Publisher's Synopsis
'A shocking and meticulous description of how today a majority of all the assets held by US corporations in Europe are in the UK; how recent British Prime Minsters and Chancellors have sold out their country; and what has to be done to avoid a historic bankruptcy of Britain and take back control from the Americans’ - Danny Dorling, author of Shattered Nation
British politicians love to vaunt the benefits of the UK's supposed 'special relationship' with the US. But are we really America's economic partner - or its colony?
Vassal State lays bare the extent to which US corporations own and control Britain's economy: how American business chiefs decide what we're paid, what we buy, and how we buy it. US companies have carved up Britain between them, siphoning off enormous profits, buying up our most lucrative firms and assets, and extracting huge rents from UK PLC - all while paying little or no tax. Meanwhile, policymakers, from Whitehall mandarins to NHS chiefs, shape their decisions to suit the whims of our American corporate overlords.
Based on his 40 years of business experience, devastating new research, and interviews with the major players, Angus Hanton exposes why Britain has become the poor transatlantic relation - and what we can do to change it.
'Read this and you’ll never again have a high street coffee, switch on your computer – do virtually anything – without pausing, anxiously, to think about the suffocating extent of American corporate domination of our lives. Meticulous and calm, Angus Hanton peels away the corporate layers of ‘British’ capitalism to show how we’ve allowed a kind of reverse colonisation sucking billions of pounds daily to Chicago, Seattle, San Francisco and New York' Polly Toynbee
'What would it really mean to ’take back control’ of the British economy? In this fascinating and provocative book, Angus Hanton argues that we need to understand the hold US corporations over the UK’s economic prospects - and decide what to do about it' - Diane Coyle, Professor of Public Policy at the University of Cambridge
