THERE’S NO LEFT LEFT 2024 – 36 x 42cm, acrylic paint, vinyl lettering on photo paper
What is the ideology behind Freeports and SEZs? The current ideology embraced by Sunak, Truss, Mogg, Badenoch hails from the US and fuses libertarianism with anarcho-capitalism, their goal is to abolish the centralised state and replace it with countless small states all totally privatised. This has its roots in empire-building and British colonialism. The East India Company in 1600, Hong Kong and Singapore in the mid-1800s, the Brits installed dozens of Freeports in those regions, bringing their own laws, and courts with them, this was known as ‘China’s century of humiliation’. In the 80s Thatcher’s aim was to turn the UK into 1 big tax haven and SEZ, but she came up against the EU. The current Tories have taken that baton of ‘exit’ from Thatcher and several prominent economists and progressive right-wing radicals like Ayn(‘Ine’) Rand, Murray Rothbard, Friedrich Hayek, Milton Friedman, James Buchanan, and Antony Fisher. Freeports, SEZs and charter cities have long been the ideal templates to isolate away or ‘exit’ from Big Govt by establishing areas of a country as zones of exception to the host country. Rishi Sunak studied at Stanford University, his mentor was Prof. Paul Romer who lectured on a return to colonialism via SEZs and charter cities.