EUROPEANPOWELL
UK policymakers across the duopoly present deregulation as the key to economic growth. Strip away “red tape,” they claim, and businesses will flourish, investment will pour in, and prosperity will follow. This narrative has become so entrenched that questioning it seems almost heretical to economic orthodoxy.
But this is a fundamentally dishonest framing. What’s being sold as “growth” is actually a transfer mechanism, a way to shift costs, risks, and resources from private balance sheets onto public ones, from corporate ledgers onto workers, communities, and the environment.
Why This is Cheating
Cheating, in essence, means gaining advantage by circumventing rules designed to ensure fairness. UK deregulation does precisely this, but it does so legally, through policy capture rather than outright violation. This makes it no less a form of cheating; it simply means the rules themselves have been rewritten by those who benefit most from their removal.
Consider what regulations actually do: they internalise costs that corporations would otherwise externalize. Environmental regulations force polluters to account for ecological damage. Labour protections ensure workers aren’t ground down for marginal profit increases. Financial regulations prevent systemic risk-taking that could crash the economy. Consumer protections stop companies from selling dangerous products or engaging in fraud.
When these regulations are removed, corporations don’t suddenly become more productive or innovative. They simply gain the ability to push costs onto others:
∙ Environmental deregulation means communities breathe dirtier air and drink contaminated water while companies save on compliance
∙ Labour deregulation means workers lose bargaining power, safety protections, and job security while profit margins expand
∙ Planning deregulation means corporations get priority for infrastructure and land use while local communities lose control over their environments
∙ Financial deregulation means banks take bigger risks with public money, knowing bailouts await
This isn’t “growth”, it’s extraction with a better marketing department.
The Corporate Tilt
Deregulation is never neutral. It overwhelmingly benefits large corporations while harming smaller businesses and the public sector.
Large corporations can:
∙ Lobby for specific regulatory carve-outs tailored to their business models
∙ Absorb remaining compliance costs that crush smaller competitors
∙ Exploit regulatory arbitrage across jurisdictions
∙ Use market power to capture the benefits of deregulation while passing costs downstream
Small businesses cannot:
∙ Afford the lobbying infrastructure to shape policy
∙ Compete when larger rivals gain regulatory advantages
∙ Survive when deregulation leads to market consolidation
∙ Benefit from subsidies and state aid primarily directed at “strategic” (read: large) industries
The UK’s recent deregulatory push perfectly illustrates this pattern.
Case Studies in Extraction
Data Centres: Private Profit, Public Cost
Data centres are being fast-tracked through planning with the promise of economic growth. The reality: massive energy consumption subsidized by grid priority, tax incentives, and infrastructure investments, while providing minimal employment. The “AI revolution” narrative justifies pouring public resources into private infrastructure that primarily benefits tech giants and their shareholders.
Fossil Fuel Licenses: Socializing Risk, Privatizing Resources
New oil and gas licenses are framed as “energy security” despite climate commitments. Companies extract finite national resources, externalizing environmental costs onto current communities (pollution, ecological damage) and future generations (climate breakdown) while profits flow to shareholders, often abroad. When the wells run dry or climate damages mount, the public bears the cost.
Freeports and Special Economic Zones: Tax Avoidance by Design
Sold as engines of local growth, freeports primarily function as vehicles for tax avoidance and regulatory arbitrage. Companies capture subsidies, relaxed regulations, and customs benefits while economic activity that would have happened anyway simply relocates to capture the advantages. Local communities get the displacement and disruption; corporations get the tax breaks.
The Neoliberal Playbook
This is classic neoliberalism: the ideology that markets are inherently efficient and government intervention inherently distortive, therefore deregulation and privatization must lead to growth.
But this ignores that:
1. Markets don’t exist in nature – they’re constructed by rules, and those rules determine who wins and loses
2. Corporations are not neutral economic actors – they actively shape the rules through lobbying, regulatory capture, and political donations
3. “Efficiency” often means efficient extraction – maximizing shareholder returns by minimizing costs to the firm, regardless of social costs
4. Growth is not development – GDP can rise while living standards fall, if gains concentrate at the top
The neoliberal promise was that deregulation would create a rising tide lifting all boats. Forty years later, we have yachts and sinking dinghies.
The Balanced Alternative
Real economic growth, the kind that improves lives and builds resilient societies, requires a balanced sharing of profits between private and public sectors.
This means:
Regulations that internalise costs: Corporations should pay for their environmental damage, ensure safe working conditions, and contribute fairly to the infrastructure they depend on.
Progressive taxation: Profits generated using public infrastructure, public education, and public research should contribute back to those public goods.
Democratic control: Communities should have meaningful input into what gets built where, not simply accommodate whatever corporations demand in the name of “growth.”
State capacity: A well-funded public sector can provide services, conduct research, and build infrastructure that private markets won’t, creating foundations for genuine innovation.
The EU model, whatever its flaws, at least attempts this balance. Regulatory floors prevent races to the bottom. State aid rules limit selective corporate subsidy. Environmental standards treat ecological stability as a precondition for long-term growth, not an obstacle to it.
Brexit: Changing the Rules Isn’t Growth
When deregulation advocates promise growth, ask: growth for whom? Growth measured how? Growth at what cost?
More often than not, “deregulatory growth” means:
∙ Corporate profits up, worker wages stagnant
∙ Executive compensation soaring, public services crumbling
∙ Shareholder returns increasing, community wealth extracting
∙ Private gains accumulating, social costs mounting
IMO this is cheating in the criminal sense; because the economic growth rhetoric from the duopoly fools the public into believing it’s done through legitimate political processes. But it’s also cheating in a deeper sense: rigging the game so corporations can win by lowering standards rather than raising performance, by externalising costs rather than creating value, by capturing public resources rather than contributing to public wealth.
Calling deregulation “pro-growth” is perhaps the most successful rhetorical sleight of hand in modern economics. It transforms what is fundamentally extraction and cost-shifting into something that sounds innovative and dynamic.
Real growth would mean more people living better lives with greater security and opportunity. What we’re getting instead is an economy optimised for quarterly earnings reports and CEO bonuses, with everyone else picking up the tab.
That’s not growth. That’s theft with better branding.
This article (Deregulation is Not Growth: Why the UK Duopoly’s Regulatory Rollback is Economic Cheating) was created and published by European Powell and is republished here under “Fair Use”
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