But in the last couple of decades, things have changed. Arguably, a public referendum in 2016, was very much a protest vote against several Parliaments that didn't listen to its citizens. And the last decade shows nothing has changed.
My friends and family, and myself included, were never very political, and very much a case of 'No Matter Who You Vote For The Government Always Gets In', but now everyone is talking about the Government. Interesting times ahead.
How are they talking about it?
British people are much happier with the state being paternalistic, across the political spectrum, it is a very strong differentiator between the US and the UK. "The government should do something!" You can see it in attitudes to the NHS, pensions, welfare. At its peak, in the 70s, 32% of people lived in social housing!
Labour voters, young and old, are generally quite paternalistic. Lots of Conservative voters are too, depending on the flavour. The exceptions are the Lib Dems and some conservative tribes. I am consistently surprised when talking to highly-educated, politically engaged people, left or right, how much the default is that the state should act.
Why won't the government do something is the refrain that everyone including opposing parties are saying. God forbid anyone should take initiative on anything.
And the state keeps on expanding year after year. I cannot remember the last time someone did not promise to shrink the state/government and once elected did a complete 180. It's bonkers.
When I talk to people in Britain about sugar-taxes, smoking bans, porn bans, hate-speech laws, etc, most people will explain that without these things people will say/do harmful things therefore the government should stop them.
I remember when they started rolling out biometric facing scanning technology in stores and using it to ban people from all supermarkets within a designated area – basically forcing them to shop in smaller stores without these cameras or get their friends and family to buy their groceries. I thought this was utterly insane but to be horror Brits seem to almost universally support of this stuff because face scanning is a great way to identity people which private companies have flagged high-risk.
Our opinion of others is very low, and are comfort with authoritarianism is relatively high.
It’s classic.
Eventually, enough people will have been fucked by it that the numbers will shift back the other way - and then the opposite end of the pathology (not being able to recognize the main groups own needs enough to defend them or pull together as a coherent group) starts building.
Lather, rinse, repeat.
does not mean
>the average Brit wants and possibly needs the government to tell them how to live their lives
The average Brit doesn't want foreign entities pushing porn and self harm / pro suicide stuff to their kids. Can you perhaps see the difference there?
I notice most of the outrage in HN is from foreign entities wanting freedom to push whatever. The Brits are ok telling JD Vance et all chill.
But that's not what the OSA is. Instead it's the government deciding how all kids should be parented. And of course it doesn't just affect the kids now because to be effective all adults need to prove they are not kids to view "harmful" materials, with all the chilling effects and collection of sensitive data that that entails.
> I notice most of the outrage in HN is from foreign entities wanting freedom to push whatever.
Hence the original acknowledgement:
> The thing you have to understand is that the average Brit wants and possibly needs the government to tell them how to live their lives.
But I think you are, maybe to a large extent, misattributing political apathy.
Maybe you're not as average as you think you are.
Labour are recently leaning into being anti immigration because it's one of the few wealthy-donor-friendly policies they can pursue which will potentially gain them votes.
Legal immigration from South Asia dominates illegal immigration by an order of magnitude, but nobody wants to lose seats in Birmingham, so essentially doesn’t figure in the arguments about small numbers of afghans in miserable hotels in Essex.
The OSA is the first time people may actually notice, because their porn habits will be disrupted.
And there are now openly right wing Christians in government...