Oceansgate Plymouth SEZ 2024 – 50 x 40cm, acrylic on canvas
Brexit is a time-based project, the transition phase to full-blown corporate governance has already laid its foundations in the form of 12 Freeports and 74 SEZs, backed by Labour. Brexit has induced desperation by design, the UK is letting go of democracy by allowing corporations to take up the mantle of governance where ‘democracy failed’. There is a violent govt repression at play whose only purpose is to ensure capital accumulation is achieved as the nation state and all of it laws and regulations are collapsed. Attacks on citizens’ protests will ramp up, targets will invariably be the ‘woke’ and LGBTQ+ communities, all those on the left, academics, writers, artists, intellectuals, and the independent press. SEZs fragment local territories by ring-fencing them from the host country’s laws and protections. Collective sovereignty has been successfully targeted and commodified. SEZs are primed to reconfigure each region of the UK by licensing the zones for 25 years, with tax-exemption for 10 years. It is no coincidence that Labour are members of the nationwide Freeports/SEZ consortia. Our main parties are quick to wave the glossy brochures of Freeports and SEZs replete with the usual ‘growth, innovation, and lifting deprived areas out of poverty’ ad nauseam, but the truth is countries with low taxation and rampant deregulation reveal high levels of crime, frozen wages for ordinary working people, huge increases in wages for the rich and absolute government corruption, and political instability.