Quote:
Originally Posted by Osem
The problem of the EU's democracy is that it isn't ours. Like everything else they believe in, it binds every member nation and is never going to truly reflect what the majority of people of the member states want. We can change our government and some say Corbyn's going to revolutionise the way things are done in the UK. How's he, or anyone else, going to do that when the future in the EU is inexorably more central control with correspondingly less able to be done by our own directly elected governments? It doesn't stack up I'm afraid. As 1 of 28 (or more) member states, our voice is just one of many, few of whom have similar national goals, interests and objectives to ours. We've seen in Greece what happens to those who dare to want something different from those based in Frankfurt who know best.
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Is our system better though, and how?
The big difference I see between the EU parliament and our own is the lack of party politics in the EU parliament. This is both a good thing and a bad thing. It's good in some ways as there isn't a whip. That said, there are of course loose groups in the Parliament such as the ECR and EPP but they don't have the power of parties in the UK Parliament.
The bad side as I see it is that you can tend to end up with consensus politics rather than having a single party government driving decisions through. Of course, single party governments are not truly representative either, ask the Scottish what they think of the Westminster government and whether it really represents their interests.
I don't think the way the systems work can really point to one systems being better than the other, they are just on a spectrum of parliamentary systems. Swings and roundabouts I guess...
Sorry, stream of consciousness on my lunch break
