Is the UK truly democratic?

Democracy is a general description of a political system that is organised on the basis that government should serve the interests of the people. It is expected that citizens should also influence decisions or make decisions themselves. As well as this; the government should be accountable under a democratic society. The UK is regarded as beholding democracy however current trends suggest increasing political apathy have begun to question whether the UK political system is truly democratic. The UK is regarded as being highly democratic in that all elections are free from bias and interference. However, the First Past the Post electoral system undermines the belief of free and fair elections in that smaller parties have no realistic chance of winning. Furthermore, there is only one representative of each constituency to express the ideologies of all constituents, this means that the constituents are under represented. 

Evidently, our democracy is far from flawless. People may argue that Britain could be made more democratic through a proportional electoral system. However, this may confuse voters and result in weaker government. People also believe that compulsory voting could improve our democracy. But this could create careless votes by people who are not interested in politics and therefore this would be an inaccurate representation of what the population wants. Also, people believe that more referendums could be the answer, but this may be subject to people who do not know what is best for the country, and even if this did occur, only those who set the agenda of the referendum are those who possess the power and have the overall decision.

In addition, the UK is not democratic in that the party that is in government does not have any legal obligations to legislate the popular policies of their manifesto programme, however the fact that the executive is held to account by legislature means that any undemocratic behaviour is publicized. For example, the Liberal Democrats main vote winner was the policy of not increasing the university fees, the fact that Nick Clegg then agreed to the decision of tripling university fees, has had terrible effects on his party. The people that voted for the Liberal Democrats on that basis are now informed, free press publicizes immoralities, which therefore results in them becoming unlikely to be voted in again anytime soon.

In conclusion, this means we don't truly have much choice in political parties. Consensus politics means that the three main parties are becoming increasingly similar and we are left with very little choice and people vote tactically therefore, not for the party they truly want in power, but for a party that is better than the one that is most similar to the main parties ideologies. Many voters see the parties they wish to be in office too small, therefore deem it futile to engage in political participation and vote.