The government needs to make protecting our democratic process a national security priority. One step would be to create a minister with clear responsibility for protecting our democracy.
Instead, the government is busy forcing First Past the Post on even more of our elections and imposing draconian ID laws that civil rights groups have warned will disproportionately suppress people from poorer and ethnic minority backgrounds from voting.
Britain is 'clearly a target' for disinformation campaigns, according to the Russia report, and now more than ever we should be focused on safeguarding our democracy at all levels.
Putin’s assault on democracy at home and abroad shows no signs of abating. This week US intelligence officials reported that Russia had attempted to interfere in the November US elections by disseminating “misleading or unsubstantiated allegations” against Joe Biden. Meanwhile in Russia, his own country, supporters of the poisoned opposition leader Alexey Navalny were faced with the prospect of indefinite house arrest.
With democracy under such sustained attack in so many countries, the UK should be leading its defence, working with other countries to resist Putin and other authoritarian ‘strongmen’, imposing Magnitsky sanctions to weaken his influence and speaking out and standing up whenever and wherever democracy and human rights are threatened.
Not burying their heads in the sand because the issues are politically inconvenient or because it might put some Tory party donors off.
Layla Moran is the Liberal Democrat MP for Oxford West and Abingdon, and the party's spokesman for foreign affairs and international development.
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