Can the UK be called a democracy?

The UK is held up as one of the words great democracies but can it really be called a democracy?

Wikipedia offers the following definition of what makes a democracy:

Elections are not in themselves a sufficient condition for the existence of democracy.

Elections have often been used by authoritarian regimes or dictatorships to give a
false sense of democracy. This can happen in a variety of different ways:

• restrictions on who is allowed to stand for election
• restrictions on the true amount of power that elected representatives are allowed to hold, or the policies that they are permitted to choose while in office
• voting which is not truly free and fair (e.g., through intimidation of those voting for particular candidates)
• falsification of the results

While there is technically no barrier to who is allowed to stand for election (other than the usual restrictions on criminals, being under-age or not a citizen of the UK), there are practical restrictions. The party political system in place today is a barrier to to people wanting to stand independently.

There is also the question of fraudulent elections with the postal voting scandal in Birmingham.

Finally, voting isn't free and fair. Labour won the last election through electoral anomolies of their own devising and not by obtaining the majority of votes.

In the same Wikipedia article they also touch on Liberal Democracy. Surely we live in one of those?

In common usage, democracy is often understood to be the same as liberal democracy. While democracy itself is a system of government defined and legitimized by elections, liberal democracy can be characterized by the incorporation of constitutional liberalism, where certain culturally subjective individual rights are protected from a simple majority vote, inversely; in illiberal democracies no such restrictions exist. Qualities of many liberal democracies include:

• A constitution that limits the authority of the government and protects many civil rights
• Universal suffrage, granting all citizens the right to vote regardless of race, gender or property ownership (See also elective rights)
• Freedom of expression, including speech, assembly and protest
• Freedom of the press and access to alternative information sources
• Freedom of association
• Equality before the law and due process under the rule of law
• The right to private property and privacy
• Educated citizens informed of their rights and civic responsibilities
• A broadly and deeply entrenched civil society
• An independent judiciary
• A system of checks and balances between branches of government

We don't have a written constitution as such, our constitution is a collection of laws. Most of the constitutional laws we have are more about giving the government more power than the head of state rather than the giving it to the people.

We no longer truly have freedom of speech or assembly. Legislation is in place and in use that limits what you can say and when you can gather in large groups and protest. You cannot say anything that does or may offend someone on the grounds of race or religion whether you intend to offend someone or not. You cannot gather together and protest without permission. I cannot recall the exact figure but I believe it take only somewhere in the region of 15 people to constitute a riot under UK law.

Equality before the law. There are plans afoot to remove the right to trial by jury for complex fraud cases which is more akin to Napoleonic Law than English Law. There are also guidelines on sentencing for ethnic minorities, different religious groups and different sexes. People are treated differently along these lines and are not equal before the law.

Our right to privacy is being squeezed on two fronts at the moment - the first being ID cards and the second being tracking systems in our cars.

A system of checks and balances between branches of government. The government has appointed itself a majority in the House of Lords to go with the Parlaiment Act that allows it to force through legislation that is deemed unsuitable. The government effectively have a free rein and only subscribe to the principle of having two houses and a monarch as head of state while they either agree with the government or can be over-ruled regardless.

I don't think the UK can be called a democracy when it fails so many of the basic criteria that defines a democratic country.