Brendan O’Neill Brendan O’Neill

Britain’s liberals have fallen out of love with democracy

Every now and then there is a political moment, some event or comment, that reveals just how much society has changed. This week contained one of those moments. On Tuesday it was reported that nine pro-democracy activists in Hong Kong had been found guilty of causing a public nuisance by taking to the streets five years ago to demand a greater democratic say in how their society is governed. And on the same day, the exact same day, the Guardian published an article with the headline ‘Democracy is overrated’. Most voters have ‘no idea’ about what’s going on in the world, the piece argued, and therefore it would be better if they just didn’t bother voting. 

What is striking about this is that a few years ago we might have expected the Guardian to be at the forefront of praising Chinese people who want more democracy. Indeed, the liberal intellectual classes more broadly often wrung their hands over the denial of democratic rights in China or Russia or Turkey and agitated for Western officials or UN agencies to put pressure on those regimes to grant their peoples the same democratic rights we enjoy. But there has been a curious silence among Western liberals following the sentencing of the leaders of the Umbrella Movement, the name given to the 2014 street protests in which Hong Kongers demanded the right to choose their local leaders without interference from the Chinese Communist Party. And it isn’t hard to see why: Britain’s liberals have lately become as cagey about democracy as the CCP is.

Much has changed in the West between 2014, when Hong Kongers occupied public spaces in protest at mainland meddling in their electoral affairs, and today, when nine of those protesters have been found guilty of public nuisance.

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