It's not literally the same of course. But you should wonder, how much of the difference is due just differences in how much they need to do?

If South American dictatorships could have their way with less blood and less noise, don't you think they would prefer that?

I'm reminded of a tragicomic recent admission from Nate Silver of 538 fame. He said Disney almost never interfered in their editorial process, as if that was a good thing. What that really meant, after all, was that Disney was perfectly willing to interfere in their editorial process, but almost never felt the need to. (As you would expect. I mean, why would Disney care about political polling?)

Could it similarly be that the UK government is perfectly willing to engage in brutal political suppression, but rarely has a need to? In that case maybe people are right to sound the alarm even though we haven't reached South American dictatorship levels yet.