Edit: To be fair that’s done by a UK-based company but I don’t think they would have much reason to be biased
I mean were it a non-western country with this level of surveillance, in the open corruption, expectation to conform, number of unelected PMs, orchestrated suppression of political opposition, regulation of the press etc. we would have no trouble calling it worse things.
Source: lived there.
All PMs are "unelected", or at least not elected via a general election, beyond their election as an MP. There's a reason they're called a Prime Minister, not a president or similar. The UK doesn't directly elect the head of the UK government, and it never has. The PM is elected is the leader of the party that gains enough seats in parliament to form a government. Enough seats is determined by the simple question of "would the formed government have a reasonable ability to pass legislation in parliament, as is needed to conduct the business of government", nothing else.
This is the UK chosen form of democracy, the US may prefer a more direct form of democracy, but that's not without its issues either.
Many would argue that the recent trend of PMs trying to appear presidential, and running general election campaigns based on their personal brand, as problematic. As the PM isn’t meant to be an important part of a persons vote. They’re voting for their local MP not the national PM.
Also every PM had to campaign in a general election. They need to be an MP to become PM, that requires them to run in a general election and win their seat.
Just because a system doesn't require something doesn't mean it is legitimate or democratic. It's a personal opinion for sure, but I would call that undemocratic. Many of the systems we in the West consider autocratic do have some sort of 'representation' after all.
> As the PM isn’t meant to be an important part of a persons vote. They’re voting for their local MP not the national PM.
The PM does have a fairly huge impact on how the country is being run, where it is headed, its foreign policy etc. do you want to argue otherwise?
My point is the UK has had multiple PMs in a row who didn't have to make a case for their agenda in front of the people. I call that undemocratic despite what its system says, no system would consider itself authoritarian, that's a judgment passed onto them by 3rd parties.
I think the general expectation in the UK was that this is tolerated because when a new PM comes in, they're expected to win a mandate for their agenda in a general election ASAP.
> Also every PM had to campaign in a general election. They need to be an MP to become PM, that requires them to run in a general election and win their seat.
A MP running for a local seat is something quite different from being a PM, but anyway this is just one aspect of why I think the UK isn't quite as democratic as it presents itself.
I think you risk arguing using a “No true Scotsman” fallacy. There are many forms of democracy, and many countries generally considered democratic don’t require the direct election of their governments leader.
For example the German chancellor is not directly elected. The Dutch prime minister is also not directly elected, neither is the Spanish Prime Minster, or the Prime Minister of Norway. Are they undemocratic as well?
If you look around most long established “democracies”, you’ll find that directly electing the head of government isn’t actual the default.
Indeed the most powerful directly elected politician in the world happens to be the Major of London. They have a surprisingly broad set of powers of a single directly elected politician.
> The PM does have a fairly huge impact on how the country is being run, where it is headed, its foreign policy etc. do you want to argue otherwise?
I most certainly would, as has been quite clearly demonstrated by the long succession of PM the UK has recently had. If the PM is so all powerful, why do they keep failing to get anything done, and keep getting replaced?
> My point is the UK has had multiple PMs in a row who didn't have to make a case for their agenda in front of the people. I call that undemocratic despite what its system says, no system would consider itself authoritarian, that's a judgment passed onto them by 3rd parties.
As a direct consequence of not having to put their agenda in front of the entire UK public, they’ve all failed to achieve anything of note. The only recent PM who could be argued to have achieved anything is Boris Johnson with his signing of the EU Brexit agreement, but he did that after winning a general election!
Every PM since then has been struggling to keep their party together, and struggling to pass anything in parliament, because they lack a strong mandate from the people, and parliament is punishing them for that.
> I think the general expectation in the UK was that this is tolerated because when a new PM comes in, they're expected to win a mandate for their agenda in a general election ASAP.
Until recently this was explicitly illegal. The fixed term parliament act prevented governments from ending their term early and calling an election. Explicitly to prevent the type of abuse that Boris Johnson engaged in, by calling elections when it’s most politically convenient for the government, and thus most likely to result in another win, and an extension to their time in power.
Allowing governments to call elections when it suites them is terrible idea for a democracy. It’s so trivial for the ruling party to abuse.
> A MP running for a local seat is something quite different from being a PM, but anyway this is just one aspect of why I think the UK isn't quite as democratic as it presents itself.
The UK electoral system could certainly use some work. But direct democracies aren’t inherently better. The US uses direct democracy for electing their president, but I’m not sure I would hold up the US as the pinnacle of democracy, not with the endless gerrymandering, political devision, and drive by parties to win at all costs.
It seemed to me like Johnson had quite the effect on how the pandemic was handled for another example.
Yet you keep arguing they have no influence.
Yes, they're not Saudi kings, nobody's arguing that. Yet you're underselling their power.
Also, it seems to me that you may be confusing democracy with tradition. Anyway, agree to disagree.
If so many important things are not up for the vote, is it really a democracy?
>>If so many important things are not up for the vote, is it really a democracy?
And, assuming they have an overall majority in parliament, this then means that every decision they subsequently make over the next 4 years is legitimised in advance because "you voted for this".
The only true democracy would involve regular referenda, whenever major new policies were proposed. This should be technically feasible with current technology. But, given the last time we had a referendum in UK the people didn't vote for the option they were meant to, I'm doubtful we'd ever see such a thing implemented.
You mean "the people believed false promises and voted for something they inevitably regretted".
https://qz.com/brexit-polls-support-popularity-eu-uk-1849952...
But i agree the unelected nature of it is undemocratic. It should be replaced with a second elected house that can perform the same role of putting a check on the HOC.
Full HOL reform would be a good way to start the move towards a proportional representation electoral system in the UK. Make the reformed second chamber a PR elected house and give them a slightly longer/fixed period between elections to shield them from the chaos of a general election and party politics.
This is the best suggestion I've seen on HoL reform, ever. I mean, it'll never happen, but that really is a great idea, and would mean that the chamber would be clearly different from the Commons, which I've not seen another proposal making sense on this area.
Mostly abolished.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/By-elections_to_the_House_of_L...
Ah, another one of those “if I were a dictator” comments…
UK citizens have democratically decided they don’t want proportional representation. But I guess you don’t care
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2011_United_Kingdom_Alternativ...
When was that?
In fact had the AV referendum vote gone the other way it is likely that the composition of our Parliament after the following general election would have been less proportional to the overall share of the national vote won by each party.
AV has certain desirable characteristics if you want to elect a single representative fairly. It makes little sense as a way to elect a group of representatives fairly. It sure is a great strawman if you're trying to kill off interest in real and appropriate electoral reform and fixing the systemic democratic deficits clearly evident in the current system we use to elect our MPs though.
Yes the rules are silly, but in practice all the House of Lords can do is debate, suggest changes，and delay a little.
Personally I think that the US, Canada, UK, Germany, etc should all fall into a general "Western Democracy" category. Roughly speaking we all have the same rights, though details differ and depending on where you stand in politics you may place one above the other, but at that point it becomes completely subjective.
Bills like these erode our democracy and we have to be vigilant, we also need to realize that in any western democratic country, we are light years away from true authoritarianism.
Democracy can and often does result in the most authoritarian systems of government, aka Mob Rule...
Just because 51% agree to strip 49% of freedom does not make to good, proper, or ethical.
Modern society fetishes democracy as the best thing ever, it is not
A dictatorship can be less authoritarian than a democracy.
While it is theoretically possible, I have a hard time coming up with an example where that is the case. What dictatorship is less authoritarian than democracies?
There is a well known phrase, the "tyranny of the majority." It is in fact extremely common for a majority to oppress a minority within a democratic system -- often with severely authoritarian methods.
When you define a large mass of people as property and deny them the franchise, that's not oppression through democracy, because its not democracy at all.
In any event it's not necessary to argue this point because there are no shortage of further examples which include authoritarianism exerted over non-disenfranchised demographics. Here are some further examples of authoritarianism within the USA:
* Japanese internment of 1940s
* Every historic invocation of martial law (more than a dozen)
* Every historic invocation of conscription
* Historic oppression of women, which continued well after the suffrage movement in a variety of ways
There are of course countless other examples throughout the history of democracies. Even a cursory reading can uncover countless examples, from contemporary democracies all the way back to its origins in ancient Greece. It is not uncommon for a majority rule system to impose authoritarian controls -- in fact, it is the norm. This is why we have concepts such as constitutional rights, which are specifically designed to balance against the authoritarian tendencies of majority rule.
Its obviously aristocratic republican with a quite open hostility to democracy at the beginning of that period, evolving over time in a rather unequal way in different parts of the union toward democracy (in both ideals and substance, though not in lockstep between the two.)
Also, Calvin's dad faces an unprecedented decline in the polls after grounding Calvin for flushing the entire household inventory of toilet paper.
Democracy and lack of authoritarianism don't correlate perfectly. I may be understating this, actually.
It keeps its populus under educated and feeds them hate and tales of past glory.
Its an embarrasment.
The democracy is just another element of that fantasy world they project. With first past the post democracy cannot be a goal.