Autocrats, Kleptocrats and Populists

Lord Anderson of Swansea Excerpts

Thursday 3rd February 2022 Grand Committee

[Lord Anderson of Swansea (Lab)]

My Lords, I congratulate my noble friend Lord Browne and begin with a Polish question. What is the difference between an optimist and a pessimist? A pessimist says things cannot get any worse and an optimist says, oh yes they can. We can surely apply that to the position of democracy today. There is certainly a recession, a backsliding.

Consider the position perhaps 30 years ago. We had the end of the Berlin Wall, which led to the dissolution of the Soviet Union and the Soviet Empire—

“Bliss was it in that dawn”—


and the end of apartheid in South Africa and, indeed, Namibia. It was the end of a chapter of colonialism. We had the time when the United States was the only hegemon and was not challenged by an authoritarian China.

A little later, there was the pent-up anger against autocrats which led to the Arab spring. Now, what is left of the Arab spring? Some may say, Tunisia, but the jury is out on Tunisia, and everywhere else where there was the Arab spring there has been a deterioration. The situation has changed very much indeed.

Secretary Blinken on his visit to Africa last year spoke of a “democratic recession”. There has been a series of military coups. There has been a series of civil conflicts in Sudan, Somalia and Ethiopia, and generally, as the Library notes show, reports from a series of well-respected international organisations illustrate that recession.

Even in Europe, there is a fragility in our democracies. In France, the 25 January edition of Le Figaro showed the disillusion with democracy there. Some 39% of the 11,000 French people polled would welcome an elected strong man, but more than 50% would welcome a government by experts, not by elected people. The majority thought that, on the whole, the political elite was corrupt. Perhaps the position in this country is less fragile—we do not have the Bonapartist tradition—but look elsewhere around Europe and see the position of illiberal democracy in Hungary and the position in Poland.

My second reflection is that the contrast between democracy and autocracy has never been so stark, but there is a continuum, with perhaps North Korea at one end and the Scandinavians at the other. It is a problem of more so, less so. To illustrate that, I invite noble Lords to look at the Council of Europe and the fact that Russia is there. Russia invaded Georgia in 2008 and Crimea in 2014, yet it is a member of this major human rights organisation. Even, alas, our Commonwealth has deteriorated, with most countries backsliding. The position in South Africa, certainly under Zuma and the state capture by Zuma and the Gupta brothers, has been well illustrated by my noble friend.

Finally, yes, there should be co-ordination but the D10 cited by the Prime Minister is clearly a non-starter, as the noble Lord, Lord Hannay, said. Co-ordination is important for Magnitsky, but the best response is not only soft power but also the question of leadership. On that, I would say that our leaders should be people of integrity and honesty. They should respect the constitution and the role of judges and parliamentarians. They should honour the international treaties they have signed and should adhere to the rules and regulations they have made. This is the best antidote to authoritarianism. We should look in the mirror ourselves, try to be a model, be vigilant, avoid the slippery slope and remember that dictatorships normally die through epileptic fits, democracies die by slow decline, often from the top.