Democratic Institutions: Threats

Lord Cryer Excerpts

Thursday 25th June 2026 Lords Chamber

[Lord Cryer (Lab)]

My Lords, it is a pleasure to follow the noble Lord, Lord Wallace. I thank him for securing this debate. Democracy is certainly under threat. Some 87% of Britons have either not very much or no trust at all in politicians and 33% sympathise with the view of British political institutions that they should “just let them all burn”. One in five voters—21%—say that political violence is acceptable in some conditions. When you think that we live in the aftermath of two MPs being murdered for doing their job, that is a staggering figure.

Some of this is due to direct political interference by hostile states, which the noble Lord, Lord Wallace, talked about. Last year, the director of MI5, Ken McCallum, pointed to a 35% rise in state threat activity and warned that Russian intelligence has been on a mission to generate “sustained mayhem” on British streets. We constantly see the generation of stories from various corners of the world. An example that is still notorious is that, after the terrible murder of three girls in Southport two years ago, an entirely false claim appeared online that the murderer was a Muslim immigrant. This is entirely false, but that claim was viewed more than 4 million times in Britain and across the globe.

Iran’s record is even worse than that of Russia or China. A report earlier this year by the noble Lord, Lord Walney, who is in his place, detailed how Tehran is making a systematic effort to build a soft power structure through the use of charitable organisations—registered charities which are being subverted or even created by proxies. As we have discussed many times, the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps is regularly using proxies. Its use of proxies is getting worse because less obvious proxies are now being used. Criminal gangs are doing its dirty work. We have just seen a court case in which two men were prosecuted and convicted for the near murder of an Iranian journalist working in London.

The All-Party Group on Counter Extremism, which I am a member of, has recommended steps, including a new directorate across Whitehall aimed at preventing democratic decline. There are other recommendations in the report by the All-Party Group that I have not got time to cover but which are all well worth looking at. I add that the Charity Commission should be far quicker and far sharper at investigating dodgy charities with links to Tehran in particular, and to China, Russia and other states. A list should also be established of charities found to have links to hostile states or their proxies. The noble Lord, Lord Goodman, has presented this idea a number of times in this Chamber. It is well worth thinking about.

I have raised again and again—I used to raise in the other place when I was a Member of Parliament—that we should have the full proscription of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps. Government after Government, going back to 1979, have failed to act on it. Many of us have seen Ministers here and in the other place come to the Dispatch Box very sympathetic towards an outright ban of the IRGC. Somehow, that sympathy gets lost in the Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office and the ban gets blocked. We have legislation going through both Houses of Parliament to create the legal framework allowing this Government or a future Government to proscribe the IRGC. However, it would then take the political will of a serving Minister to say, “We’re going to take action and proscribe the IRGC”.

I have talked almost entirely about the influence of hostile states and their proxies. However, I will also say something about the threat to our democratic institutions from within democratic institutions. Many of us heard Lord Hennessy’s valedictory speech a few weeks ago in this Chamber. He was the first person to present, in the language of a few decades ago, the “good chaps” theory of the British constitution—that politicians, civil servants and others are largely men and women of good will, intelligence and capability. Largely, that theory still holds true.

However, we are now seeing the rise of elements in the British constitution and politics that were not there when Peter Hennessy wrote his outstanding books about the British constitution. For example, at the other end of the Corridor, in the other place, we have a group of five Gaza independents—for want of a better phrase—who were elected on a purely sectarian basis. Their appeal is purely sectarian. We have not had that in living memory and, in my view, that is a threat to democracy. One of them led a campaign, which he has boasted about, that aimed to make Britain’s second city a no-go zone for Jews when Maccabi Tel Aviv was playing a football match in Birmingham. Sadly, that campaign was successful, and that is a tragedy.

We have always had scandals in British politics—Suez, Marconi and Profumo spring to mind. What seems to have changed is that the scandals come thicker and faster, these days. At the moment, we are still living through the Mandelson and McSweeney scandal, which still has some way to run. Before that, a previous Prime Minister, Boris Johnson, insisted on staying in Downing Street when the Government had, in effect, ceased to function, because so many Ministers, including some in the Cabinet, had resigned. Before then, we had a period when the leader of the Opposition, Jeremy Corbyn, refused to leave, despite an overwhelming vote of no confidence, which, in effect, meant that the Opposition ceased to function.

Having taken all that in the balance, I suspect that the British constitution will prevail because the checks and balances are there. But it is not a foregone conclusion.