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361 points gloxkiqcza | 1 comments | | HN request time: 0s | source
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torginus ◴[] No.45011561[source]
I genuinely do not understand where how the idea of building a total surveillance police state, where all speech is monitored, can even as much as seriously be considered by an allegedly pro-democracy, pro-human rights government, much less make it into law.

Also:

Step 1: Build mass surveillance to prevent the 'bad guys' from coming into political power (its ok, we're the good guys).

Step 2: Your political opponents capitalize on your genuinely horrific overreach, and legitimize themselves in the eyes of the public as fighting against tyranny (unfortunately for you they do have a point). They promise to dismantle the system if coming to power.

Step 3: They get elected.

Step 4: They don't dismantle the system, now the people you planned to use the system against are using it against you.

Sounds brilliant, lets do this.

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luke727 ◴[] No.45011932[source]
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. It's a completely foreign paradigm to the average American, though alarming "progress" has been made on the American front as of late.
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sailorganymede ◴[] No.45012013[source]
Average Brit here - we do not like this and the way politics here has been so tumultuous has shown the general public are sick of this behaviour too.
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ghufran_syed ◴[] No.45012076[source]
and yet they keep voting for blue labour or red labour…
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inglor_cz ◴[] No.45012271[source]
Current opinion polls for both are abysmal, but I don't think that civic freedoms are the main reason; the main reason is immigration, which all the previous governments promised to limit and then silently decided not to.
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1. pydry ◴[] No.45012465[source]
Immigration is sucking support more from the tories than labour. They rode into power based upon a promise to do something about it and then massively increased it.

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.