Even after the clocks have changed and the evenings are getting longer, night eventually comes. It’s not all at once but slowly and surely the light fades and, all of a sudden, you’re in darkness.

According to the most recent annual report from Amnesty International, human rights in the UK are also fading and threaten to plunge the country into darkness. Britain has long been a bastion of freedom and democracy in the West but change is certainly afoot. You can maybe think of one or two examples off the top of your head (the Police Bill; threats to overturn the Human Rights Act) but the more you put your mind to it, the list just grows.

Amnesty International highlight a number of concerns:

• Arms sales to Saudi Arabia
• Threats to judicial review
• Treatment of immigrants and asylum seekers
• Policies around housing and homelessness
• Discrimination against black and Asian people in terms of policing and healthcare
• The handling of the pandemic
• Restrictions on the right to protest
• Slashing foreign aid to war-torn Yemen
• Military Prosecutions Bill offering a carte blanche to soldiers

To be clear, the UK is not an authoritarian state like Hungary or Russia but it is moving in the wrong direction. More than that the rate of decline is increasing as well. The director of Amnesty International UK, Kate Allen, says that we are “speeding towards the cliff edge” and it is hard to disagree when the full extent to which human rights are being eroded hits home.

This drip-drip-drip effect has been going on for many years at this point and generally flies under the radar. Before you know it, you look around and there is only darkness.