>With all the red lights flashing at the state of the UK’s democracy, I’ve seen it said we shouldn’t assume the next general election will even happen. The issue, though, isn’t whether an election will happen (it will). It’s whether it will be free and fair (it won’t).
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>The UK isn’t about to become a totalitarian state. But it’s well on the way to becoming a sham democracy. And elections are essential to a sham democracy. They allow it to claim international legitimacy. And they reassure a sleeping public that they still have their freedom.
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>But scratch below the surface and things are bleak. Voter suppression. A neutered electoral commission to be brought under government control. Public money withheld from constituencies that don’t vote Tory. Personal data used to target susceptible voters with blatant lies.
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>And yet many people seem to believe that the mere holding of an election or referendum is all that matters. That those things alone constitute democracy. The very word “democracy” has been weaponised.
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>Never mind ruling by executive fiat. Never mind closing down parliament. Never mind going to excruciating lengths to avoid scrutiny. Never mind attacking all the institutions whose role is to hold you to account. “We’ve had an election ergo we live in a healthy democracy”.
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>Many in the Conservative Party are encouraging this way of thinking. In response to recent scandals, I’ve heard Dominic Raab and Daniel Hannan, among others, say that if the public don’t like it they can vote the Government out.
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>Their meaning is clear. Once elected, a Government should be entitled to do what it wants without limit or challenge, and it is only the electorate – at the next election – which has the right to hold it to account.
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>A good reason, you might say, to make it harder for other parties to win an election. When your reasoning is this warped, opposition, scrutiny and debate, holding the powerful to account, all the things that are the very essence of liberal democracy, are seen as anti-democratic. The poles are inverted.
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>It’s an authoritarian position, revealed time and again in the things Tory MPs such as Joy Morrissey say on social media, often before rushing to press delete, as she did yesterday. Being elected means you can do no wrong, and being unelected means you have no legitimacy.
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>Since the Brexit vote, many people have fallen for this. And even if they haven’t, if their preference is for permanent or entrenched Conservative power, they are unlikely to do too much to challenge it.
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>So, we are not about to see general elections come to an end. But there is a danger that the mere fact of their taking place will be seen as evidence that the UK has a healthy democracy, together, of course, with a referendum held half a decade ago, in which the vote of a minority of the population was used as a mandate for a full-scale revolution.
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>As a further thought, who’s to say that if the devolved governments continue to be formed by parties opposed to the Tories, or to the Union, they won’t also one day be deemed “undemocratic?”
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>You can pick up hints in the utterings of some politicians and commentators, with their not-so-subtle messages that the success of the SNP in Scotland means democracy isn’t working.
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>People, you begin to suspect, for whom the preservation of the Union is more important than the preservation of democracy. It’s not too great a leap of imagination to envisage these people calling one day for the dissolution of the devolved parliaments.
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>After all, rather than try to convince people of the merits of the Union in a post-Brexit, authoritarian UK, easier just to remove the institution that gives voice to the counter-arguments. Especially if you can persuade yourself that you’re doing it all in the name of democracy. Your own, special kind of democracy.
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>The result in North Shropshire gives me hope that the Tories will yet go down in flames. But I’m still not confident. And you can be assured they will continue to undermine democracy across the UK, at all levels, if that’s what they deem necessary to hold on to power.
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[https://twitter.com/rfhaviland/status/1471916300754690053](https://twitter.com/rfhaviland/status/1471916300754690053)
23 comments
If Torries win next election, I will be moving heaven and earth to leave. Only those ignorant of world history would feel safe remaining. Or of course those with no choice.
My god the hyperbole in the OPs copy and paste and some of the comments are absurd to the point of parody.
Could not agree more!
Repressive, authoritarian laws being churned out on a “law and order” platform. Inconvenient Human Rights being discarded. Deliberate drowning of refugees being suggested. Voter suppression for any demographic deemed unsympathetic to the Tory cause – the list goes on and on and on again.
Tories have taken a leaf from the Trumpian playbook. Appeal to the baser instincts of xenophobia and selfishness, label dissenters as terrorists and jail them, strangle the electoral process so it only comes out with decisions in their favour. We are seeing it played out in all it’s horrific detail across the pond and the current massive majority allows it to continue for as long as this parliament lasts.
Above all. lie! Lie about the backhanders. Lie about the intent behind repressive legislation. Lie about anything that isn’t convenient. Lie about levelling up. Lie about fossil fuel emissions control. Lie about the benefits of a trade deal. Lie about the realities of completely breaking from EU trade framework. It’s astonishing that they are getting away with it but that majority gives them every excuse – we have a mandate!
Thank heaven for N. Shropshire and the voters who expressed themselves so clearly. It has to happen again and again until we are rid of the right wing loonies in control of our country.
If only we had a *credible* opposition capable of leading the country or at the very least holding the Tories to account. As it stands, even without all this voter suppression Labour are incapable of winning a majority, their best case scenario is a hung parliament against one of the most shambolic administrations this country has ever seen. Let that sink in.
I think we should take the risk seriously and agree there’s a weakening of vital institutions that protect real democracy.
But I think complaining about brexit being based on a minority of the population as if that’s part of a slide from democracy is dubious and undermines the rest (and I say this as an intellectual and emotional remainer)
The referendum was in the manifesto of the winning party and the decision to leave after had cross party support. When it got more contested the tories won a strong majority in the resulting election (yes under fptp but the argument is we’re losing something not just that our system has never been ideal).
For reference when we joined it was without referendum and the retrospective referendum on staying was also a minority of the population voting yes.
> “We’ve had an election ergo we live in a healthy democracy”.
Sorry, but I have seen and heard that in many places other than here. This is hardly exclusive to Westminster or the UK.
It’s only democratic if you win.
If people vote based on lies, it’s not a democracy.
The UK is an “Elected Dictatorship” and the Tories are receiving massive amounts of funding from Russia, Boris sat on the report proving that he’d stopped the intelligence service for even looking into the possibility of Russian interference in the last election, the night of winning the last election Boris went straight to a party given by a wealthy Russian.
Dom Cummings and his brother in law both have very dodgy Russian contacts.
The Tory party is basically paid for and run by the Russians and is anyone really surprised that our current electoral service is right out of Russia’s playbook.
Restricted voting for anyone that’s not typically a Tory voter, Tories taking over control of the, until now, independent electoral commission, voting restrictions to counter non-existent voter fraud, ID required to vote to be removed from drug users…
This entire country is fucked an run to the whims of Putin
Hell the Tories have already told their paymasters that they will not do anything other than a stern finger wagging when Putin invaded the Ukraine, no troops to be sent at all
Does anybody believe that IF Labour win the GE they will role back many of the changes the Tories have implemented over the years?
Do you think Labour will role back many of purposed laws which attack free speech if they go through?
I’ll say this about the devolved governments; they can try to dissolve them, but it’ll spectacularly backfire.
You should make it clearer that your text is reproduced verbatim from the Twitter thread to which you chuck in an unexplained link. True, you have marked all your text as a quotation, but marking a large block of text in that way makes it easy to fail to see the mark. You should say: ‘Source: xxx’ or something similar.
They didn’t mention one of the most powerful forces for a free election, the BBC, which has been cowed into submission.
Well one day the fucking spineless liberals and centrists will wake up to find out we live in a sham democracy. And a ballot box won’t fix that. People will need to take to the streets and I don’t mean marching around Whitehall cooperating with pigs and holding cardboard placards with witty messages. Idk lads, maybe it’s just Monday morning and that but I feel like we’re doomed lmao. I don’t see Britain having the appetite for street movements anymore. Where is the spirit of the 1920s and syndacalism and the battle of cable street?
Soon we will be in ranks with countries like Hungary, Poland and who knows maybe even Belarus…
Given the opportunity we’d need to start allllll over again..
The more I see these sort of posts the more I believe they are a result of propaganda efforts to undermine our democracy by reducing confidence and participation. Not to say there isn’t issues, but I don’t see them as being so dramatic.
I expect 2022 election. If Boris goes the Tories will regroup on a simple message of “no vaccine mandates, no lockdowns” or something close to it and wipe the floor with Labour as they infight about whether to make vaccines mandatory.
Based on where these Tory rebels have drawn the line I expect that is the expected outcome.
>Only those ignorant of world history would feel safe remaining.
To what world history events are you referring?
If there’s an election and it doesn’t go your way it must be a conspiracy. Got it mate.
Expect the Tories to lurch further to the right fearing losing votes to Reform UK
It’s so dangerous to feed into a narrative where the legitimately elected parliament is declared illegitimate. It leads to Jan 6th style problems. We don’t want that in the UK. It doesn’t matter if you think Boris is a fool or bad willed, what follows from delegitimising parliament would be much worse.
This is a hugely negative reading of the situation. There isn’t really voter suppression in the UK – normally people raising this mean the proposals to require an ID to vote, and while I don’t think that’s necessary, to claim applying for a free card if you don’t have any ID already is “suppression” is nonsense. The proposed changes to the EC *are* worrying, but they won’t affect the validity of elections.
The DUP are already threatening to collapse Stormont in the north of Ireland because they aren’t getting their way re the Protocol. The preservation of the Union is more important to them than the preservation of democracy. I support a United Ireland, because we need to be as far, far away from this Tory government as possible.