopt it for their vaccination management.
A Deloitte network firm named Brightman Almagor Zohar & Co, sometimes known as Deloitte Israel, gave an unqualified audit opinion on the accounts of Tingo Group, Inc for 2022. This became controversial when a report by Hindenburg Research identified "obvious errors" in Tingo's financials, making Hindenburg "suspect Deloitte Israel missed or rushed through procedures that would have uncovered important findings", and the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission accused Tingo Group and others of a fraud of "staggering" scope.
Deloitte is in bed with the duopoly and is very happy about Starmer's changed Labour Party's deregulation plans announced at their recent 'Investment Summit' deregulation is catnip for malign criminal corporations setting up shop subsidised with public money at £160 million per SEZ in the UK's 86 Free zones.
taxscape.deloitte.com/article/freepo… Deloitte had acted as internal auditor at construction and services giant Carillion before it went into liquidation in January 2018. The "excoriating" and "damning" (The Guardian) final report of the Parliamentary inquiry into Carillion's collapse was published on 16 May 2018, and criticised Deloitte for its involvement in the company's financial reporting practices.
Carillion grew from the hot new ideas of the 2000s, and it collapse is the cold wet patch left by the public service policies followed under the Blair, Brown and Cameron governments. Blair said his “third way” meant “Investment must drive radical reform” of the public sector: Labour spent more on public services, but expanded privatisation by insisting new “private partners” run public services.
When David Cameron became Prime Minister in 2010, Tory-led governments embraced and expanded the New Labour policy of handing public services to private “partners”, but under austerity reduced the amount they spent, making the situation even worse.
Zone Fever has arrived by stealth in Brexit Britain, just know that Trump is a big fan of zoning aka carving out private jurisdictions and building free cities for his kind of right-wing customer/citizen.
vice.com/en/article/the…
Nov 6 5 tweets 2 min read
Still able to go it alone UK?
Rejoining the EU is the only option if you want your economy to grow, and not be destroyed by Trump, the UK must get its act together and be on the right side of history.🇪🇺 “The UK is a small, open economy and would be one of the countries most affected,” Kaya said. NIESR has estimated that over two years the UK inflation rate would be 3-4 points higher while interest rates would be 2-3 points higher.
theguardian.com/us-news/2024/n…
Oct 25 6 tweets 5 min read
A corporate coup means everything is up for grabs, the UK is desperate and capital-hungry after Brexit. Deregulated SEZs were a Sunak and Truss initiative fully backed by Labour MPs, Mayors, councillors, Lords, and Baronesses, who were active board members of the Tories nationwide SEZs/Freeports consortia.
Free zones = privatisation on steroids, that's all public infrastructure within the zone, schools, hospitals, public utilities, police, housing, councils.
Free zones are regulated in the EU to prevent govts of member states from giving advantages to companies by exploiting State aid for profit motives without giving anything back to local infrastructure, deregulated free zones distort markets and create an unlevel playing field, this is Brexit.
europarl.europa.eu/RegData/etudes…
State aid is public money, UK tax payers are subsidizing the dismantling of their public services.
UK 74 SEZs and 12 Freeports are licensed for a quarter of a century with tax breaks for companies set at 10 years.
Each SEZ gets £160 million in State aid, multiplied by 74 = £11 billion 840 million
Sunak's flagship Brexit Freeport in Teesside has already spent half a billion of taxpayers money, profits are split 90/10 in favour of the private sector. Rinse and repeat across all UK free zones.
UK free zones contravene EU laws and regulations on State aid, this information is on the Govt's website, it explains why SEZs failed under Thatcher.
researchbriefings.files.parliament.uk/documents/SN05…
WTO rules on State aid are more 'flexible' for developing countries, but massive deregulation benefits corporations and not workers, this is the price ordinary people pay trying to stay afloat with 2, 3 more jobs, it will get far worse once the 86 free zones are fully operational.
It is an absolute travesty that the UK MSM is ignoring the dangers of deregulated SEZs, scores of councils collapsing through engineered insolvency are catnip for private equity to step in and 'rescue' entire regions from the 'oppressive constraints' democracy.
On top of this mass Compulsory Purchase Orders (CPOs) are taking place in Birmingham, and Cornwall, 6 SEZs in Birmingham, 16 SEZs in Cornwall.
x.com/EuropeanPowell…
CPOs apply to business, agricultural and residential properties.
x.com/EuropeanPowell…
The state is being abolished, the most lucrative line of business is between malign corporations and govts who despise an egalitarian system of democracy. Wage share and profit share of GDP under managed capitalism are kept in balance, not so when deregulated SEZs hollow out social governance and replace it with corporate governance.
Labour are continuing the Tories SEZs policy with the same contempt right-wing libertarians harbour for the nation-state that hands over social governance powers to corporations.
Starmer's changed Labour Party are in hoc to Blackrock, Deloitte, Blackstone, Chevron, Exxon Mobil, the IEA, Adam Smith Institute, Centre for Policy Exchange, Starmer's Labour an absolute disgrace, they have betrayed the core foundations of the social contract, the impacts on ordinary working people will be catastrophic for decades to come.
thecanary.co/uk/analysis/20…Image
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Oct 23 5 tweets 3 min read
Understand that the UK's 12 deregulated Freeports each sit in much larger Special Economic Zones which range in size from 38 to 75km in diameter, there are 74 SEZs being set up across the UK, 48 in England, 18 in Scotland, and 8 in Wales.
Free zones have a colonialist mindset embedded in them along with secondary legislation that bypasses Parliamentary and public scrutiny. I made a list of the dangers SEZs pose to
communities, towns, and cities across the UK.
Please read it and know that as the UK is carved up into corporate governed sovereignties, deregulation has already begun under Jacob Rees-Mogg's REUL Bill, 600 EU/UK laws were revoked overnight on 31st Dec 2023 with 1000s more laws for the chop by 2026, the 3 main areas targeted were employment rights, food safety, and environmental protections.
This bill is now in Labour's hands, last week at the Labour Investment Summit, Starmer et al announced a whole raft of deregulatory attacks (because that is what they actually are) to entrench profit over protections that took 40 years to develop as members of the EU.
It still astonishes me that people assume Starmer's changed Labour Party is for the working people of the UK, it is clearly not, this incarnation of Labour is even further right than Blair.
Brexit has rendered the UK economy 'desperate and capital hungry', the 'quick silver capital' solution is to deregulate the hell out of everything by allowing corporations to 'rescue' democracy from its negatively framed statist failings.
Brexit was an outgrowth of 'exit strategies' from democracy developed in the 50s and 60s by right-wing libertarians and economists, think tanks like the IEA and ATLAS network incubated what were once deemed radical fringe ideologies by academia.
As the world turned, these ideologies became flesh, and this involved fomenting state capture resulting in the transfer of public wealth to private hands, you have all been conned; now watch as 'zone fever' tips the UK into kleptocratic authoritarianism.
x.com/EuropeanPowell…
Oct 14 4 tweets 2 min read
Deregulation on tap from Starmer's changed Labour Party, they are no different than the Tories.
Corporate governance is coming as the absolute worst companies from around the globe like DP World, Blackrock, and Blackstone are given carte blanche to self-regulate inside the duopoly's 74 SEZs and 12 Freeports.
The UK is being carved up into zones of exception from the host country's laws and regulations. Economies outside the zones will be forced to emulate the big companies as competition increases in an unlevel playing field. This is why Starmer says no rejoining the EU.
All UK free zones contravene EU laws on State aid (public money). Companies chasing State aid in the zones are not looking at the long term, it is literally boom-and-bust.
europarl.europa.eu/RegData/etudes…
Understand that the corporate model of politics will replace social democracy, this is how SEZs operate via small acts of secession fragmenting the country into small govts with no interventionism from big govt. Free zones perforate holes in the fabric of the nation-state, once this takes hold, the entire country will be privatised.
Of course @Guardian mention none of the above, you have to ask why?
theguardian.com/politics/2024/…
Oct 13 5 tweets 1 min read
I guarantee that Britain is installing the 'preferred' corporate model of politics by 'letting go of democracy' because Brexit has rendered the country's economy 'capital hungry and desperate'. The MSM completely fails to see what comes next after the 'end of Empire'. A substitution of its colonial excesses turned back onto its own citizens.
The UK is currently carving out 86 feudal enclaves across England, Scotland, and Wales.
Oct 2 8 tweets 2 min read
The Labour Party has used a sham figure of £90bn to claim that water nationalisation would be too expensive. The water industry paid for the ‘analysis’ that Labour cited in a recent official letter to anti-sewage groups.

thecanary.co/uk/analysis/20… Once people take the lid off Starmer's shiny new changed Labour Party, they will soon discover they've been sold a dud.
Sep 27 12 tweets 6 min read
A Special Economic Zone (SEZ) is a designated region 'freed' from the host country's regulations, stakeholders and investors are trusted to 'self-regulate', meaning they can create their own rules.
At one end, we have low-wage production, and reduced employment rights for workers.
At the other end zones are basically tax havens where corporations can both onshore and offshore their profits.
Sunak and Truss turbocharged the resurrection of Thatcher’s free zones and added dozens more; there are now 74 SEZs and 12 Freeports currently being installed across the UK under the Labour Govt.
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 closed in 2022. All 12 UK Freeports are housed inside a Special Economic Zone (SEZ), the zones vary in size from 38 to 75km in diameter.
Example; Forth Ports in Scotland own 8 other Freeports which are owned by parent company Otter Ports Ltd, the managing director of which is Lord Smith of Kelvin, Otter Ports Ltd is registered in the Cayman Islands, Smith did not declare this in the register of interests.
Both Cromarty and the Firth of Forth sit inside much larger Special Economic Zones (SEZs), 70% of the City of Edinburgh is inside Forth Ports SEZ.
From the UK govt website
‘Enterprise zones are a devolved matter and there is no obligation for the devolved administrations to adopt them’ - UK Government 👇🏻👀 researchbriefings.files.parliament.uk/documents/SN05…Image
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Sep 26 8 tweets 2 min read
The simplest way to understand Starmer’s changed Labour Party is that they work for corporations and not for you.
Sep 21 4 tweets 4 min read
If you are concerned about how and why deregulation affects key facets of UK society after Brexit including environmental laws, employment rights, and food safety, then take a look at this paper on Secondary Legislation - Plus ça change? Brexit and the flaws of the delegated legislation system.
I have not come across such a wilful and concerted attack on laws and protections without proper scrutiny of the impacts of secondary legislation, it reads like anarchists have sabotaged the entire legal infrastructure to allow 'absolute deregulation' to empower corporations profit gain and screw the state for decades.
The Environment (Miscellaneous Amendments and Revocations) (EU Exit) Regulations 2019 corrected a host of errors, 72 including a ‘tick box’ that was ‘omitted in error’ but was crucial to enable endangered species to be moved within the UK and an amendment which ‘inadvertently altered the operation of an Article’ relating to pesticide products.73
A wash-up SI was also used to correct the accidental removal by the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs of the prohibition on hormone-disrupting chemicals being used in pesticides in the UK, which the Department later described as an ‘erroneous omission.’74 The Civil Jurisdiction and Judgments (Civil and Family) (Amendment) (EU Exit) Regulations 2019 were necessary to rectify a mistake which prevented some Scottish claimants from being able to file for child maintenance in Scotland.75 Somewhat extraordinarily, The Animal Health, Plant Health, Seeds and Food (Amendment) (Northern Ireland) (EU Exit) Regulations 2019 proposed amendments to a draft affirmative instrument that had not yet been laid before parliament.76 Some errors have even attracted wider public notoriety. For instance, the European University Institute Regulations 2019 were withdrawn. These regulations indicated the Government (wrongly) thought that membership of the European University Institute was contingent on EU membership.77 There were 97 wash-up Brexit SIs, to correct earlier mistakes, laid up until Exit Day. This compares with 4.6% of SIs being wash-ups in the 2015-2016 parliamentary session. Not only does this show that mistakes can slip through scrutiny processes, it means that the resulting legal framework is complicated further by layering regulations on regulations.
It becomes clear that the Tories took a sledgehammer to EU/UK regulations without any recourse as to the detrimental and chaotic consequences we see coming up now in the headlines.
‘significant aspects’ of the UK’s ‘regime would become less effective or legally inoperable... the UK’s ability to regulate the financial sector effectively would be compromised, affecting market confidence and creating instability.’
Apply this massive deregulatory attack to just about everything we take for granted in society, and consider the UK's upcoming 74 Special Economic Zones and 12 Freeports, a Tory initiative backed and signed off by Labour, and it becomes painfully clear that the UK is being privatized, via Zone Fever.
publiclawproject.org.uk/content/upload… All of the problems detailed here align with the anxieties set out in the first part of the report. 359 Brexit SIs were laid in the four months leading up to March 2019. Those SIs touched on every part of UK life, from haulage to equality to food safety. Very significant policies such as alterations to deportation thresholds or changes to social security law were placed in secondary legislation and the rationale for why they deserved to be in delegated legislation was not explained.
Sep 18 11 tweets 3 min read
This is totally unacceptable, Labour are entrenched with corporate corruption. These figures are astronomical sums, they represent an obscene capitulation to neoliberalism and the predations of the asset classes on representative democracy. This is exactly what Starmer meant by ‘changing ‘the Labour Party, by expunging morality, ethics, and all traces of the left courtesy of Peter Mandelson, and Morgan McSweeney. The Labour Party’s largest-ever donation came from a Cayman Islands-registered hedge fund with shares worth hundreds of millions of pounds in fossil fuels, private health firms, arms manufacturers and asset managers.
Sep 7 8 tweets 2 min read
Imagine your company is offered several million pounds of State aid (public money) to set up inside any one of Sunak and Starmer's 74 Special Economic Zones or 12 Freeports, you will get tax breaks for the next 10 years while the zones are licensed for a quarter of a century, not only that but your company is trusted by the UK Govt to 'self-regulate' in the zone where employment rights, food safety, and environmental protections have been shredded with 1000s more EU/UK laws for the chop by 2026, any economic or environmental damage to the region will be billed to residents in the zone, all manner of illicit activity is now possible because secondary legislation means zero scrutiny by Parliament including public FOI requests being swept under the carpet, plus compulsory purchase orders give your company carte-blanche to buy up (on the cheap) dozens of business, agricultural, and residential properties, public services will crumble, your company can replace them with their own private services.
What would you do?
Sep 3 4 tweets 3 min read
Did you know that Labour MPs, Mayors, councillors, Lords, and Baronesses have for the last few years been very busy board members of Rishi Sunak’s nationwide SEZs/Freeports consortia? There are 74 deregulated SEZs and 12 Freeports currently being installed across England, Scotland, and Wales
Metro Mayor Steve Rotheram signed off on the Liverpool SEZs and Freeport, PEEL Group very happy.
Metro Mayor Andy Burnham signed off on Manchester SEZ.
Former FM Mark Drakeford signed off on 2 Freeports and 8 SEZs with Sunak, Shanker Singham, known as the brains behind Brexit was present at the signing.
Your towns and cities are being privatised.
Add Labour's austerity policies into the mix and it becomes very clear that the Tory baton of SEZs is now in Labour's hands.
On 31st Dec 2023 600 EU/UK laws were revoked overnight under Jacob Rees-Mogg's brutal REUL Bill with 1000's more for the chop by 2026, the 3 main areas were employment rights, food safety, and environmental protections.
Labour's negative stance on the EU means those EU/UK regulations and protections are now in their hands, they fully back Sunak and Truss's 'full-fat investment zones' which are neoliberal exits into corporate dystopia as the UK is carved up into private enclaves. Brexit 'We will make our own laws'
Secondary legislation in the United Kingdom is perfect for companies in SEZs who wish to exploit law that is not enacted by a legislative assembly such as the UK Parliament, but made by a government minister, a delegated person or an authorised body under powers given to them by an Act of Parliament. Suella Braverman used secondary legislation – which is subject to less parliamentary scrutiny – to allow police to restrict or shut down any protest that they believe could cause “more than minor disruption to the life of the community”. Once the 74 SEZs and 12 Freeports are operational, corporations will employ private security services to clamp down on workers, on unions, and any semblance of dissent or protest. Did you know that Lord Smith of Kelvin is managing director of Otter Ports Ltd? It is the parent company of Forth Ports who own 8 Freeports in total, Otter ports Ltd is registered in the Cayman Islands.
Sep 1 4 tweets 5 min read
Grand Commitee - Transcript from 11 May 2023
Baroness Kramer (Lib Dem) raising the issue of transparency and criminal activity in SEZs and Freeports of which there are 74 SEZs and 12 Freeports currently being set up across the UK, initiated by Sunak and fully backed by Starmer's changed Labour Party.
'I think even the Government recognise that freeports are catnip to criminals and money launderers. I would make the point that the kind of people who are attracted to freeports tend to be those who absolutely push the law to the limit, even when they do not go beyond it. We have so many examples from around the world where the players in various different freeports have gone well beyond it. We know that at least one of the major freeports will be under the Dubai Ports World regime, which already has ownership of major docks in London'.
'...but because there are no customs declarations, customs inspections or tax-related declarations in freeports, the normal mechanisms that provide data and direct monitoring and enforcement agencies are simply not available'.
'Why is the register that is going to be put together for freeports not to be made public? If I understood the answer that I got, it was, “Oh, this will all be dealt with when we get to Companies House legislation”.
Well, here we are: that economic crime Bill 2, with Companies House at the heart of it, but I cannot see anything that deals with making that register of beneficial owners in freeports public'
hansard.parliament.uk/Lords/2023-05-…Image
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Baroness Bennet Green Party @natalieben
“Contracts at the site will be a commercial matter for the companies involved”. Official Report, Commons, 10/5/23
There is great public concern about what is happening on Teesside, and it is at the moment extremely opaque.

I shall concentrate mostly on freeports, because, as the noble Baroness said, investment zones are such a “fluffy” area that is very hard to grasp on to it. As to what we know about freeports and what is happening, a lot of the questions are being asked by the independent media and the civil society organisations referred to by the noble Baroness. I would point anyone who is interested to an excellent, 44-page report from the Bylines Network that was put out by local journalists from around the country in areas directly affected. It does a great job of examining some of the issues, but butting up again and again against commercial confidentiality and lack of recording. One of those reports notes that in 2020, the Royal United Services Institute Centre for Financial Crime and Security Studies submitted evidence to the International Trade Committee saying that “there is evidence of criminal activity taking place in multiple freeports around the world. It often involves trade in counterfeit goods, drug trafficking, smuggling of untaxed goods or trade-based money laundering”.
'If we were to think of something that is essential to the purposes of the economic crime Bill now before us, shining the light, opening the doors and being able to see what is happening would clearly be it. What we are talking about with freeports are huge concessions from the Government. As the noble Baroness, Lady Kramer, said, they include freedom from all kinds of usual customs controls, but also stamp duty land tax relief, enhanced structures and building allowance, enhanced capital allowances, employer national insurance contributions relief, and business rates relief and retention. Those are huge concessions. Surely it would only be absolutely fair and reasonable to demand full transparency about who is responsible and who is making those decisions'.
'It is very evident that there is great public concern. This is one way that the Bill or some other mechanism—I directly put the question, “If not this Bill, where else?”, to the Minister—will make sure of what will happen if we create these structures. The reason why people are so suspicious about this seems to go back to an uncredited blog from 2010 on the website of a right-wing lobbying group, the TaxPayers’ Alliance, which raised the idea of charter cities. People are very suspicious. Surely the Government would want to dispel some of those suspicions by ensuring that there is absolute transparency and openness'.
Here is the link to the 44-page Freeports Gazette Natalie refers to above of which I was a contributor. @BylinesCymru
bylines.cymru/wp-content/upl…
Aug 27 13 tweets 6 min read
Starmer announcing more pain and economic hardship is not what people voted for.
The vast majority of the public already had this from 14 years of Tory austerity policies.
Labour are not being honest with the public, they have been very busy as board members of Sunak’s nationwide SEZs/Freeports consortia.
Here’s what happening behind the scenes and beyond the radar of the MSM.
The UK is being carved up into jurisdictions where governance is given over to corporations along with tax breaks for 10 years, the free zones are licensed for 25 years and contravene EU laws on State aid (public money) that prohibit govts of member states from giving money to corporations of their choosing, this unleashes market distortions that destabilizes the integrity of the EUs Single Market, basically UK SEZs sabotage the UK’s chances of rejoining the EU for the duration of the licenses, 25 years.
Each SEZ is a growth sector for the asset classes, companies include Blackrock, Blackstone, Macquarie, Google, Exxon Mobil, Uber, Caldwell, and many more.
‘Unfortunately, their proposals draw more from right-wing think tanks, astroturf campaigns and asset managers than they do the demands of workers, tenants and the labour movement’
The profits of Cauldwell and BlackRock go up and the costs of housing remain unmoved.
Join up Brexit and the fact that Labour spent a year having meetings everyday with the private sector, including governance consultancies that worked for Cameron and Thatcher, the sad truth emerges that Labour are in thrall to the most malevolent corporations and lobbyists responsible for ever widening contrasts between rich and poor. The UK is being privatised, zone fever is happening right now, and it’s all because of Brexit, the main culprit that Labour refuse to discuss.

tribunemag.co.uk/2024/07/deregu… Now read this, an expose of the inner workings between corporations, governace consultancies, and Lthink tank abour Together.
Be in no doubt that Starmer’s changed Labour Party is handing over the collective sovereignty of the UK to the absolute worst corporations and predatory capitalists both foreign and domestic.
opendemocracy.net/en/dark-money-…