SEZ (Airwave) 2024 – 16 x 260 x 189cm, sheet plastic, canvas, wood, sculpture, photographs, vinyl lettering, mic mufflers, acrylic paint, miniature table, letraset
P&O Ferries spent more than £47m sacking 786 UK seafarers in 2022. This is about the tricks of the deregulated zone. DP World bought P&O Ferries in 2006, outbidding Singapore, P&O was the shipping lane that served the British Empire. US policymakers opposed the deal as a security risk, DP World’s Dubai CEO sat on the Brexit trade advisory board. Dubai also bought 20% of the London Stock Exchange. Another advisor said ‘Our freeports are only going to work if we think of them as little offshore islands’ (we have to compete with the Middle East). DP World, P&O’s Dubai-based owner, had reportedly threatened to pull out of a £1bn investment in the UK on the back of comments made by transport secretary, Louise Haigh that the P&O and by extension parent company DP World Dubai was a ‘rogue operator’ which
Keir Starmer then rebuked because he is continuing the Tories 12 Freeports and 74 SEZs rollout with promises of more to come. All UK free zone licenses are embedded with secondary legislation, meaning Parliamentary and public scrutiny is non-existent, so companies are trusted to ‘self-regulate’ inside the zones. The Labour Government’s dagger of deregulation is aimed at employment rights, unions, fair wages, environmental protections, and much more.
As ‘zone fever’ eclipses the UK, job displacement, modern-day slavery, land grabbing, greenwashing hydrogen projects, tax evasion, compulsory purchase orders, private banking, the privatisation of the entire public sector, people/weapons, and drugs trafficking will accelerate as the UK’s 86 zones become operational. This is where the duopoly’s obsession with growth will reveal its malignant neoliberal ideology, this is how Brexit is being forced to work. Guess who else loves Freeports, SEZs, and Free cities? Donald Trump.
