On 23rd September 2022, in a “mini budget” designed to concentrate wealth, Chancellor of the Exchequer Kwasi Kwarteng announced creation of “investment zones” wherein “investors” will have lower tax commitments when buying land and property and when operating businesses than elsewhere in UK.
Critical commentary of the content of the “mini budget” focussed on analysis of tax cuts, particularly advantages for wealthier people, and on concerns about “government borrowing” and the value of the pound relative to other currencies. “Investment zones” received less attention but they are of much greater effect.
Presentation of the zones by the government highlights “investment” with the usual conservative misrepresentation of how capitalist economy works and of how exploitative capitalists operate. Critics of the zones – in the way they are described by the government – made (reasonable) points about how “trickle down economics” (from investors to people) is a con-trick and how zoning off parts of a country creates an imbalance. Government’s description of the zones and critics’ analyses distract from what the zones are and what their existence will mean for people who live and/or work in them.
The “investment zones” will be charter territories. Charter territories are states within a state where governance is abdicated by government and handed to unelected administrations. “Investors” buy land and property at knock-down prices, much of it public land. They, and businesses who rent space from them, operate without taxation, without commitment to workers’ rights or health and safety regulations, and without any worries about legal redress for those whom they exploit because justice is determined by the territory’s administrators who are on the side of the “investors.” Every rule, regulation and law is decided by the administrators who have no concerns about public opinion because democracy is absent: They are not dependent on elections to remain in power.
One of the main protagonists in design, development and promotion of charter territories Shanker Singham spoke enthusiastically about them in interviews with like-minded organisations. It is useful to listen to him, gleefully, describe the end of democracy and accountability: Singham speaks to Seastanding and Singham speaks to Edgington Post.
Singham advises the UK government. He is invited onto political debate shows on TV as an “independent” analyst.” His career, as a legal advisor, is focussed on privatisation of public services, disaster capitalism and imposition of charter territories. In one of the interviews mentioned above he said “my career started with privatisation of the UK electricity industry. We did a lot of the privatisation laws and competition laws [in Russia and Eastern Europe]. In the early nineties I went to Latin America and did much the same thing there after the Apertura [partial privatisation of Venezuela’s oil industry].” He has worked at several libertarian think-tanks including Institute Of Economic Affairs and Legatum Institute.
Throughout the interviews he emphasised that “property protection” usurped all rights and he repeated often that charter territories must have a “regulatory framework.” The “framework” replaces laws and democracy.
He admitted that preferred targets for charter territories are countries that are less economically developed because their governments can be more easily strong-armed into accepting loss of territory and because there is usually more un- or underdeveloped land available.
UK would not have been seen as a possible victim without Brexit. Abandonment of EU laws that offered partial protections from exploitation, coupled with extreme libertarian conservative governments, created the opportunity for charter territories to be possible. Brexit was planned with that opportunity as its main aim. The designers, developers, promoters and enablers of Brexit are also the backers of charter territories: Singham, Barbara Kolm, Dan Hannan, Matthew Elliott and others.
For charter territories to be attractive to extreme exploiters there needs to be easy access for them to ownership of land and property. In UK, unlike in most targetted countries, land desired by charter territories is already in use, both by businesses and as residential areas. However, if businesses collapse and if people lose their homes to foreclosure then land, businesses properties and residential properties can be acquired cheaply, or freely. Kwarteng’s “mini budget,” Tory enablement of huge rises in fuel supply costs, and consequences for businesses due to Brexit lead directly to homes, businesses and land being available for cheap purchase.
Governtment’s mendacious use of the phrase “investment zone” is more than an attempt to hide the nature of charter territories. It is used as a positive description to imply that the zones will lead to more and better jobs and to greater opportunity of career advancement and job security. That echoes the presentation by Singham in his interviews. It is a blatant lie. Charter cities are intrinsically exclusive with relentless focus on wealth concentration. Most workers in them are on barely survivable wages and do not have workers’ rights or legal protections.
Tory government is 1) creating the necessary severe economic difficulties that “investors” in charter territories want and 2) using the existence of those difficulties as a tool to promote the concept of “investment zones” to the public. It is layered theft and layered fraud.
Given the aim of the government, there is no limit to how destructive they will be. Crashing the value of the pound against other currencies, destroying import and export businesses, destroying NHS, destroying trust among capitalists for its financial management, creating large personal debts for the public, causing loss of homes due to inability to pay mortgages, and closure of shops, entertainment venues, pubs and clubs due to extortionate fuel costs are by-products (some intentional and some collateral) of the ideological philosophy of extreme libertarianism, and it will get worse.
In November Tories will confirm devastating cuts to public services. None of the cuts are manageable. All will add, considerably, to damage to people’s livelihoods and lives. As with all purposeful austerity attacks since 2010 the worse hit will be people with disabilities or with chronic or terminal illnesses, pensioners, carers, people who rent their homes, people on low income or with part-time or insecure employment.
Government will claim the cuts in public services are the flipside of tax cuts, but most tax cuts (in Kwarteng’s “mini budget“) favoured the wealthiest and most public service cuts will harm the poorest.
Dismantlement of public services will continue because it benefits “investors” in charter territories. Control of vital services is a guaranteed big earner. Privatisation of public services that began in 1980s was designed to provide continuous large unearned income to racketeers while services deteriorated and became more expensive to use. This is experienced starkly today in massive rises in costs to public and businesses for fuel supply and in sewage being pumped into rivers and seas by water suppliers while the shareholders and senior executives at the companies that “own” fuel supply and water supply are wallowing in millions upon millions of dividends and bonuses. In charter territories all vital public services will be cashcows for exploiters.
Proposed “investment zones” include tracts of land greater than fifty kilometres in diameter. Such an area goes well beyond a port (always desired for charter territories) and land needed for low-pay logistics and manufacturing businesses and for exclusive residential compounds. The extent of the territories includes all locations in UK that are identified as fracking sites. Fracking will be opposed by residents and, subsequently, by elected councils. By extending charter territories to include fracking sites the problem of democratic accountability is removed and opposition of public and elected administrative bodies is ignored.
Given the enormously horrific effects of Kwarteng’s “mini budget” it is understandable that “investment zones” are not the leading topic of conversation for commentators and for the public. But, everyone needs to be aware that charter cities are several factors worse than what is happening now. In them there is no protection in the form of democracy or justice or human rights at all. It is an extreme libertarian hell-hole.
If you would like to support this blog please click DONATE. Thank you.
ducksoap 