Paul Lynch’s dystopian novel Prophet Song paints a harrowing picture of a future where Ireland gradually descends into the jaws of tyranny. Besides being an artful depiction of an ordinary person’s perspective of the transformation of a liberal state into a (textbook) police state, it rubbishes the notion that a developed country is immune to the plague of totalitarianism. The events of this book, for many in the UK, are emblematic of what may be to come in their own state. In the last few years, an unprecedented crackdown on social media, coupled with legislation and directives passed amidst widespread condemnation, has led activists to claim that the UK, a wealthy, democratic, first-world state, is becoming a ‘police state’.

I argue that these claims are true, and the UK is in fact becoming a police state. This essay begins by identifying the key characteristics that make a state, a ‘police state’. Subsequently, I dissect the situation in the UK with reference to the arrests made because of social media posts, and corresponding institutional changes. I use the aforementioned characteristics to illustrate three reasons why the UK, the mother of parliamentary democracy, is on the way to becoming a police state, albeit still being in the nascent stages.

Initially, as pioneered by the rulers of Prussia and Austria, the polizeistaat, or ‘police state’ was a state that used the police, and in particular the secret police, not as a tool of repression, but of facilitating good government by monitoring public servants, refugees and revolutionaries. It was not a state of arbitrary rule, but one where the state, embodied by the King, used the police to create a government that, despite being controlling by modern standards, would benefit the people. The modern conception of a police state is largely based upon Nazi Germany. The National Socialists used the police to consolidate their rule, through relentless centralisation, fearmongering and politicisation. Police powers slowly concentrated into the hands of only a few party members, like Heinrich Himmler and Reinhard Heydrich. Thus, the police became “concerned with the formal police powers of the state in so far as they were necessary for the fulfilment of its primary political purpose.”

The question then is, what constitutes a police state in the modern context? Brian Chapman puts forward five dimensions of a police state- centralisation, politicisation, penetration, determination, and militarisation. For Chapman, one can determine the existence of a police state in a country by examining the concentration of police power within one body (centralisation), intervention of police into political matters (politicisation), interference in the working of other state apparatuses (penetration), subversion of the judiciary (determination) and the degree of military capacity of the police (militarisation).

Apart from these criteria, a police state also involves institutional and legislation-related changes that empower the police while disadvantaging the people; a state surveillance apparatus, fearmongering, and control over communications. Importantly though, none of these criteria are watertight or static. There is no threshold, upon crossing which a state becomes a police state. Keeping this in mind, it becomes necessary to understand the situation in the UK before making judgements.

While sources differ on the exact count, thousands of people have been arrested in the UK for their actions on social media over the past few years, with the number increasing with each passing year. Between 2008 and 2017, 5332 people were arrested and charged for a range of offences under the Communications Act 2003, in London alone. The Times reported in 2017 that nine people were being arrested each day for posting ‘offensive messages’ on social media.

There are three pieces of legislation key to understanding the problem at hand- the Online Safety Act 2023, the Investigatory Powers (Amendment) Act 2024 and the Communications Act 2003.

Combined, these three laws have strengthened the police surveillance system of the UK, which was already among the most extensive in the Western world.

Section 127 of the Communications Act, with its ill-defined criterion of “grossly offensive” to be used for determining an offence over a public electronic communications network, has granted the police disproportionate powers of discretion. Take for example R v Paul Chambers in 2012, where a veteran of the armed forces was arrested by anti-terror police at his home because of a tweet where he had jokingly threatened to blow up an airport, only for the conviction to be quashed. While all cases under Section 127 may not be as extreme as this fairly old example, such convictions have seen a marked increase in recent years; this may not set a rule, but it certainly sets a dangerous precedent.

Clause 122 of the Online Safety Bill weakens end-to-end encryption, ostensibly to find perpetrators of child pornography. This may help the government catch these criminals, but it concomitantly endangers the privacy of millions of citizens. To quote the European Court of Human Rights, deciding an unrelated case, requiring degraded end-to-end encryption “cannot be regarded as necessary in a democratic society”.

Lastly, the IPA and its 2024 Amendment pose roadblocks to the implementation of new encryption practices. They form a ‘notice regime’, whereby the government can issue notices to multinational social media platforms to stall security updates, specifically altering services provided in the UK, and most surprisingly of all, keeping the notice secret from the company’s home government. Most concerningly, orders under this act shall now be issued by the Secretary of State without consultation with privacy regulators. These laws have raised fears that prominent players in the social media industry may exit the UK.