Comment by kmlx | Hacker News Reader

Comment by kmlx | Hacker News Reader

Parent Full thread

> I increasingly do not recognise our government as one that is in any kind of alignment with my values as a UK citizen or even as just a decent human being.

every single political party in the UK is either for this law, or wants it strengthened. not only that, they're actively criticising the government for being too slow in adopting it.

and in a recent poll a majority want online speech to be regulated: https://inews.co.uk/news/online-safety-freedom-from-abuse-mo...

Labour pledges to toughen ‘weakened and gutted’ online safety bill https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2023/jan/01/labour-pl...

Lib Dems: "However, does she accept that there are major gaps in this Bill? For instance, gaming is not covered. It is not clear whether things such as virtual reality and the metaverse are going to be covered." https://www.parallelparliament.co.uk/mp/munira-wilson/bill/2...

Cross-party support: https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2023/05/15/online-safety-bi...

I agree. I'm disappointed in particular by Labour's approach to this too.

Similarly they (Labour) are not taking a strong enough position on honestly recognising the state of Brexit because they don't want to alienate their potential pro-brexit voters, nor are they taking a strong stand on a number of other policies which I think they should be.

The conservatives have lurched so far right that I can't help but feel that Labour is having to move in that direction too just to have a fighting chance of winning the next election. But this makes them not an effective enough opposition at the moment. Their strategy is clearly working - see uptick in pro-brexit votes in recent local elections - but I'm not sure at what cost...

So overall, personally, I'm just extremely disillusioned with all political parties right now. We have to recognise that we brought this on ourselves, collectively - such is the nature of democracy - but that doesn't help alleviate my current sense of despair!

> I agree. I'm disappointed in particular by Labour's approach to this too.

why would you expect labour to be better?

they are more authoratitian than the Tories

they brought in the Identity Register, the Terrorism Act (90 day detention without charge), the RIP Act (forced decryption), attempted to remove the right to trial by jury and the defence of double jeopardy

along with countless more

Fair point

labour doesn't surprise me one bit.

but i am surprised by the liberal democrats. i don't really understand why they keep calling themselves "liberal" when for the past years they have been anything but liberal.

> However, you should know that this [liberal democracy] has precisely nothing to do with the Liberal Democrats in the UK. The Liberal Democrats are so named because they're the result of a merger between the Liberal Party and the Social Democratic Party. The best combination of the names was "Liberal Democrats." -- cpast

https://politics.stackexchange.com/a/7812

That's a meme in politics, the words in party names have nothing to do with the ideas they commonly represent. Names in this space just work according to the "laws" of marketing.

The term liberal is only a magnitude, it's not a vector. In common parlance, people understand it to mean social liberalism, i.e. a proponent of personal freedoms; but in most parties, it's much more likely to refer to economic liberalism, i.e. laissez-faire market policies.

That said, I don't know enough about the UK's political parties to know along what axis the Lib Dems consider themselves to be "liberal".

>The conservatives have lurched so far right that I can't help but feel that Labour is having to move in that direction too just to have a fighting chance of winning the next election.

Oh no, political parties moving in response to the expressed will of the general public in a democracy. What an outrage! How dare a party in a democratic system change its policy to match voter preferences. Won't someone think of the people that know better??

> Oh no, political parties moving in response to the expressed will of the general public in a democracy.

Consider a very simple model of a two party system, expressing views on one left/right axis. Members of the population vote for the political party that is closest to their views on that axis. Political parties want to win as many votes as possible.

Under that model and those assumptions, if one party moves in a particular direction, the 'correct' behaviour for the other party is to move in that direction also to capture more votes, regardless of what the underlying 'will' of the general voting public is.

> political parties moving in response to the expressed will of the general public in a democracy

They dont care about the people, they are simply occupying the political ground that has been abandoned by the other party.

"It's a big club and you ain't in it"

> every single political party in the UK is either for this law

The SNP motioned to have it repealed, they are still, sadly, a party in the UK.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com