Are we a liberal democracy? by Sackerson

In the New Yorker interview https://www.newyorker.com/news/q-and-a/why-john-mearsheimer-blames-the-us-for-the-crisis-in-ukraine referenced last week by our editor https://www.conservativewoman.co.uk/who-is-really-to-blame-for-the-war-in-ukraine/ , political scientist John Mearsheimer spoke of the ‘disastrous policies’ pursued by America as it tried to impose the ‘Bush Doctrine’ of liberal democracy on Middle Eastern countries.

That raises the question of whether the UK itself is a ‘liberal democracy.’ How do we define the term? The relevant Wiki article looks back at a 1971 book by Robert Dahl and lists ‘eight necessary rights’ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liberal_democracy#Rights_and_freedoms shared by all varieties of such forms of government:

1.    Freedom to form and join organisations.

2.    Freedom of expression.

3.    Right to vote.

4.    Right to run for public office.

5.    Right of political leaders to compete for support and votes.

6.    Freedom of alternative sources of information

7.    Free and fair elections.

8.    Right to control government policy through votes and other expressions of preference.

 How does our country measure up against this yardstick? Not altogether perfectly, I would argue.

‘Freedom of expression’: we are familiar with the ill-defined constraints on ‘hate speech’ but also on dissident speech on subjects such as policy to deal with Covid and the efficacy and dangers of the new medicines to combat it. Yes, the new media giants are also acting as censors, but there is no sign that our government pushes back.

‘Freedom of alternative sources of information’: we have just cancelled RT online so that we cannot consider inconveniently different opinions and claims of facts from that source. Never mind ‘alternative’: who does not see gross propaganda in our mainstream press coverage of Ukraine? How are voters in a democracy enabled to make judgements in such a distorted information environment?

‘Free and fair elections’: the current system for General Elections means that many people like myself are in a ‘safe’ constituency where their vote has virtually no effect, other than in some rare convulsion such as the collapse of the ‘Red Wall’. We had a referendum on the Alternative Vote in 2011, but my recollection is that both the Labour and Conservative parties ‘bust a gut’ to rubbish the idea. By contrast, I was astonished that the referendum on Brexit was covered so fairly in the media, yet since then the Establishment has obviously been busting another gut to neuter the result. Also, the party system itself is a major problem – see how hard it is for independents to gain a seat in Parliament, and how even a veteran like Frank Field can be ousted when he fails to toe the Party line.

‘Right to control government policy etc.’ In a way it surprises me that the government is responsive at all, given a guaranteed five-year period before having to face the electorate again (unless they themselves choose to go to the country early), and the ability to abrogate civil rights by Privy Council rulings and passing laws such as the Coronavirus Act with its ‘carte blanche’ powers – which the Opposition allowed to renew without even a division in the House. The current proposals for a ‘UK Bill of Rights’ look like a further dangerous enabling for authoritarians https://www.conservativewoman.co.uk/is-this-the-reform-of-our-human-rights-that-we-really-need%ef%bf%bc/ plus enshrining the principle that our rights are to be determined by government and so can be amended or cancelled at a later date. Goodbye the implications and traditions of Magna Carta and the Common Law.

If the UK were to sit a GCSE examination in ‘being a liberal democracy’ it might just about scrape a pass with 4/8, but hardly anything more.