> The bigger picture of why UK is hell bent on surveilling their citizens, communities is that the number one problem is that governments are losing control over society.
I suspect theres a bunch of things going on.
They've come down so hard on recent protest movements like Just Stop Oil, Insulate Britain, etc because as you say they feel like they've lost authority and they want it back. National-scale surveillance is a way to remind everyone who really runs the country, and who just does as they're told. The uk has almost always been governed by essentially the same elite group, and they have a lot of experience of keeping it that way. Not by Spectre-style secret meetings, just by convergent overlapping objectives.
I think part of their fear comes from seeing how popular devolution has been in the UK. And partly how successful the EU has become, hence brexit. Theres also a part of the tory party that wants to nope out of the ECHR jurisdiction, and this kind of legislation potentially sets-up a fight with the court that could be used as a pretext for withdrawal. Some of them undoubtedly also simply see the potential to make some money from a surveylance society.
I also suspect they've finally woken up to the climate-related crisies that are now just down the road and they've decided that a more authoritarian society is the only way to keep their position at the top.
> Off course the whole point of democracy is that governments should fear their citizens, rather than vice versa.
Err... nope. Can't build stable societies on fear. The "whole point of democracy" is how to negociate the divergent desires and opinions of the nation's citizens.