Breaches of standards in public office, clampdowns on protest and attacks on the judiciary have all featured in the last few years of Tory rule, writes Prof Toby S James. Plus letters from Mark Ellis, William Wallace and Michael Bulley
Polly Toynbee is right to note how British democracy has been undermined by compulsory voter identification requirements, which makes elections harder to access for so many people (Look at the effects of the Tories’ corrupt voter ID rules – and then tell me Britain is still a democracy, 27 June). However, the depth of decline in the quality of our democracy under Boris Johnson and Liz Truss was much deeper.
The report UK Democracy Under Strain, written by me and published this week by Compass and Unlock Democracy, sets out the full scale of the democratic erosion. There have been breaches of the standards in public office at the most senior level. The powers of citizens to protest have been undermined by new laws and “serious disruption prevention orders” which, in scenes more befitting the 17th century, saw republican protesters arrested during the coronation of King Charles. International law has been ignored. The government has attacked judicial constraints on its own power.
