United Kingdom
The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland (the UK) is a stable, high-performing democracy. It is a permanent member of the United Nations’ Security Council and boasts the world’s sixth largest economy, although it has the highest income inequality of any major European economy. Between 1973 and 2020, the UK was also a member of the European Union (EU) and its predecessor, the European Community. The UK withdrew from the EU following a 2016 referendum in which a narrow majority of voters opted to leave the regional bloc. The departure process, known colloquially as 'Brexit', has had a profound political impact on the country, revealing new social divisions and giving rise to a more populist brand of politics. Notwithstanding these developments, the UK’s Global State of Democracy Indices (GSoDI) scores over the course of the past five years have remained relatively stable.
British society is diverse and is marked by a complex mix of identities that exert considerable influence on its politics. The national identities of its constitutive nations – England, Scotland , Wales and Northern Ireland - are amongst the most salient of these identities and have produced political nationalisms that increasingly threaten the integrity of the UK. These national divisions appear to have been deepened by the Brexit referendum, with Scottish and English nationalists in particular holding strongly opposing views on EU membership. Immigration from across the Commonwealth and from Europe have over time added new layers of diversity and identity to the UK’s nations, as immigrants brought with them new languages, religions and ethnicities. Previous tolerance of such diversity has been eroded as multiculturalism and other liberal values have increasingly been contested by politicians and voters holding authoritarian and socially conservative values. Since the Brexit referendum, this liberal-authoritarian cleavage has divided voters and parties on key issues such as national sovereignty and immigration. Connected to the value divide is another important cleavage, that between voters living in the UK’s prosperous cities and regions (who tend to hold more socially liberal views) and voters in less prosperous regions and rural areas (who tend to hold more socially conservative and authoritarian views). This economic-geographical division has grown out of the concentration of governance and economic productivity in London and its hinterlands, which has produced some of the highest levels of regional inequality in the developed world.
There are two concerning developments to watch in the years to come. The first is the erosion of civil liberties protections. This is evident in recently passed legislation restricting the right to peaceful protest (the Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Act) and weakening of the rights of asylum seekers, immigrants, dual nationals and those born abroad (the Nationality and Borders Act). In line with this legislation are the proposed reforms to the country’s core human rights law, the Human Rights Act, which if passed, would make the enforcement of civil liberties more difficult. Concerning too are the government’s legislative and rhetorical attacks on the independence of the Electoral Commission, the UK’s independent electoral management body. If these continue, it may affect the UK’s performance in the Clean Elections sub-attribute of the GSoDI.
https://www.idea.int/democracytracker/
April 2024
Parliament approves plan to send asylum-seekers to Rwanda
On 22 April, Parliament approved a controversial bill allowing the UK government to send asylum-seekers to Rwanda for their asylum claims to be heard, even after the Supreme Court ruled the scheme to be unlawful in November 2023. Migrants who have their claims rejected are not provided recourse to return to the UK. The law compels UK courts to consider Rwanda a safe country for the purposes of relocating migrants and prevents legal challenges from delaying a person’s removal to Rwanda on the grounds that the country may be unsafe. Prime Minister Rishi Sunak, who spearheaded the bill, says it is designed to deter irregular migration, discourage migrants from making dangerous crossings and prevent exploitation of migrants by criminal gangs. The law has been widely criticized, including by international NGO Amnesty International, who say the legislation weakens legal protections for vulnerable people, and the Council of Europe Commissioner for Human Rights, who claims it infringes on judicial independence and the ability of courts to independently scrutinize the issues brought before them. The government has indicated the scheme will be operationalized within the next 10-12 weeks.
Sources: International IDEA, Amnesty International, UN News, BBC, UK Home Office (1), UK Home Office (2), Council of Europe, UK Parliament
March 2024
New hate crime law comes into force in Scotland
With the enactment of the Hate Crime and Public Order Act on 1 April, Scotland expanded protections for victims of hate crimes. The amendments create a new offence of “threatening or abusive” behaviour which is intended to stir up hatred on the basis of age, disability, religion, gender identity, or sexual orientation (hate crimes concerning race are already in place). The entry into force of the law (first passed by members of the Scottish Parliament in 2021) has been delayed over debates of its treatment of cases of misogyny, as well as calls, particularly from religious and cultural groups, to reinforce freedom of speech provisions. Amendments have since been passed seeking to ensure the hate crime law is aligned with Article 10 of the European Convention of Human Rights, which requires a high threshold for criminality in the new offenses. Critics, ranging from conservative celebrities to anti-trans rights activists, continue to express concerns about the law’s potential impacts on freedom of speech despite the amendments. The Scottish Police Federation has stated that they have not received enough training to deal with the complexity of the law.
Sources: The Guardian (1), The Guardian (2), Hate Crime and Public Order Act (2021), The Scottish Parliament, Scottish Government (1), Scottish Government (2)
January 2024
End of 15-year-limit on voting rights enfranchises overseas voters
On 16 January, an estimated 3.5 million British citizens living abroad became eligible to vote in parliamentary elections and referenda in the UK. Amendments to the Representation of the People Act, together with provisions on overseas voting in the Elections Act (passed in 2022), paved the way for the abolishment of a rule that citizens could only be registered to vote for 15 years after leaving the UK. The changes allow any citizen abroad who has previously lived in, or been registered to vote, in the UK to register as an overseas voter. The Electoral Commission has launched a campaign to raise awareness of the changes and to encourage the newly eligible UK citizens abroad to register to vote. An estimated 233,000 overseas voters were registered to vote in the 2019 general elections. UK electoral law allows any registered voter to donate to political parties and campaigners in the UK.
Sources: UK Parliament (1), UK Parliament (2), The Guardian, UK Electoral Commission (1), UK Electoral Commission (2), BBC, UK Government (1), UK Government (2), UK Parliament (3)
December 2023
Government seeks to revive Rwanda asylum scheme after legal challenges
The government has asked the Parliament to declare via a majority vote that Rwanda is safe for asylum seekers, introducing a new Safety of Rwanda (Asylum and Immigration) bill. The move follows a Supreme Court ruling on 15 November 2023 which found that the safety of asylum seekers deported to Rwanda could not be guaranteed and ruled the planned asylum scheme to be unlawful. In parallel, the government has updated a 2022 bilateral agreement between the UK and Rwanda, which made plans for asylum seekers arriving in the UK to have their asylum claims processed in Rwanda and be relocated accordingly, without recourse to return to the UK. The updates to the agreement seek to respond to the risks raised in legal challenges to the scheme, according to Home Secretary James Cleverly, establishing a new appeal body to hear individual cases and an independent committee to monitor Rwanda’s asylum system and minimize the risk of asylum seekers being returned to their home countries.
Sources: BBC (1), BBC (2), BBC (3), BBC (4), Al Jazeera, UK Government, The Migration Observatory, European Council on Refugees and Exiles, The Conversation, Home Office
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GSoD Indices Data 2014-2023
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