So the Archbish of C said the EU is ‘the greatest dream realised for human beings

[Burney]

Nope. My argument is that the moral high ground of democratic accountability adopted by you and your ilk would be a lot easier to swallow if you had ever raised similar concerns about the very similar lack of democracy in the very institutions you claim have been undermined by the EU.

THese institutions you cherish and protect managed, by your own admission, to keep the matter of EU membership off the political agenda for 40 years despite the evident demand for a discussion by a huge percentage of the voting public. Where is your democratic outrage at that system?

I acknowledge the deficit inherent in each but I would never demand we fix one and not the other. That is simply unbalanced.

Well the glib answer would be to turn the question on its head and ask those who have long moaned about the HoL, FPTP and the Monarchy how are they a problem, but this hugely undemocratic entity that has been legislating over you for decades doesn't bother you?

But ultimately this is simply whataboutery, p - and not very good whataboutery at that. Democracy is about what the people want and, for instance, this country was given a vote on changing FPTP and rejected it by a massive margin. Equally, there is precisely no democratic impetus for getting rid of our monarch as head of state, which leaves that question moot. I have always had major questions about the House of Lords, but have always seen their role as advisory rather than strictly legislative - plus I can see the issues of precedence associated with having two elected chambers, so am on the fence.

As for the issue of parties, that is common to every democratic system in the world and there seems precious little alternative to party systems.

And - frankly - all these shortcomings are as nothing to an unelected, unaccountable Commission that is the sole source of legislation (Article 294 of the Lisbon Treaty) and which arrogates hugely important 'exclusive competences' to itself; a Parliament whose power is purely advisory and a Council of Ministers whose power is hugely circumscribed by that of the unelected Commission and whose international nature means that voters in one country that may suffer hugely from a piece of legislation are essentially powerless to opt out of anything (particularly since the advent of QMV).

This is not OK. On any level.