Quote Originally Posted by Burney View Post
Hmmm. Oh, yes, I'd definitely trust - *checks notes* - 'Friends of Europe' - very impartial.

It's a classic piece of sophistry whose sole intent is to obscure the truth.
For starters, the premises of the piece are absurdly flawed. For instance, it's laughable to compare a government that has won an election (and thus has a direct democratic mandate) and a patronage-appointed Commission that has no democratic mandate whatsoever. The issue therefore is not that the Commission has less power than an elected national government, but that it has any power at all!

The Commission's very existence is an offence to any democrat's sensibilities. It is the sole body that is capable of proposing legislation. That gives it pretty much complete power over the legislative agenda of the EU with no democratic mandate whatsoever. No amount of quasi-democratic window dressing can obscure that stark fact.

Secondly, the nonsense about the cabinet and PM not being directly elected wilfully ignores that they are all elected in a national election in which the electorate voted largely by party and in response to clear manifestos. None of that is the case with the Commission, which is an appointment with zero democratic legitimacy.

All in all, that article is nothing but an example of how dishonest the proponents of the EU are prepared to be in defence of the indefensible and how willing others are to lie to themselves that their self-interest in maintaining the status quo has any higher justification.
Ad hominem

And you have refuted very little of the article including some points that directly contradict the 'undemocratic' view. As an example:

'The Commission can only propose laws in those areas where the EU governments have unanimously agreed to allow it to do under the EU treaty. Put another way, the Commission can only propose EU laws in areas where the UK government and the House of Commons has allowed it to do so.'