this post was submitted on 26 Jul 2025
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Don't get me wrong, but why are matters of governmental surveillance and control inherently "right-wing" rather than a totalitarian policy not otherwise directly connected to wing politics? Extremists on both sides have a history of creating totalitarian, Big Brother states (which the UK is certainly headed towards).
When the Snowden Revelations came out, the UK had even more civil society surveillance than the US.
As a consequence of those revelations, in the US some of the surveillance was walked back, whilst in the UK the Government just passed a law that retroactively made the whole thing legal, issued a bunch of D-Notices (the UK system of Press Censorship) to shut up the Press, got the Editor of the newspaper that brought it out in the UK (The Guardian) kicked out, and the Press there never talked about it again.
Also, let's not forget the UK has the biggest number of surveillance cameras per-capita in the World.
Oh, and they have a special and separate Surveillance Tribunal (the Investigatory Powers Tribunal) were the lawyers for the side other than the State are not allowed to be present in certain sessions, see certain evidence or even get informed of the final judgement unless their side wins.
They easily have the most extreme regime of Civil Society Surveillance in Europe, and in the World are probably second only to the likes of North Korea and China.
Britain is well beyond merely "headed towards" Big Brother and has been for at least a decade.
Last i read, cameras in london outnumbered those in Beijing, so im not sure id even put them second place
It's not so much the control aspect as the anti-porn stance. It also comes in at the same time as a series of anti-trans moves from them.
In the case of Labour, the party's politics these days are over to the right on any measure. Under Starmer they seem to have abandoned their left-wing roots.