Is 4chan the perfect Pirate Bay poster child to justify wider UK site-blocking?

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.

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.

Are you (or do you know) many 'average Brits' who would agree with this statement (as applying to themselves)?

I am not nor will I ever be a Brit, let alone an average one. But I live here and I have seen and heard things from seemingly average Brits. Would they describe themselves using my exact words? Doubtful. But what other conclusion can one draw from their observed behavior? The Online Safety Act in particular enjoys extraordinarily high support among the general public.

For what it's worth as a Brit I agree with you.

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.