No need to speculate that the UK government "might" one day become the bad guys: they already arrest over 30 people a day for speech that offends the prevailing political orthodoxy.
Everyone should read the case of the IT consultant getting arrested in the UK because he posted a photo of him doing some target shooting during a trip to the US: <a href="https://www.lbc.co.uk/article/consultant-arrested-linkedin-shotgun-florida-5HjdNhP_2/" rel="nofollow">https://www.lbc.co.uk/article/consultant-arrested-linkedin-s...
Stories like this quickly put to rest the idea that everyone who gets arrested must actually deserve it. The bar for posting content that violates the law is very low.
There was also the tragic story of the Cambridge professor who was completely unqualified and had a fake life story. When journalists would get close to the story he would report them to the police for harassment to spike the stories.
- We just changed our PM, despite his party having a historic majority.
- Parliament routinely rebels against the government, and backbenchers have a lot of say about the business of government.
- We have a number of upstart parties; they might be populist, but at least it's not a two-party-forever system.
- We had a coalition government just a few years ago.
- We changed our constitution a few months ago (abolishing hereditary peers) and it was just another news among many.
- We ejected one of the previous PMs for having a party during a lockdown, with a massive scandal before that when the PM accepted a gift of some wallpaper.
Compare and contrast to the ossified and corrupt American system, where the president is openly enriching himself and his family and friends, and there's nothing threatening the presidency. The last amendment was passed half a century ago, and there's zero hope for reform.
Democracy is a living, breathing system of government, not a number of checkboxes like "can I shoot a gun for fun" or "can I call someone N-word online". It's important to see the forest for the trees.
I don't get why you're making excuses for this stuff. Trump is one kind of bad, but almost all western governments are increasingly unaccountable to their voters. And these are usually the folks that claim to be defenders of democracy. The hypocrisy is breathtaking.
They're making excuses for this stuff because the wording used around it in this comment thread has been quite hysterical. For all the problems plaguing modern democracies, leadership elections are not one of them. In representative democracies, the leader of the party isn't god like how a president is in non-parliamentary systems. The role has some additional powers, but it doesn't get its own branch of government. Most importantly, party leaders are still MPs who were democratically elected by their constituents - the party leader designation is an internal role. You can even affect it by becoming a party member in most cases. This is incredibly mundane stuff that has existed for decades to centuries, so people here immediately jumping in to talk about China or say that this is somehow worse than Trump just seems like enraged flailing in an attempt to portray many other democracies not being exactly like the US as horrific injustice.
failbuffer · · focus · HN ↗
[1] <a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/steveforbes/2025/09/09/people-are-being-thrown-in-uk-prisons-over-what-theyve-said-online-can-free-speech-be-saved/" rel="nofollow">https://www.forbes.com/sites/steveforbes/2025/09/09/people-a...
Aurornis · · focus · HN ↗
Stories like this quickly put to rest the idea that everyone who gets arrested must actually deserve it. The bar for posting content that violates the law is very low.
There was also the tragic story of the Cambridge professor who was completely unqualified and had a fake life story. When journalists would get close to the story he would report them to the police for harassment to spike the stories.
shrubby · · focus · HN ↗
[dead]
dgroshev · · focus · HN ↗
- We just changed our PM, despite his party having a historic majority.
- Parliament routinely rebels against the government, and backbenchers have a lot of say about the business of government.
- We have a number of upstart parties; they might be populist, but at least it's not a two-party-forever system.
- We had a coalition government just a few years ago.
- We changed our constitution a few months ago (abolishing hereditary peers) and it was just another news among many.
- We ejected one of the previous PMs for having a party during a lockdown, with a massive scandal before that when the PM accepted a gift of some wallpaper.
Compare and contrast to the ossified and corrupt American system, where the president is openly enriching himself and his family and friends, and there's nothing threatening the presidency. The last amendment was passed half a century ago, and there's zero hope for reform.
Democracy is a living, breathing system of government, not a number of checkboxes like "can I shoot a gun for fun" or "can I call someone N-word online". It's important to see the forest for the trees.
tomp · · focus · HN ↗
non-democratically. there was no election. the ruling party simply made a decision itself. Just like in China.
dgroshev · · focus · HN ↗
The ruling party has changed just two years ago. Hardly China, is it
AlexandrB · · focus · HN ↗
tavavex · · focus · HN ↗