Let’s be honest - the CMA isn’t about to save the UK’s digital future. This reads like bureaucratic theatre designed to show voters the government is doing something , while the real agenda - handing the UK’s digital infrastructure to foreign tax-shy giants - continues unchecked.

We’re told that “exit fees, vendor lock-in, and preferential licensing” are stifling innovation. Yet who exactly cemented this stranglehold? The government itself - by making AWS, Azure, and pals the default destination for public sector data. If these practices are so dangerous, maybe Whitehall should stop buying into them first. Lead by example, not by press release.

This isn't “market reform.” It’s a cynical performance. The same officials who crippled domestic providers with IR35, procurement rules, and hostile tax treatment now pretend to wring their hands over the dominance they actively created. Meanwhile, real competition - British, independent, and agile - was priced and legislated out years ago.

No, don't be daft. I'm staggered anybody would even think this a valid question.

The last head of the CMA, Marcus Bokkerink, was given the boot by this government for (quite remarkably) not being "business friendly" enough, and replaced by Douglas Gurr, a former country manager for Amazon UK. Hmm, will he hold Amazon's feet to the fire? And with both Amazon and Microsoft making or promising multi-billion DC investments in the UK....?

Moreover, in recently updated guidance to the CMA, government set out priorities the CMA must consider, and the FIRST priority is "prioritising pro-growth and pro-investment interventions".

So again, no, the CMA will not hold ANYBODY's feet to the fire, if they're big tech, US companies, or any other multinational tax dodgers.

Even the whole EU cloud industry can't compete with AWS or Azure, never mind the UK.

Why? Because the reasons are exactly the same as for the UK:

a) they don't want to and they are too lazy, too slow, inept, and in the UK it'd end up as a digital version of HS2. It's easier to use "someone else's computer", regardless of data sovereignty

b) it needs masses of financial investment and spare hardware capacity

c) they don't have the imagination or business acumen. Remember Amazon was just a bookseller. EU businesses are one trick ponies

d) in the EU and UK it simply takes regulators, governments, and businesses too long to make decisions. JFDI is an alien concept and not invented here

That’s not a failure of imagination - it’s design. The UK doesn’t want a book seller to become a cloud giant. Any spare capital gets bled out via business rates, punitive taxes, and regulatory micromanagement. Try reinvesting? Good luck. Then the government takes your taxed-to-death revenue and hands it straight to AWS or Azure - and later whines that there’s no domestic competition.

This isn’t just economic sabotage - it’s institutionalised class suppression. In the UK, a bookseller daring to become a tech giant is seen as getting above their station. If you're not privately educated and clinking glasses at Whitehall dinners, your ambition is treated like a threat - and punished accordingly. The system’s designed to keep you in your place while pretending it's meritocratic.

That’s why we don’t get British Amazons. Not because we can’t - but because we’re not meant to.

For decades the UK has rolled out toothless regulators which only really exist to give an appearance of "doing something"(*) or worse, had trade associations wrap themselves in the cloak of "industry self-regulation", then calling themselves regulators and making out that they have a government mandate (ASA, ICSTIS/PPP, etc), in order to avoid the government stepping in and regulating sectors which really _DO_ need regulation rather than "old boys' clubs"

Thanks to Brexit it may be forced to actually make these regulators and quangos fit for purpose. It's a faint hope but it's at least a hope

(*) That works when inside the EU because a government can't be forced to enforce its laws without embarking on an elephant-breeding exercise. Once outside the EU, it can be a matter of "Do it to our satisfaction or you don't get trade access" (Whether said by the EU, USA, China or one of the three other large economic players)

"Thanks to Brexit it may be forced to actually make these regulators and quangos fit for purpose. It's a faint hope but it's at least a hope"

And it's an ill-founded hope.

I'm a regulator and a civil servant, and there's currently a unicorn hunt been started in all UK regulators at the behest of HMT to reduce the administrative burden on business of regulation by around 25%. Of itself that's admirable, excepting that (a) governments of all persuasions have been prattling on about reducing regulation for about thirty years* with few perceptible benefits, and (b) there's no baseline or accurate measure of what that burden is, and (c) government have been clear that they want regulators to reduce their burden on business, but politicians don't intend to actually remove or reform any statute law.

Which of those counts most? That they've tried this since forever and its never worked before, that they don't know what the 100% that they want to reduce to 75% is, or that all of the rules remain in place? I'd say they're all equally important in guaranteeing that the crusade will fail. Even whilst promising to reduce the burden of regulation, the apparatus of state continues to roll more into (e.g.) minimum wage, employee entitlements, NI costs, pension obligations, stillbirth leave etc etc and that mindset is not changing. Pointless garbage reporting like corporate environmental disclosures, modern slavery reporting, or equal pay reporting** will all remain. But apparently just by telling regulators to ask fewer questions of business the government think that they'll save business around £5bn*** a year.

There's a huge conflict between what ministers want and what can be delivered, the civil service is poor at offering good, practical solutions to ministers, the civil service has too many dossers amongst the Senior Civil Service, and said SCS are simply not held to account when things go wrong. If government want regulation to cost business less, then THEY need to remove some even many of the regulations they've passed, they need to bash the civil service into modernity, and when setting targets to reduce something they need to have an accurate idea of what that something is.

* e.g. The Better Regulation Task Force of 1997, the Bonfire of the Quango's in 2010, the Growth Duty in 2013 and since, plus others.

** There are regulations in place, just enforce those rather than wasting every law-abiding companies time and resources having to report that they're not breaking the law.

*** I did say no baseline; To be fair somebody did take a "plucked from my arse" estimate from 2015, inflated it by an arbitrary amount, and came up with the idea that regulators currently cost business around £25bn a year. Assuming a fully loaded average labour cost of £52k, that would imply that 480,000 FTE of private sector do NOTHING but fill in forms for regulators. Like 'em or loathe 'em, how credible do you think that is?

redundant for all the good it has done.

Google, MS, AMAZON and the rest have this cloud crap sewn up tight.

Time for the UK Gov to tax them dearly otherwise, we are truly FSCK'd as a country.

Lets face it people, we are broke. Just like when Gordo Brown stopped being PM. We can't go on like this forever and before anyone pipes up, Farage and Reform are merely Trump/MAGA light.

CMA may come to damning conclusion on current state of play, but the Government is so weak and will bend over and take it, while the corrupt senior Civil Service masters are bed hoping with the tax shy megacorps for their next pay packet, nothing will get done, just waffle, promise, smoke and mirrors, business as usual.

Then again, there's not much to be had.

But saying that you're broke ? I think that's going a bit too far.

You are generating wealth. You're just not the ones that are benefitting from it.