Winston Churchill said that the best argument against democracy is a conversation an average voter so he would be happy that the number of Democracies around the World is shrinking and we are now down to just 19 full democracies or less than 5% of the world's population according to the annual Democracy Index which looks at governments around the world and tracks elections, politics,
culture and civil rights.
As usual, Scandinavia comes out best with Norway the most democratic nation followed by Iceland and then Sweden, the UK is the 14th most democratic country while the USA is 21st and was downgraded to a 'flawed democracy' last year and remains in the same class as nations such as India, Chile, South Africa, Greece, Colombia and Mexico.
Overall, across the world, democratic norms are slipping, according to the Index authors blaming declining trust in institutions, erosion of civil liberties and curbs on freedom of speech and curtailing freedom of the media under the guise of prevention of terrorism laws, blasphemy and 'hate speech' laws.
The rest of the world’s population live in a hybrid or authoritarian regime with North Korea the lowest-ranking country on the list along with Syria, Chad and Central African Republic.
As for the 95% of those not living in a full democracy, placing a cross on a ballot paper every five years in order to hand over political control to a party is as much say as we have. Yes we can remove a Government but once in they are there for a long time and short of a revolution, we are stuck with them and it's 60 months until Democracy wheels its way back again.
I wouldn't be that upset if your country is not in the top class as Democracy is 1 day every 1826 days so for 1825 days we are no different.
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