Democracy is dying as Britain crumbles

LIVING costs have been rising year on year in the aftermath of a global capitalist crisis and almost eight years of crippling austerity.

Tory (and right-wing Labour) politicians never tire of reminding people that in order to rescue Britain’s fragile economy we have no choice but to tighten our belts.

We are essentially being punished for the criminal antics of avaricious corporate fat cats, many of whom continue to vandalise the economy after receiving only a stern telling off. Pay restraint affecting publicand private-sector workers alike is worsening in-work poverty, as millions of people find their incomes outstripped by inflation.

How perplexing, then, that our fundamentally useless Prime Minister has now decided that the biggest issue facing Britain today is “fake news”, a divisive phrase popularised by Donald Trump as a means of censoring critical elements of the media.

Trump’s “war on fake news” already encourages threats, harassment and intimidation against US journalists; he learned this trick from old pal Vladimir Putin, who has developed a rather nasty habit of making journalists and opposition politicians “disappear”. It almost seems as if Theresa May wants to keep information that reflects badly on her government concealed from the public, in a feat worthy of George Orwell’s dystopian novel, 1984.

The government’s official position is that this dedicated national security unit will focus only on challenging propaganda efforts by foreign powers such as Russia. We’re not permitted to ask how it will be regulated, nor query the cost to taxpayer resources. Neither will we be afforded the luxury of knowing who oversees the project. We will be in the dark about its activities and structure, effectively meaning it will lack any semblance of transparent accountability to the British people.

It is nothing more than an antidemocratic means of monitoring and limiting our right to free expression, clumsily invoking the bogeyman of Putin’s name only to adopt the tyrannical objectives of his – and Trump’s – reactionary vendetta against press freedom. Is this how British democracy dies?

Daniel Pitt Mountain Ash