[iEchoic]

Taking 60 questions across a handful of arbitrary categories and weighting them all equally is not a very useful methodology for this type of thing. It can help you differentiate Canada from Azerbaijan, but isn't going to be useful for comparing similarly-situated countries.

[circuit10]

Well my point is just that most people wouldn’t consider it anywhere near authoritarian, and that was a bit of an extreme word to use

[Matl]

It is pretty authoritarian, heavy-handed and undemocratic, I just think people generally have trouble with that because Western countries are supposed to not be like that.

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.

[avianlyric]

> number of unelected PMs

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.

[Matl]

Yeah, I know. That's nitpicking. What I meant was the number of PMs who didn't have to campaign in a general election, at the very least not for a good while after taking office, I assumed that was clear.

[avianlyric]

I’m not really sure you can separate the two. The UK parliamentary system doesn’t require the PM to campaign, and never has. I don’t think you can call PM “unelected” when the system doesn’t, and has never, required them to get a direct mandate from the people.

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.

[Matl]

> I don’t think you can call PM “unelected” when the system doesn’t, and has never, required them to get a direct mand

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.

[largepeepee]

These days I have a hard time telling the difference between either, because no one in a democracy will ever vote for crazy policies like having surveillance cameras pointing at themselves or having increasing harsher laws on freedoms both online and offline.

If so many important things are not up for the vote, is it really a democracy?

[ClapperHeid]

  >>If so many important things are not up for the vote, is it really a democracy?

Exactly. For me, this is the myth of democracy. A party campaigns on a manifesto containing a few cherry-picked policies, aimed at appealing to enough of the electorate, to get them elected [quite often with less than 50% of the vote]

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.

[largepeepee]

We don't even need new tech, Switzerland for example has been doing direct democracy like this for ages.

[dane-pgp]

> the last time we had a referendum in UK the people didn't vote for the option they were meant to

You mean "the people believed false promises and voted for something they inevitably regretted".

https://qz.com/brexit-polls-support-popularity-eu-uk-1849952...

[fennecfoxy]

I'd rather have that flavour of democracy than the one that voted someone like Trump into power. Hell, he's still managing to wreak havoc over there even post-potus.