Two from artist/activist/lecturer at the Royal Academy, David Powell.
First up, via X, April 5:
Daniela Gabor’s assertion in The Guardian that "BlackRock will privatise the UK" reflects a critical perspective on the growing influence of private finance, particularly BlackRock, in shaping Britain’s economic and social landscape.
Add to this Labour's recent webinar that included 700 lobbyists where Starmer's spokesperson Lord Evermore stated that governance powers were to be handed over to the lobbyists, while the UK Govt takes a 'secondary position' and things get very dark, very quickly.
Starmer's announcement on Twitter that the Govt is now a partner with firms like BlackRock is not about rebuilding the UK’s public infrastructure, far from it, this is about facilitating Blackrock's ambitions to expand its financial portfolio by hoovering up housing, education, health, nature, and green energy, by exploiting public-private partnerships (PPPs) to the max. This should be immediately stopped.
The most lucrative line of business in the world right now is between governments and corporations
Starmer is subsidizing privatization with taxpayer money, as BlackRock leverages its $10 trillion in managed assets to expand its grip on public goods.
Subsidies for the rentier class or asset class are a destructive feature of globalisation, govt's dish out subsidies in the form of State aid which is public money at ever-increasing and alarming rates. State aid is strictly regulated in the EU to prevent governments of member states from giving public money as profit motives for corporations. Subsidies induce corporations to take advantage of deregulation policy rollouts, nowhere are these more dangerous than in free zones such as Freeport's and Special Economic Zones, of which there are 74 SEZs and 12 Freeports currently nearing operational status in the UK.
BlackRock CEO Larry Fink’s pitch at the G7 summit in June 2024 saw him argue that rich nations need growth through infrastructure investment—estimated at $75 trillion globally by 2040—but public debt constraints limit state-led funding. Fink positions asset managers like BlackRock, which oversee vast pools of private capital (e.g., pensions and insurance funds), as the solution. This is a Trojan horse: BlackRock doesn’t just invest; it reshapes the social contract by turning public assets into profit streams, sweetened by public subsidies.
In the UK context, this aligns with Labour’s 2024 manifesto, which embraces "derisking" investments—essentially, the state absorbing risks to make projects attractive to private firms. BlackRock’s real-world moves, like its £1.5 billion-plus investments in UK housing (e.g., shared ownership with Heylo Housing and rental projects with Outpost Management), show it’s already active. Gabor’s critique amplifies this, warning that such partnerships could lock public goods into private hands, making renationalization harder and ceding control over critical sectors to finance giants.The UK government will in its partnership with BlackRock privatise. BlackRock’s role is opportunistic: it invests where policy opens doors.
Labour’s openness to PPPs, as Gabor notes, accelerates this. Its influence is real—owning stakes in major UK firms and advising on crises like 2022’s pension fund mess—but it’s a partner, not a puppet master. It would be Keir Starmer's Govt that privatises the UK with a criminally corrupt shadow bank with infinite capital and atrocious track records in just about every corporate crime under the sun
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/article/2024/jul/02/labour-plans-britain-private-finance-blackrock
And at The Canary, April 8/May 6:
Freeports: what are they, and why did Labour sign off on them with the Tories?
“Freeports represent a significant threat to the well-being of Britain” – Richard Murphy, tax expert and political economist.
“I think that for the most part, these zones are used quite candidly by political leaders to create areas of unaccountability or to accelerate economic activity for their own interests” – Quinn Slobodian, author of Crack Up Capitalism: Market Radicals and the Dream of a World Without Democracy.
Freeports: complex entities carving up the UK for corporations
Freeports and Special Economic Zones (SEZ) are variations on the same thing: deregulation, privatisation, tax evasion, and corporate governance.
Freeports and SEZs are complex entities. Complexity is their camouflage, and we must understand what they are, because they are carving up the UK into regions where corporations are protected from parliamentary and public scrutiny under secondary legislation.
A Freeport is privately owned, whereas a port is publicly owned.
Ports are traditionally used for container freight transhipment operations. Freight comes into a port area, and it is stored and/or processed before being re-exported. However, a Freeport can also be a warehouse, an inland location, or an airport.
Freeports carve out sections of the country by establishing a border around them. Within that border, companies have exceptional legal status, distinct from the rules and regulations applied to their surroundings.
Goods going into a Freeport are not subject to customs and tariff duties. After US president Donald Trump’s latest global tariff attacks, this begs the question, will the UK’s 12 free ports be exempt from Trump’s tariffs when exporting goods to the US?
BlackRock’s fingerprints all over Freeports, naturally
Blackrock has bought three British Freeports. In partnership with Terminal Investment Limited (TiL), a subsidiary of the shipping line MSC, it has acquired an 80% stake in Felixstowe, Harwich, and Thamesport, as part of a larger $22.8 billion deal with CK Hutchison.
This transaction, announced in early March 2025, involves Hutchison Port Holdings, which includes 43 ports across 23 countries. The deal encompasses the UK’s Port of Felixstowe, the country’s primary container hub, along with Harwich and Thamesport, as well as significant terminal operations in Europe, such as Rotterdam.
The agreement was finalised with an expected signing date of 2 April 2025, transferring control of these key UK freeports to the BlackRock-TiL consortium. This move has been noted in trade and freight industry reports, though broader mainstream media coverage has been limited as of the current date, 7 April 2025.
Freeports: the playgrounds of predatory capitalism....
....MUCH MORE
We have quite a few posts on freeports going back to 2013, most often in regard to fine art storage. One, from Barron's Penta ($five million and up net worth) begins:
Freeports, a sort of maximum-security safety-deposit box with tax benefits, have become the vault of choice for global collectors, allowing them to securely and discreetly warehouse large stashes of art. But greater scrutiny is being paid to these opaque art strongholds, and straight shooters are advised to steer clear of freeports, despite their perceived attractions....
