The colonization and privatisation of everyday life and infrastructure must be resisted or it's Game Over for democracy.

 

 

'Exit' means leaving the system entirely and replacing it with a substitute system, such as corporate governance.

'Voice' means participating in democracy via voting, and activism.

When Keir Starmer announced his Govt partnership with US shadow bank Blackrock, he chose ‘exit over ‘voice’, Freedom Of Information requests about his 21 November 2024 meeting with Blackrock have been rejected for months, but the Govt did eventually issue a reply to one intrepid independent journalist, @Lewis_Brackpool on X, that what was discussed was ‘commercially sensitive, ongoing policy formulation’ and not for public viewing. So much for Starmer’s promises of ‘being the most transparent government on record’…

Since then, Blackrock has just bought 3 British Freeports (Felixstowe, Harwich, and Thamesport) for $22 billion from Hong Kong company CK Hutchison in a deal pushed by none other than Donald Trump. Hard to believe that this was not discussed back in November 2024, and how quickly the subsequent buying up of 3 British Freeports went.

Freeports which are privately owned, have been described as ‘the muscles and sinews of free trade’. ‘Freeports’ differ from publicly owned ‘ports’ in that deregulation runs rampant, meaning all manner of illegal and illicit activity is commonplace in them, everything from tax evasion, fraud, human trafficking, smuggling gold and drugs, weapons dealing, shredding of workers rights, land-grabbing, private security forces, and decades-long corporate tax breaks, while 25-year long licenses are embedded with ‘secondary legislation’ meaning zero public scrutiny by regulators and/or the public,

The next cherry on top of the cake that applies to all 86 UK free zones (74 SEZs and 12 Freeports) is a secret corporate justice court mechanism known as LCIA, the London Court of International Arbitration. Like its sibling, Investor-State Dispute Settlement (ISDS), LCIA bypasses a country’s domestic courts and can sue governments for billions over breach of contract. What this usually entails is a corporation’s right to pollute the environment, shred worker’s rights, and ban Unions under the guise that corporate rights have been ‘infringed upon.

It is worth noting that ISDS was set up by the World Bank in 1966, its committee members number 3 in total, none of whom have a law degree. It is also worth noting that ISDS is embedded in CPTPP free trade deals as confirmed in a Oral Evidence Government meeting in 2023 where Kemi Badenoch admits that ISDS is built into all post-Brexit CPTPP deals, meaning countries can sue the UK Govt for infringements on any Foreign country's right to allow a supranational body to regulate and restrict sovereign decisions of the UK.

International Trade Committee, Oral evidence: The work of the Department for International Trade, HC 16 https://committees.parliament.uk/oralevidence/13035/pdf/

The next big incursion from private equity is to privatise the public sector, this has been spoken of as corporations ‘rescuing’ democracy from its failures. Blackrock have concocted an ‘Infrastructure Imperative’ https://s24.q4cdn.com/856567660/files/doc_financials/2024/ar/BLK_AR23.pdf

Infrastructure noun

The basic systems and services that are necessary for a country or an organization to run smoothly, for example buildings, transportation,and water and power supplies.

1: the system of public works of a country, state, or region

also : the resources (such as personnel, buildings, or equipment) required for an activity

2: the underlying foundation or basic framework (as of a system or organization)

By targeting infrastructure, corporations like Blackrock will turn the UK’s public services into additional assets including Blackrock’s recent announcement that green spaces are to be identified as ‘nature’s assets’, in their financial portfolio , this comes on the back of 192 English councils with higher debt levels than Birmingham which is technically bankrupt and is host to 6 deregulated SEZs. 6000 people could have their homes torn down under a mass compulsory purchase order in the Birmingham region.

https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/article/2024/jul/22/economic-violence-ladywood-birmingham-redevelopment-residents-clash-council

In January 2025, Labour updated a 192-page document on Compulsory Purchase Orders (CPOs), this was published last October in 2024. CPOs apply to business, agricultural, and residential properties where the UK Govt can seize property and land to facilitate 'economic growth', Boris Johnson and Michael Gove called this ‘Levelling Up’

https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/media/67eac2220678ace40a7f27b8/CPO_Guidance_Update_January_2025.pdf

Keir Starmer’s changed Labour Party is transforming the UK Government into a ‘Sovereign Corporation’ with Blackrock and 700 corporate lobbyists who have been given governance powers while the government takes a ‘secondary position’.

What is a Sovereign Corporation? Curtis Yarvin, (a far-right philosopher in cahoots with Trump and Vance), advocates the hollowing out of big govt and the civil service by appointing an unelected oligarch to illegally dismantle the civil service and steal taxpayers money designated for the public sector, (cue Elon Musk).

Neoliberals and right-wing libertarians have for decades attacked big govt for putting constraints on corporations; such as paying taxes, protecting worker rights, and preserving the environment. In 1955 battery chicken farmer Antony Fisher heeded the advice of right-wing economist Friedrich Hayek and set up a think tank called the Institute of Economic Affairs (IEA), whose extreme neoliberal partisan views would remain hidden from public scrutiny for fear of losing its charity status. Fisher went on to form the ATLAS network in 1981, an umbrella group described as "a think tank that creates think tanks," the organization partners with nearly 600 organizations in over 100 countries. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atlas_Network

The Intercept, The Guardian, and The New Republic have described Atlas Network as having ties to right-wing and conservative movements, including the administration of Donald Trump in the United States, Brexit in the United Kingdom, and anti-government protests in Latin America.

The Neoreactionary Movement or NRx (whose chief proponent is Curtis Yarvin) has formulated a philosophy that seeks to abolish big govt altogether by carving up countries into Special Economic Zones (SEZs) and free cities. The premise is that big govt has failed so it’s now up to corporations to take control of Parliament, hollow it out from within, scrap all welfare benefits and social security, and run the country like a corporation with a CEO instead of a PM or president at the helm. Once a country has been captured, and by that I don’t mean by military means, I mean by starving a nation of its public wealth, and public services.

A ripping up of the social contract that leaves citizens sufficiently fatigued, desperate and disorientated, tactics learned from the military translated into a disaster capitalist war machine on the poor and vulnerable…by which time the process of corporate and annexation of a country is achieved by carving up territories into patchworks of corporate sovereignties. Corporations have full scope to ‘self-regulate’ inside the free zones operating under different laws and a deregulatory framework, this framework was developed by the architect of Brexit, the US trader Shanker Singham, a man who had extraordinary access to the Tory Cabinet before and after Brexit.

‘The Network State cult calls for the creation of new tech-controlled sovereign cities that would essentially act as miniature countries’.

One of the main reasons that the UK is sinking so fast is because of across-the-board privatisation of infrastructure. The cultural commons main component is the media, it was once a place where all groups were represented, it was publicly owned and accountable.

Corporate interests have dismantled all diverse views, take the example of the BBC's Question Time where highly paid TV presenters, business executives and editors decide what constitutes the public interest, and relentlessly foreground the right, which, in turn stifles debate and dissenting voices.

The BBC's charter of 2017 opened up BBC output to competition, this is deeply problematic because programming bends to the dictates of the market while having a negative effect on journalistic freedom. What is left in place of investigative reporting are predominantly American programmes and American style 'sound-bite' news with severe limits on who takes part in the debate, it is patently clear that 'debate' (for want of a better term) is entrusted with centre-right to far-right representatives backed by corporate interests.

This is another form of colonization by US interests that has corroded local output, and silenced dissenting political voices, starving them of oxygen. They don't call it the MSM for nothing.

Millions of people are refusing to be spoon-fed lies and the ritualised pantomime politics of so-called Parliamentary debate. However, it becomes increasingly difficult when the public space of the cultural and information commons has effectively been territorialised by corporate interests.

I would suggest going old school and read books, arm yourselves with knowledge that has been swept under the carpet by the corporate political model of 'exit over voice'. Organise, and meet your friends, neighbours, while making new acquaintances at public meetings all around the UK, distribute your findings on social media (yes, it can be used for good)

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