It's remarkable how close the UK is getting to CN-styled internet. It would not surprise me to see a proposal to firewall the island off from the rest of the world, mandatory British government apps for services, etc., following the permanent installation of a dictator. Coupled with the promotion of a national digital currency, it's hard to see a future where Britain does not devolve into fascism. It has not had a democratically elected leader for years now.
The UK doesn't elect a leader, it elects a parliamentary party which chooses its own leadership. People did actually vote for this.
Although for the people in scotland, this is more accurate. We are not represented for over a decade by the UK government, and have been removed from the EU against our will...
There are 59 Scottish MPs in Parliament, many of whom support the Online Safety Bill. In fact, SNP MPs have consistently argued for stronger 'protections' than the Bill's proposers originally wanted. How is Scotland not represented in Parliament?
> it elects a parliamentary party which chooses its own leadership
That’s not quite true - the parliamentary Tory and Labour parties gave away the right to select the leader to their members. Hence we got Truss who MPs didn’t vote for but members did.
43.6% of the electorate voted for the Tory party on a manifesto not very much like what the current government is delivering. So even if one accepts that the Tory party totally changing the platform of their government doesn't justify saying nobody voted for it, the current party in government got its majority in parliament with the support of a minority of voters thanks to a fundamentally undemocratic electoral system.
By that measure, it's pretty reasonable to say that people did not vote for this.
Utterly absurd comment, supported in no way by any evidence. This bill has wide cross party support. There is a lot of blame for it's stupidity to go around. You've lived a very sheltered life if you think the UK in any manner is an authoritarian unaccountable state. COVID hysteria aside
The UK arrests 3300 people annually for being mildly offensive on the internet. That's an arrest almost every 2 and a half hours. Two examples of people being formally charged include a man for saying "get off of my football team" and a teenage girl for posting the lyrics of her dead friend's favourite rap song in his memory. No other western nation is this bad.
The current government is of a party that has a majority in parliament despite getting a minority of the votes. It's fairly reasonable to consider the UK undemocratic and unaccountable, even if there are far worse alternatives.
It's knowing full well how the UK system works for many decades, and living here for a couple of decades and observing the largescale disenfranchisement of UK voters which has made me firmly hold that opinion.
> observing the largescale disenfranchisement of UK voters
i think you’re confusing democracy in general (and it’s many flaws) with whatever you’ve noticed in the UK. if you’d study other democratic countries you’d find huge issues as well.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/First-past-the-post_voting Parties can and do win despite most people voting against them if those against them don't vote for the same party. Other voting systems don't have this problem, but allow voters to be represented in the proportions in which they vote.
> allow voters to be represented in the proportions in which they vote.
lived most of my life in such a system. it basically disenfranchised people from voting as whatever party they voted for never got enough votes and had to go into an alliance with other parties thus dropping their election pledges and thus removing any sort of democratic mandate. result: fewer and fewer people now go out to vote: https://www.statista.com/statistics/300427/eu-parlament-turn...
Under FPTP a large proportion of voters lose effective representation, while in a proportional system you are able to vote for parties who will negotiate the way you want them to. I grew up on Norway, where parties always would go into elections with promises about what their negotiation goals for a coalition would be, because people understood that enfranchising as many as possible means negotiated compromises, not letting on faction push through whatever they want.
Democracies are best judged by how well they ensure minorities interests are allowed to influence policy.
exactly this is why voters simply don't turn up to vote any more. by "negotiating" those parties break their election pledges to their voters. voters thus become disenfranchised. we can see the end result today: very few people vote.
> Democracies are best judged by how well they ensure minorities interests are allowed to influence policy.
there are many ways to judge democracies. that's just one of the myriad of indicators.
What does a 'minority of the votes' mean? In the 2019 general election, the conservatives got 13,966,000 votes and the next largest party got 10,269,000.
The Tories got 43.6% of the votes. So a minority of the votes cast gave them a substantial majority of the seats in parliament. Only the fundamentally undemocratic electoral system gave them the ability to form a government without negotiating a coalition.
I understand that some people don't agree with First Past the Post systems, but it's a little overblown to say it's fundamentally undemocratic. And I don't see how a coalition government formed through horse trading and favor-swapping in backroom negotiations is more democratic.
(Somewhat related: Anyone who complains about the 'undemocratically elected' Tories is compelled by consistency to complain about the 'undemocratically elected' Labour government of Tony Blair and the likely forthcoming 'undemocratic' government of Kier Starmer. If they are quiet about that, then they haven't a leg to stand on. See also complaining about the results of the Brexit Referendum, which won a clear, although narrow, majority of the people who bothered to vote, and was therefore legitimate by the lights of people who prefer majority decisions.)
I absolutely consider every government elected with a minority of the votes under FPTP to have been illegitimate and undemocratic.
A government formed through negotiation is more democratic if you accept that a representative government can ever be democratic and that the parties actually represents the interests of their voters in as much as if neither party achieves a majority, then a compromise that provides for some of what is wanted by all is more democratic. If anything, I'd argue the broader coalition the more democratic - democracies are best measured by how well they ensure also the interests of the minorities are protected.
A contract implies a meeting of minds. I do not accept any system which has systematically denied me representation my entire adult life as legitimate in any way.
A system imposed on people which denies them representation has no claim to be considered democratic.
All representative systems are somewhat undemocratic but the point of them is to pick someone who's we can agree is legitimately the winner of the contest - not to deadlock trying to pick a winner to a better standard.
The primary goal isn't to represent, but to reduce misrepresentation to the point where we can literally live with it.
To me it's only illegitimate if this is coupled with unreasonable attempts to keep us from improving the system as technology and knowledge give us the means.
yes, the person you are replying to is not an expert at UK politics, but then you went right off the hinges with the rest of your post. the UK is one of the biggest police states in the west. the king of punk was to be executed for insulting the queen just 40 or whatever years ago. it was or is illegal to give someone the middle finger. someone got jail for 60 days for saying something racist on twitter or facebook. the UK literally favors "decency" over basic freedoms
> At the time of the punk icons’ rise to fame, capital punishment remained on the statute books for the crime of high treason even though it had been abolished for all other crimes. While it’s unlikely Lydon and his bandmates would have been charged with that offense, media speculation called for them to be accused of treason for the lyrics to “God Save the Queen” in 1977.
