Quote:
Originally Posted by jem
And that is a perfectly valid point, but consider this.
Imagine you are a Cornishman*, would you also say that ‘the cost of being part of the UK is surrender of swathes of powers in social and market regulation policy to a council of ministers and a parliament (in Westminster) over which no Cornish electorate can ever exercise control. It is undemocratic by design.’
Where would you draw the line?
The whole point of any sort of community is, yes, you do lose a degree of individual control, but the overall benefits, to you, outweigh that.
I’ve said it before, and I think it merits repeating; ‘leave’ did not win the 2016 referendum - ‘remain’ lost it. They ran a really negative campaign which never, ever works, don't emphasise the damage that leaving will do but rather the advantages that membership brings.
* other counties, boroughs, districts, parishes, villages are available.
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You draw the line around the boundaries of the
demos, that is, the unified body of people whose outlooks and interests and heritage are similar and distinct enough that they form a natural, distinct democratic unit.
Regulation for its own sake is fundamentally un-British, yet that is a driving force in the euro-parliament. Government initiative led by the civil service is not British, it is a thing the French bequeathed to the European Commission.
Because there is no common European demos, it is impossible for single pan-European parties to emerge, which could control the parliament, and stand for election on common manifestos that could adequately address the differing priorities of electorates across the 27 (formerly 28) states. Because they are different electorates, and always will be. The Strasbourg gravy train gives the whole circus a veneer of democracy but it is, and always had been, a technocratic system.
The feudal systems that absorbed Cornwall and Wales into England simply don’t exist any more. Were it to be attempted today it would rightly be called ‘Empire’. And preventing pan-European empires was, ostensibly, one of the main reasons for creating the European Coal and Steel Community in the first place.