Both Liz Truss and Rishi Sunak are currently promoting the benefits of the deregulated “special economic zones” known as freeports, despite evidence that they encourage organised crime, money-laundering, drug-trafficking and terrorist finance, though admittedly the first three of these supposed problems appear to be common leisure activities for most Tory MPs. I’m here all week! Try the Colombian!!
Joined-up thinking, or paranoia depending on your point of view, suggests the next logical step from freeports is “charter cities”, allowing whole regions to be run as “corporate fiefs” by big business, stripped of tiresome regulations in the pursuit of profit. As long ago as 2010, the rightwing Tufton Street-based Taxpayers’ Alliance thinktank proposed that Hull “became our own version of a charter city [with] minimum wage, working-hours regulations, social benefits for working-age citizens, and central government planning regulations abolished”. Businesses that have made themselves useful to the Tories will doubtless be the beneficiaries here, just as they were when the PPE billions were doled out with due diligence.
