It’s not democratic - we need better political education in the U.K.

[Greenleavesandsunshine]

It not democratic, meaning it’s not what I want or understand. It’s used by Trump in the US, he uses it to gerrymander the electoral system and host a riot on Jan 6th. We’re starting to hear it all the time in the U.K.
Firstly, there are many different types of democracy, different voting systems, different legislatures, separation of powers, constitutions etc. The UK is quite unusual due to our uncodified constitution.

Here is the issue, every time the political extremes come across something they don’t like they claim it’s undemocratic. It started with Brexit - the EU is undemocratic. The EU has a more European type of democracy, but it’s democratic. The EU selects the equivalent of cabinet ministers, similar to the US, yet people claim it’s not democratic.
Burnham, stands in a contrived by election - that’s not democratic. It was democratic.
The main parties don’t stand candidates against Farage - that’s not democratic. It is.

On a slight tangent, Amnesty doesn’t like the way women’s rights are moving in the U.K., they claim rights are being demolished. No they are not.

Hyperbole on the left and right.

Am I unreasonable to think we need better political education in the U.K. to fight back against the way democracy is being attacked by people claiming to love democracy and ‘rights’ when they have little understanding of either. In fact these people claiming to support democracy are Putin’s puppets.

It's complicated, OP. I'm not sure you can do more than inform children about our system and the necessity of voting.

We have a first-past-the-post system and many feel that isn't democratic. But the proportional representation systems, although they sound nice, have issues too. They are complex and (to be blunt) require a very high level of education, informed-ness and patience from the electorate. You'd have to rank candidates rather than just pick one, and then in some systems repeat this process, adapting your choices, in subsequent rounds of voting.

It's battle enough getting the electorate out on voting day as it is! I don't much care about the rights of people who can't be bothered to go and vote, but I suppose I should.

Our system isn’t democratic. There’s very little democracy in a direct democratic system. We need more participatory democracy, we should implement a system akin to Switzerland’s. And yes, we need better political education- it should be on the curriculum and should be a GCSE option.

We only have the illusion of democracy. Look at what's happening to the country and the wider western world. Do you think anybody voted for this disaster? The government ignore the electorate once they've conned people into voting for them and they're all following the same game plan anyway which is why nothing ever improves (and only gets worse).

I'm in Wales and dislike the constant shifting in what system the welsh assembly is using - last election we all had to look up how it was all working - and it may now change again.

I personally like the fist past post system - each a race off in each area meaning national and local issues can both covered and that mp is supposed to then represent everyone - so there's a driect link. I feel there needs to be more education about system we actually have in UK parliament - rather than looking at national polls.

Our system still consider a funcational democracy by international orgaisations where as US and even France are increasingly considered not to be.

The U.K. is actually a representative democracy. Switzerland is regarded as direct democracy which is why they have so many referenda, they directly make decisions. In the U.K. an elected MP makes
decisions in what they believe are our best interests.

This is the type of ant democratic pro Putin post that concerns me. You this idea that we are a failed state and life is a disaster, this leads in many cases to the idea democracy has failed and what we need is a nice friendly dictator - or strong leader as they are often framed.

It blows my mind that politics lessons - specifically lessons on our political system and how we are governed - are not compulsory on the national curriculum.

Our electoral system is simply not fit for purpose in today’s world. Any system
thst hands a super majority of MPs with only something like 25% of votes is simply not representative. We need a more reflective PR system. Fptp is not democratic representation of the will of the people. Add that then to the fact MPs seem to forget they are there to represent the views of their constituents not to serve the party line and many vote ways directly contravening wishes of constituents that makes for very bad democracy

As I said the U.K. is a representative democracy. We elect MPs who do what they think is right, we do not elect delegates who have to do what they are told. For example we got rid of the death penalty when the vast majority of the public supported it. Same with legalising homosexuality and abortion MPs were ahead of the public. We elect the person, who becomes an MP who happens to be in a party. If they change party they don’t need a by election because we don’t vote for parties.