This essay will show that the UK is a liberal democracy because it has the features of one. The essay will cover three qualities of a liberal democracy: elections – free, fair and frequent, freedom of the media and press and freedom of belief and representation in parliament of a belief.
A key feature of a liberal democracy is fair, free and frequent elections. In the UK elections are held every five years (2011 Fixed-term Parliament Act – but at the moment it has only been used for the full five years in 2015) but could be held sooner if the House of Commons voted for it, and due to the 2019 Early Parliaments General Election Act that Boris Johnson (PM, Conservative, MP) put through parliament there only has to be a simple majority, not a two third majority. Fair elections in this sense means that you aren’t forced or pressured into voting for someone or even to vote at all. And free elections means anyone is free to stand as a candidate and free to campaign, as lawfully as possible.
Although in the UK elections are fair, free and frequent the system the UK uses (First Past the Post – FPtP) for elections isn’t the best for representation. When it comes to a general election each constituency elects a MP, but very rarely does that candidate get over half the vote, the majority of people vote for other candidates but because it’s first past the post it’s the one with the most votes that gets elected – an example is Jo Swinson’s old seat, Dunbartonshire East, the new MPAmy Callaghan (SNP) only got 37% of the vote but still became the constituency’s MP.
The next feature is the freedom of the press. Freedom of the press is important because it can explain to the public what government policy means, give the public information that has been leaked only to the press and also it means the press can snoop around to see if Parliament or the Government is holding back information that should be released. An example is the MP’s expenses scandal. In 2009 there was a Freedom of Information Act request of MP’s expenses, the House of Commons Authorities did not publish them at first, so the information was leaked to the Daily Telegraph and the Telegraph started printing them, until the Commons authorities had no choice and released them altogether. If the press did not have their freedom, MP’s might still be using their expense for the wrong thing – like building a house for your ducks in a pond.
Even though freedom of the press is, good newspapers and websites are always influenced and usually lean to left or right on the political spectrum, examples are: Right wing newspapers – Daily Mail and Daily Telegraph and Left wing newspapers – Guardian and the Mirror. This isn’t good as people read newspapers ands other news sources just to find out what’s happening in the world or in their country, but at the same time they are being manipulated into the left or right side of the spectrum, when maybe they don’t want to be.
The last feature is freedom of belief and representation of that belief in Parliament. In article nine of the Human rights Act of 1998 it says ‘freedom to change his religion or belief’ this shows that in the UK people are free to believe in whatever they want and can change their belief at any given time. And going back to the free elections if people believe in the same thing that a political party represents then they are free to join it and stand in elections as a candidate from that party.
Even if you are free to believe in what you want, some people’s liberties are infringed because although it says you are free to join a political party if you believe the same things as the Nazi party, people in the UK aren’t free to join it. And also some of the smaller parties aren’t represented in Parliament as much as the bigger parties, an example is at the 2019 general election the Liberal Democrat’s only got 11 seats even though they got 11.5% of the vote. This means people’s beliefs aren’t brought up in parliament and might even be forgotten about. Perhaps this should have been brought up by the Remain campaign in 2016 because parties like the Liberal Democrats and the Brexit party had many more MEP’s (Member of the European Parliament) elected at the 2019 elections than the Conservatives or Labour. Even the Green Party had more MEP’s than the Tories!
In conclusion the answer to the question ‘To what extent is the UK a Liberal Democracy’ is the UK is, to a significant extent, a liberal democracy. Although the features have couple of flaws (which liberal democracy doesn’t?), the UK still has all that is needed to be described as a liberal democracy.
Комментарии