China is doing great. Not saying the UK will do well, just that authoritarian regimes can be successful as states although not great for the commoners.
Read business books and news from the 80's - 90's, and they almost never mention China - it's all Germany, UK, Japan, USA. The stats tell the same story - China spent half a century going nowhere fast.
After liberalizing their economy, China spent the 90's quietly growing, and only started making real waves in the news around 2000.
All this to say that economic authoritarianism has never worked and there's no reason to suppose that the social kind is going to fare any better for anyone either.
My point is centralization doesn’t work, so maybe social authoritarianism has deleterious cultural effects that will show up generations from now.