ZONE FEVER: The Silent Corporate Coup Carving Up Britain

How Labour's "Industrial Strategy Zones" Complete the Corporate Colonisation Started by the Tories

The Email That Exposes Everything

When Rachel, a small business owner with two dormant limited companies, received an unexpected screen on her HMRC Corporation Tax return, she unknowingly stumbled upon evidence of the largest peacetime transfer of British sovereignty to foreign corporations in modern history.

The screen listed enhanced tax allowances available to businesses in "Freeports" and "Investment Zones" - benefits worth thousands of pounds per year that her web consultancy and administration companies, like millions of other British businesses, are systematically excluded from accessing.

"This is so anti-competitive," Rachel wrote in frustration. "Companies not sited/working in a Freeport won't be able to claim these enhanced allowances, while at the same time being hit by the National Insurance payments that Freeport companies are going to be exempt from."

Rachel's email, shared with this publication, perfectly captures what economists are calling the "David vs Goliath" reality of modern Britain: a two-tier system where location-based corporate privileges are systematically destroying fair competition while the mainstream media maintains a conspiracy of silence.

But Rachel's experience is just the tip of an iceberg that reveals something far more sinister: the systematic "zonification" of Britain through what government documents now call "Industrial Strategy Zones (ISZs), a rebranding exercise designed to obscure the true scale of corporate state capture.

The Great Zone Merger: From 86 to Infinity

In June 2025, Keir Starmer's Labour government published the "Industrial Strategy Zones Action Plan" - a document that few in the mainstream media bothered to scrutinise, despite it representing the completion of a corporate coup that began immediately after Brexit.

https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/industrial-strategy-zones-action-plan/industrial-strategy-zones-action-plan.

The plan announces the merger of Britain's 12 Freeports and 74 Special Economic Zones (SEZs) under the unified banner of "Industrial Strategy Zones" - a consolidation that legitimises and expands what were originally experimental programmes into a permanent parallel state system.

But the merger represents more than administrative tidying. It creates a unified framework for corporate privileges that spans both physical and digital realms, as evidenced by Starmer's simultaneous launch of "AI Growth Zones" in January 2025, which I describe as the digital equivalent of Freeports and SEZs.

https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/ai-growth-zones/ai-growth-zones-open-for-applications.

The timing is no coincidence. With employer National Insurance contributions rising from 13.8% to 15% from April 2025, businesses like Rachel's face increased costs while their competitors in the zones enjoy three-year exemptions worth up to £2,200 per employee annually. The free zones were always designed to create two classes of business in Britain. The merger just makes it official policy.

The 86 Zone Empire: A Map of Corporate Britain

The scale of what I call "Zone Fever" is staggering. Across Britain, 86 deregulated zones now operate under different legal frameworks to the rest of the country:

The Physical Empire:

• 12 Freeports with customs privileges and enhanced tax allowances

• 74 Special Economic Zones/Investment Zones with similar benefits

• Combined coverage spanning 34-75 kilometres in diameter

• 25-year operating licenses with minimal democratic oversight

The Digital Empire:

• AI Growth Zones prioritising tech giants like Palantir who have 24 UK government contracts, including the NHS, the Ministry of Defence, the Police Force, the Cabinet Office, and the DLUHC

• Enhanced planning permissions for data centres

• Preferential access to public compute capacity

• National Data Library integration

The Financial Architecture:

• £19.78 billion in confirmed public spending

• £64 billion in projected costs committed over 25 years

• 10-year tax breaks for qualifying businesses

• Enhanced capital allowances worth millions annually

Yet the majority of British citizens remain completely unaware that these zones exist, let alone that they're being funded by their tax money while creating systematic competitive disadvantages for businesses outside the zones.

Secondary Legislation: The Parliamentary Bypass

The most damning aspect of the zone system is how it was implemented. All 86 zones were embedded through secondary legislation - a process that bypasses meaningful parliamentary debate and eliminates public scrutiny.

Secondary legislation is supposed to be for technical details, not fundamental changes to how large parts of Britain are governed. What we're seeing is the systematic use of delegated powers to avoid democratic accountability

The implications are profound:

• No parliamentary votes on individual zones

• No public consultation requirements

• No democratic oversight of zone governance

• No citizen representation on zone boards

This represents what campaigners call "democracy by stealth" - the implementation of fundamental constitutional changes without the inconvenience of public debate or citizen consent.

The FOI Blackout: What They're Hiding

This year I submitted several Freedom of Information requests to multiple government departments seeking basic transparency about the free zones system, which has been systematically blocked using spurious "manifestly unreasonable" justifications.

The government's desperate attempts to hide information about:

• Compulsory Purchase Orders affecting thousands of properties

• Corporate contracts worth billions of pounds

• Financial arrangements with foreign corporations

• Environmental and social impact assessments

• Public consultation processes (or lack thereof)

When a democratically elected government systematically refuses to provide basic information about policies affecting millions of people and billions of pounds of public money, democracy itself is under threat.

The government's own admission that providing transparency would require "three or four teams" to compile information from "multiple repositories" reveals they don't even know the full extent of what they've authorised.

Corporate Justice: The LCIA Mechanism

Buried within the free zone contracts is a mechanism that fundamentally undermines British legal sovereignty: the London Court of International Arbitration (LCIA) system.

This corporate justice mechanism, equivalent to the controversial Investor-State Dispute Settlement (ISDS) procedures in international trade deals allows foreign corporations to sue the British government in private arbitration rather than British courts.

The precedent is chilling. In Honduras, a similar "charter city" experiment by Prospera Capital funded by Peter Thiel and other Silicon Valley figures like Marc Andreessen and Sam Altman led to an $11 billion ISDS claim against the government when it attempted to assert democratic control over the zone. Honduras is currently embroiled in 5 ISDS cases, know that no government can enact an ISDS/LCIA case, it can only be in a defensive position. Corporations are notorious for winning almost all ISDS and LCIA cases.

We're creating a system where foreign corporations have more legal rights than British citizens. When zone operators can sue the government for policy changes that affect their profits, we've crossed the line from democracy to corporate rule.