> If I was in the U.K., this would be enough to forever turn me off the ruling Conservative party. It's disgusting.
Unfortunately this isn't unique to the Tories. Politicians across the whole political spectrum have fought to introduce increasingly authoritarian controls over the internet and technology over the past 30 years.
UK culture as a whole is more authoritarian than you'd expect. Labour would gladly implement their own version of the same if they had the opportunity. To that point, any UK millennial will likely not be able to remember a time where there wasn't some hand wringing campaign about online privacy or porn.
In all likelihood, yes: they are from a faction of the Labour party that was routinely surveilled by police throughout the 20th century (and more recently, in all likelihood).
The election manifesto for Labour in 1983 contained pledges to abolish the secret services, too.
Not to mention the fact that this same part of the Labour party is often engaged in protests that will have left wingers as attendees and speakers. They're very often on the sharp end of both surveillance and crackdowns on protest.
That combined with their belief that the police are racist (eg the Met) and that prison is generally harmful is not likely to produce an authoritarian programme.
They'd have dealt with large scale tax dodgers too, unlike the current leadership.
The Liberal Democrats are anti-authoritarian, but our first-past-the-post elections don't give them a proportional number of seats :(
For example, they blocked the "snoopers charter" (digital economy bill) when they were in coalition; although the Conservatives, predictably, passed it after they won the following election on their own.
I'll be the first to admit my bias against the lib dems (I cant say I like any of the parties but I do have a particular dislike for them), but putting that aside as much as I can I doubt they'd be any different outside a coalition. At best, I can see them being apathetic, which when combined with pressure applied from their opposition could well turn into support.
Not on the level of the tories, and perhaps labour, but I doubt they'd be anything special in that regard
The Lib Dem's main focus for at least the last 30 years has been electoral reform, preferably to a proportional system like STV which doesn't punish third-parties. If nothing else, a Lib Dem government managing to pass that would have a massive impact on the future of UK politics, and break the two party system that first-past-the-post inevitably causes (whether Whig/Tory, Liberal/Conservative, or recently Labour/Conservative).
They took a huge gamble entering the ConDem coalition: getting some concessions from the Conservatives (e.g. same-sex marriage), but overall achieving hardly any of their manifesto promises (which, indeed, included scrapping tuition fees; first mentioned on page 33 https://www.markpack.org.uk/files/2015/01/Liberal-Democrat-m... ).
It seems they gave away way too much in order to get a meagre chance at voting reform. The resulting referendum was watered-down to Alternative Vote (rather than STV), and was not only attacked by Conservatives, but also Labour (who had ignored their own manifesto pledge in 1997 to follow the Jenkins Commission recommendations, which were to use a variant of Alternative Vote!)
There are some grass-roots efforts to support electoral reform in Labour; I doubt they'd do it themselves (like they didn't in 97), but maybe they'd be more amenable to accepting it in return for Lib Dem support?
My main worry about a Lib Dem government would be how much influence their 'free market libertarian' wing would have; where 'individual liberty' becomes a synonym for 'deregulation of the private sector'. There's definitely been more of a such rightward-lean since Clegg (compared to e.g. Charles Kennedy).
The Lib Dems managed to mitigate a lot of damage done by the Conservatives during their time in the coalition. And they were rewarded with blame for everything they couldn't stop, and a hugely reduced voter base ever since.
Unfortunately for them they sold out their student voters in order to do that, all but guaranteeing that those people would not trust the LibDems again.
Was it a good trade in hindsight? I'm not so sure. I gave them the benefit of the doubt, and my vote, a couple more times.
Unfortunately this isn't unique to the Tories. Politicians across the whole political spectrum have fought to introduce increasingly authoritarian controls over the internet and technology over the past 30 years.
UK culture as a whole is more authoritarian than you'd expect. Labour would gladly implement their own version of the same if they had the opportunity. To that point, any UK millennial will likely not be able to remember a time where there wasn't some hand wringing campaign about online privacy or porn.