And um, regarding comments on off-shoring data/services, Amazon certainly does have cloud services that run on hosts in the UK... Dublin mostly. (There may be open questions about the parent company being US-based, but those wouldn't have to do with the geographic location of the services and data, which surely would be hosted from the Dublin data centers.)

I feel compelled to point out that Dublin, Republic of Ireland (where Amazon does indeed have datacenters) is most definitely not in the UK.

Actually read the article (I know, against /. policy ;-0), read most of the comments, and nowhere read anything about it possible being related to the patriot act. I happen to know that the patriot act is (one of) the reason(s) the Dutch government will not enter into an agreement with American hosting providers, surely the British have similar reservations?
(And yes, the article is scarce on facts, so cannot check whether all American companies are excluded, but heck: so could none of the other people posting a reply).

So:
MY guess is that the patriot act played a mayor role in letting this business opportunity slip trough the fingers of american companies...