Democracy SOS

Today Citizen Network, in partnership with Unlock Democracy and Compass, have published Democracy SOS. This report rings the alarm on the extremely fragile and dangerous state of the UK’s current democratic system. It also sets out 8 urgent systemic reforms that Government must begin.

The urgency of this couldn’t be more obvious.

On Saturday 13th September we saw a large and violent gathering of Far-right extremists in London. They were addressed by Elon Musk, an American billionaire and owner of the social media platform X who told the crowd “you either fight back or you die” and who also called for “revolutionary change in the UK government.” The previous Saturday saw the arrest of over 425 people for expressing support for Palestine Action.

Old assumptions about the stability of the UK political system are failing. Trust is low and the two main political parties have never been so unpopular. Populist authoritarian rulers are emerging across the West, feeding on chronic problems of inequality, insecurity and the growing centralisation of power and technology. Instead of addressing the real problems they find minority groups to blame. These are dangerous times and there is no reason to believe things will just go back to normal.

Instead of authoritarian control by the super-rich we need more democracy - real democracy.

Democracy SOS is authored by Dr Henry Tam and draws on expert evidence from across the democracy sector in the UK. It outlines what needs to be done to move the UK onto genuinely democratic foundations. Some of these ideas include reform to the voting system, but they also go much further. We also need to address misinformation, economic injustice, the extreme centralisation of power and the lack of any support to enable people to be engaged citizens.

We will be sending this report to the Prime Minister and we call on all UK citizens to express support for genuine democratic reform of the UK’s political system.