Georgia is one of the starkest examples of how foreign interference can destabilise democracy, but democracy in the UK is not immune from this risk.
Alice Jeffrey is Campaigns Officer at Unlock Democracy
I was lucky enough to visit the beautiful country of Georgia last year. One thing that stood out was the sheer number of European Union flags being flown in the capital city of Tbilisi. The Georgian people are clearly eager to join the EU, and polling shows that 79% of them back this goal.
Russia unfortunately has other plans for its neighbour. Moscow has been working hard to undermine democracy in Georgia and pull the country back into its sphere of influence.
This came to a head in 2024 when the pro-Russian Georgian Dream Party rammed through the ‘foreign agents law’ despite significant public protest. The bill was eerily similar to one passed by the Kremlin in 2012 to silence dissent and shut down civil society organisations in Russia.
Tensions flared up again when the Georgian Dream Party was re-elected in October. Voters took to social media to share videos of ballot stuffing, voter intimidation and vote buying.[1] The Office for Democratic Institutions and Human Rights (ODIHR) expressed concerns that the election was neither free nor fair.[2]
The Georgian Dream Party has now halted Georgia’s accession talks with the EU, a move that will certainly be popular with the Kremlin. Protestors have been forced to take to the streets for over a month in freezing cold temperatures.
Georgia is one of the starkest examples of how foreign interference can destabilise democracy, but democracy in the UK is not immune from this risk.
Russia has interfered in Georgia’s elections through disinformation campaigns, cyberattacks, and the promotion of pro-Russian political figures.[3] But Russia does not only pick on its neighbours. In the UK, the National Cyber Security Centre uncovered evidence of the Russian Intelligence Services running a campaign of malicious cyber activity to disrupt UK politics.[4] This included leaking confidential documents and targeting parliamentarians as well as civil society organisations.
The threat of foreign interference in the UK is now escalating, in part, due to the widespread use of social media. Hostile states can use fake news, bots, and AI-generated content to spread disinformation and manipulate public opinion.
Our government must address these new risks head-on. The Defending Democracy Taskforce, set up in 2022 to examine the risks that foreign interference poses to the democratic integrity of the UK, must publish its recommendations on how to fight back against foreign risks, and the government must implement them in full.
Unlock Democracy hopes these will include strengthening fact-checking, enforcing electoral law, tackling disinformation through Ofcom and improving political literacy.[1]
Another serious threat to democratic integrity in Georgia comes from oligarchs and their financial power. Oligarchs have a chokehold over the Georgian political system. Politics is largely dominated by Bidzina Ivanishvili, a billionaire businessman whose wealth represents a quarter of the country’s GDP.[2] His financial backing of the Georgian Dream party has cemented its tight grip on power, and ensured that the party’s policies align with his own business interests. It’s difficult to see how the concerns of ordinary people can be heard in Georgia when large donors have such an outsized influence over politics.
Without action, the UK is doomed to go down a similar path. Rumours have recently circulated that Elon Musk could donate up to £80 million to Nigel Farage’s Reform UK party – which would be ten times larger than any single donation ever made to a UK political party.
Fortunately, it’s easy to stop Musk and others from distorting our political landscape with huge piles of money. Unlock Democracy is calling on the government to introduce a £5,000 annual donation limit per company or per individual. This would protect the interests of ordinary voters and would be very popular with the public. Polling conducted by Unlock Democracy revealed that two thirds of people support limiting the size of donations to political parties or politicians.
Another attack on democracy is the silencing of dissent. The Georgian authorities have clamped down on recent protests using violence and arrests. The UK government has rightfully condemned this as an “egregious attack on democracy” and has sanctioned those responsible.[3] However, the UK’s own record on protest rights has been damaged by anti-protest legislation, such as the Public Order Act 2023 and the Police, Crime, Sentencing, and Courts Act 2022.
This government has yet to announce their intention to repeal these repressive laws. While they remain on the statute book, the UK undermines the democratic principles that we champion abroad. We also risk these powers falling into the hands of a more authoritarian government in the future. The government must repeal these laws without delay to restore our right to protest at home and to strengthen our ability to champion protest rights abroad.
All in all, Georgia is a much more fragile democracy than the UK, but both face an urgent need to protect their democratic systems.
The UK government is completely right to call out democratic backsliding in Georgia. Now it must get serious about preventing democratic backsliding at home.
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