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[CyclopsRock]

The reason is that the member states were and are unwilling to move away from their power, their very own interests.

But how is this any different? It's still the same position, with the same powers, only with a bizarre and twisted mandate rather than a direct one.

 

[Walshicus]

But how is this any different? It's still the same position, with the same powers, only with a bizarre and twisted mandate rather than a direct one.

You're right, the EUC should either come from the EP or be voted on separately.

 

[CyclopsRock]

You're right, the EUC should either come from the EP or be voted on separately.

Voting in separately would be ideal, I think. This is the person who, to the rest of the world at least, is the "face" of the EU, especially if they had a democratic mandate. I think it'd be best to allow people the choice on who they want representing them on the world stage; We don't want another Van Rompuy.

 

[Zornica]

When it comes to medicine and public health, I don't think there's such a thing as overreach. I just don't think private pharmas can ever provide value for money. Their incentive isn't to cure or prevent ailment, but to manage it in a way that profits them. We shouldn't be afraid to nationalise where it makes sense, and I can't see why it wouldn't in this sector.

the problem runs even deeper than that. I read an article not too long ago talking about serious threats to public health in the near future. oddly enough, pharmacies are running out of money as their investors get greedier by the minute and instead of putting money into research for useful stuff, they waste money on useless junk like animal medicine and vitamin supplements and, not to forget, higher and higher rates of return.

I really hope that we can eventually break this self-imposed private sector only bull crap and start putting money into necessities (again).

 

[CyclopsRock]

Rumour has it that Merkel has been sounding out Hollande to put Legarde forward. I don't think he will (he would rather a French person heading the IMF I imagine) but if the rumour is true, it shows Merkel is serious about helping Cameron.

 

[Sonik]

It's a little more complicated than that though, surely? Firstly, we didn't vote for any individual - we voted for national parties, which in turn join larger groups, which in turn present candidates which in turn can be ignored by the Commission if they want to, though ultimately they need a consensus.

Yes, it's more complicated than what I described but even more fucked up when you analyze it like you did.

Lumping the executive in with the legislature is always a bad idea - it's one of the worst parts about the UK constitution but at least in the UK it "makes sense" insomuch as our executive is a part of the legislature - all members of government are in the legislature and their "power" comes from the fact that they're at the top of the party with a majority. That's not the case in the EU, where if you removed the commission and had the parliament propose and vote upon its own legislation, with laws passed with a majority vote, you wouldn't have a single obvious "leader" precisely because there are a number of groups, none of which have a majority of the power.

While I partly agree with you, lumping legislative and executive is still preferable to this clusterfuck. The commission is a horrible autocratic branch that has way more power than the parliament and shouldn't even exist.

 

[anonymous_abc]

Yes, it's more complicated than what I described but even more fucked up when you analyze it like you did.



While I partly agree with you, lumping legislative and executive is still preferable to this clusterfuck. The commission is a horrible autocratic branch that has way more power than the parliament and shouldn't even exist.

I agree, the alternative though is to have the EP elect a 'government' from its ranks. And there is no chance that is going to happen any time soon as it would require major reworking of treaties et al.

 

[CyclopsRock]

The tough work of rewriting treaties aside, is there a reason the EU needs an executive at all, in the traditional sense? Given the nature of what the EU does, it seems like most if the traditional individual roles are superfluous given the distribution of powers. Have the legislature write the laws like they're meant to, the ECJ interpret them and have no commission?

 

[anonymous_abc]

The tough work of rewriting treaties aside, is there a reason the EU needs an executive at all, in the traditional sense? Given the nature of what the EU does, it seems like most if the traditional individual roles are superfluous given the distribution of powers. Have the legislature write the laws like they're meant to, the ECJ interpret them and have no commission?

Works for me.

 

[CyclopsRock]

See, I'm a pan-European consensus builder. Does anyone want to put me forward for Commissioner?!

 

[anonymous_abc]

See, I'm a pan-European consensus builder. Does anyone want to put me forward for Commissioner?!

Works for me.

 

[michaelius]

Is there any decent reason why we don't just vote directly for the head of the commission? I assume it's because they know that most people a) won't care, b) won't know the candidates or c) have a preference anyway, especially if there isn't one from their own nation which is probably all true, or sort of also makes a mockery of the idea that Juncker was "elected" this time.

Apart from European elites being afraid people might elect someone who doesn't share their vision of unified European Super State as ultimate goal ?

 

[Kozak]

Just wanted to pop in and congratulate big man Tony G!

Bring on the Russians!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AZIRE4P7Tcw

 

[Zornica]

Is there any decent reason why we don't just vote directly for the head of the commission? I assume it's because they know that most people a) won't care, b) won't know the candidates or c) have a preference anyway, especially if there isn't one from their own nation which is probably all true, or sort of also makes a mockery of the idea that Juncker was "elected" this time.

I guess it's mostly C. People would vote for whoever is from their nation because "He is one of us!" and "he will show those idiots in Brussels how things are handled the right way because we figured it out 40 years ago". Which means the head of the commission would most likely be either from Germany, France or the UK.

I think it would be easier if the head was elected by the eu parliament, but not the way it's done this time.
I think every EP should be able to run for commission president, but he has to go through a two step process to get a majority behind him. During the first phase, everybody can try to get elected. The two (or 3?) candidates with the most votes move on to phase two where whoever gets a majority wins and therefore gets to be commission president.

Just wanted to pop in and congratulate big man Tony G!

Bring on the Russians!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AZIRE4P7Tcw

how is a stupid nationalistic douche from australia in any way relevant to this thread?

He's a member of the European Parliament.

How can someone from Australia be in the European Parliament... is he UKIP?
edit: wait a sec... he's from Lithuanian? than why is he called "the Australian Airbag"?

How can a douche like him get elected. Shameful

 

[Kabouter]

how is a stupid nationalistic douche from australia in any way relevant to this thread?

He's a member of the European Parliament.

 

[QuicheFontaine]

how is a stupid nationalistic douche from australia in any way relevant to this thread?

Hey, Aksy's entitled to his opinion just like anyone else!

Oh, you meant Tony G

Spoiler

;-P

 

[CyclopsRock]

Boris is on the warpath.

Here it comes! With a nape-tingling drumroll the national Excalibur is being loosened from the scabbard. The great Union Jack-draped missile is slowly nosing its way from its silo in Faslane or wherever they keep it these days. The almighty British veto is about to be unleashed after years of cobwebbed desuetude.

If I read the news correctly we are about to prevent Jean-Claude Juncker from bringing his career of federalist fudging and finagling to its logical conclusion. The Government has decided that the veteran Luxembourger is not the man to lead the new European Commission. Poor old Juncker is so depressed that he is on the verge of packing it in.

Only last Wednesday he was tweeting that he was more confident than ever of getting the job. Angela Merkel was backing him. He had the support of the European People’s Party – the biggest grouping in the European Parliament. In Juncker’s imagination this is the equivalent of a mass democratic mandate – as if the whole European electorate had decided to stand on their chairs as one and chant, 'what do we want? Juncker! When do we want him? Now!’

.....

But in what sense would a Lamy commission be an improvement on a Juncker commission? From the point of view of a British Euro-sceptic, you could argue that he would be even worse: more formidable, more effective in pushing forward the whole federalist agenda. The deep and awful truth is that it doesn’t make much difference who is installed at the top of the Berlaymont. It doesn’t matter whether you have a Bofferding-quaffing Luxembourger or a dynamic French énarque or a Borgen-esque Scandiwegian or a statue of the Mannekin Pis as president of the EU commission.

It wouldn’t even make much difference if we could get Bill Cash or Norman Tebbit to run the place. No European Commission president has any real democratic legitimacy, contrary to what Juncker believes – and it is inconceivable that any one functionary could change the direction or the culture. The European Commission has a single aim, role, point, remit, charter, mission, purpose, function, ethic and ambition – and that is to uphold the treaties on European Union, as successively amended, and to bring forward legislation designed to promote ever closer union among the peoples of Europe.

This involves creating an ever more intricate system of government and ever more regulation of our lives. The only way to change the activities of the European Commission is to change the treaties; and as I never tire of pointing out, there is only one way to get that renegotiation followed by an in/out referendum, and that is to give David Cameron and the Conservatives the mandate they need at the next election. We either need a reform of the EU that boils it down to the single market, or we need to get out. We need to stop subcontracting our democracy to the EU.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/wor...tless.-It-doesnt-matter-who-gets-the-job.html

 

[Walshicus]

Boris just needs to fuck off back to Toffland.

 

[Dougald]

Boris just needs to fuck off back to Toffland.

Henley-on-Thames?

 

[Walshicus]

Henley-on-Thames?

New York apparently. But yeah the guy makes my class warrior blood boil.

 

[CyclopsRock]

Since this is the catch-all thread for all things EU, I thought I'd link up Dan Hodges latest piece because I think it's accurate (and, in fact, what I was basically saying earlier in this very thread):

http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/news/d...jacked-ukip-and-turned-it-into-a-toxic-brand/

The first thing Nigel Farage needs to recognise is the party he’s leading isn’t the party he thinks he’s leading. Two years ago Ukip were easily defined. They were, to borrow a phrase from Nick Clegg, “the party of Out”. Labour and the Lib Dems were Europhiles. The Tory party were Euroagnostic. Ukip, in contrast, were the only genuine Eurosceptics.

Yes, they came across as a bit eccentric. A little obsessed, as single-issue parties tend to do. But they were essentially harmless. They had a charismatic leader. And they were tapping into a suspicion about the grand European project that was shared by a significant section of the electorate on both the Left and Right of the political spectrum.
Slowly but surely, however, Ukip has been the subject of a political takeover. The Kippers have given way to Britain's equivalent of the Tea Party, the Tea Kippers.

The Tea Kippers don’t view Ukip as a single-issue party. Or a political party at all. They see Ukip first as a movement. Then an uprising. And finally a vehicle for unleashing a political civil war on a Britain they despise and no longer understand.

Like the entryism of Trotskyists into Labour in the late 1970s and early 1980s, the rise of the Tea Kippers was the product of many factors. The compromises forced on the Tory and Liberal Democrat parties by coalition. The failure of Labour to establish itself as an effective opposition. The collapse of the BNP. The lingering sense of disillusionment with the political class in the wake of the expense scandal and the 2008 crash.

...

That’s the question Nigel Farage has to address. Is Ukip his party? Or is it the Tea Kippers' party? He hasn't got long to come up with an answer.

There's more at the link, but what he's basically saying is that the party has been changed by the people who joined at the grassroots in the same way the GOP has been changed by the Tea Party, as the leaders and party candidates necessarily change to reflect their changing membership. When I mentioned this earlier in the thread, people said to me "Well, if your movement attracts racists, maybe there's something wrong with your movement?" I said that I didn't think that was fair, but since then I've been thinking, and I think it happens with basically all single-interest groups and parties. You end up with environmental groups that were set up with their eyes on climate change ending up as vehicles against GMOs. The various Occupy movements which began as a protest against the unequal distribution of wealth and capital and ended up with significant groups seeking to end the Israeli genocide of Palestinian children. Union strikes often remain better disciplined as they have a specific leadership with specific goals, but reports on the group often find signs against free schools in a strike about teacher's pay etc. I think it's inevitable in any single-issue movement, as sympathisers seek to stamp their own, additional views onto a popular movement.

 

[anonymous_abc]

It seems evermore likely that JCJ will indeed become President of the European Commission.
And it looks as if Cameron will have lost this fight quite significantly.

One interesting comment I just read is by Andrew Duff (former LibDem MEP)
http://andrewduff.blogactiv.eu/2014...ship-crisis-whos-to-blame-and-why-it-matters/

London, as usual, was in denial. The British have never really understood the political nature of the Commission. Nor do they seem to grasp that the EU has a bicameral legislature. Constitutionally illiterate and driven by off-shore domestic obsessions, few in Whitehall or Westminster woke up to the changes afoot. Having withdrawn from the European People’s Party in 2009, the Conservative Party has no engagement with mainstream mainland party politics – making risible its desperate claim to see in the German CDU its natural fraternal party while, at the same moment, they admit the right-wing conservative AfD to their group of MEPs. Labour abstained in the process by which Martin Schulz eliminated all potential rivals to emerge as the nominee of the Party of European Socialists. The Liberal Democrats were divided by Nick Clegg’s peremptory decision to support Olli Rehn as Guy Verhofstadt’s rival in the race to become the Spitzenkandidat of the Alliance of Liberals and Democrats for Europe (ALDE) – but at least the Lib Dems took part in the process, and accepted the outcome.

Throughout the adventure, the European Parliament has acted within the letter and spirit of the Treaty of Lisbon. It is natural that the four mainstream pro-European parties which took part in the election are now backing the lead candidate of the EPP, the largest group, to become Barroso’s successor. The ball is in the court of Van Rompuy, who acts in the Belgian way as informateur. Later this week, he will propose to his colleagues in the European Council that they nominate someone who commands a qualified majority among heads of government and an absolute majority in the Parliament. Having been heard in the groups and in the plenary, the parliamentary election will take place by secret ballot in Strasbourg in 16 July. If the nominee has not won over 376 MEPs, the European Council has one month in which to come up with an alternative name – all in accordance with the Treaty.

If this is a ‘power grab’ by the European Parliament, I am proud to be complicit in it. Time was when a parliamentary blow against autocratic rule would have been lauded by the British Establishment. It is ironic that what is deemed fine by the UK for, say, Burma is considered to be scandalous for the European Union.

David Cameron argues that Juncker is too much of an old-fashioned federalist to be Commission President. Yet he has no other candidate to put up. And, despite vain claims, Cameron has no coherent reform programme of his own. He has engineered for himself a presumably deliberate defeat at the hands of (mostly) continental federalists. What profit this brings him, his party or his country I am not able to say.

Those who wish the European Union well, however, can expect to get out of this crisis of leadership a stronger and more legitimate European Commission.

 

[Sir_Crocodile]

Once step closer to being out the door

 

[Zornica]

I love the "power grab’ by the European Parliament" part. I already had a good laugh a few days ago:

Bei seinen Gesprächen mit EU-Ratspräsident Hermann van Rompuy am heutigen Montag in London wollte Cameron daher eine offene Wahl im Kreis der 28 Staats- und Regierungschefs vorschlagen, hieß es am Wochenende in der Downing Street. Der Konservative wolle "mehr Macht für das EU-Parlament durch einen Deal im Hinterzimmer" verhindern.

http://derstandard.at/2000002208195...ten-wollen-Abstimmung-ueber-Juncker-erzwingen
(sorry, I got no english source to cite)

oh the irony...

 

[anonymous_abc]

Good news everyone.
The far right populists have not managed to form a group in the European Parliament. The deadline for the first round is today.
SZ (German source)
TAZ (German source)
Wilders wants to continue trying though, so good luck to him on that.

Forming a group would get them more speaking time and money. In order to do so they need 25 members from at least 7 different member states.


Judging by the second article a few FN parliamentarians are in the same group as UKIP.

 

[Kabouter]

Judging by the second article a few FN parliamentarians are in the same group as UKIP.

Keeping company like that pretty much tells you all you need to know about UKIP, doesn't it?

And yes, good news

 

[anonymous_abc]

Good commentary from the BBC
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-27993522

The eurozone's most serious flaw, many would say, is the absence of a political union to underpin and reinforce economic and monetary union.

[...]

The point is that banking union (a common, adequately financed approach to supervising and rescuing banks) and fiscal union (controls on taxing and spending by member states), which are both seen as necessary long-term foundations of monetary union, erode national sovereignty.

[...]

Which takes us to why it matters that the elected European parliament is insisting on its new right to nominate the president of the European Commission, and kill the tradition that the holder of this powerful position should be chosen by unseemly horse trading between EU government heads.


In that sense Spitzenkandidat Jean-Claude Juncker is the embodiment of an attempt to show that voting in the European elections is not just a protest against unpopular national governments or an EU that some see as meddlesome, but will actually determine how the EU is run.

[...]

He would agree that the eurozone needs to become more politically integrated to thrive. However he would point out - perfectly properly - that the eurozone and the European Union are not the same.

The problem of course is that there is no easy institutional way to give the eurozone more democratic legitimacy while not simultaneously democratising the European Union as a whole.

And the last thing David Cameron needs right now, with UKIP so rampant in Tory heartlands, is any sign that the EU is claiming an enhanced legitimacy and right to interfere in the affairs of the UK.

Or to put it another way, building a eurozone for the long term - something which the UK would want, because it would bring stability to our most important overseas market - seems inimical to the British government's hopes of tilting the balance of power back to Westminster and away from Brussels.

 

[MisterFalcon]

Good news everyone.
The far right populists have not managed to form a group in the European Parliament. The deadline for the first round is today.
SZ (German source)
TAZ (German source)
Wilders wants to continue trying though, so good luck to him on that.

Forming a group would get them more speaking time and money. In order to do so they need 25 members from at least 7 different member states.

That's a very clever way to make sure nationalists never get the power their electoral share would normally give them.

 

[CyclopsRock]

Good commentary from the BBC
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-27993522

Two-speed it! Two-speed it! Imo there's no need for the governance of the Eurozone issues to be related to the EU Commission.

 

[anonymous_abc]

That's a very clever way to make sure nationalists never get the power their electoral share would normally give them.

I really don't understand what you are saying.

What sort of power do you think they should have? They are still in the parliament they get financial support, are paid get to talk out of their asses in all manner of comities and in front of the parliament.

Its the same sort of institution in all manner of parliamentary democracies. Eg in Germany a fraction (group) needs a set number of MdB in order to be formed.
And yes absolutely the rule is in place in order to stop minorities from obstructing the parliament at every turn.

I'm sure the parliamentary process would be much better if all 766 MEPs get an equal amount of time to speak on every subject matter.
I would go so far as to say that single parliamentarians wield a lot of power, because I'm sure they can speak for and about everything if they so choose, most MEPs from larger groups will decide to specialise on a few select subjects.


Also now an English link to aforementioned news.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-27993210

 

[TCRS]

Good. Make Junker the clown president, it will push the UK even further in a eurosceptic direction.

 

[Irminsul]

Good. Make Junker the clown president, it will push the UK even further in a eurosceptic direction.

Is that a promise that the constant moaning and bitching will stop once the UK is outside the EU? Then I'm all in favour of it.

 

[Arksy]

Is that a promise that the constant moaning and bitching will stop once the UK is outside the EU? Then I'm all in favour of it.

If the UK were outside the EU I would think that they'd stop being a bad tenant and become a good neighbour.

 

[TCRS]

Is that a promise that the constant moaning and bitching will stop once the UK is outside the EU? Then I'm all in favour of it.

probably. then you'll get to enjoy your centralist super state with dodgy democratic legitimacy for a few years or decades until it all comes crashing down. have fun.

 

[Irminsul]

probably. then you'll get to enjoy your centralist super state with dodgy democratic legitimacy for a few years or decades until it all comes crashing down. have fun.

I'll take that over a government that honestly thinks human rights are incompatible with common law.

 

[anonymous_abc]

If the UK were outside the EU I would think that they'd stop being a bad tenant and become a good neighbour.

Sir Humphrey: Minister, Britain has had the same foreign policy objective for at least the last five hundred years: to create a disunited Europe. In that cause we have fought with the Dutch against the Spanish, with the Germans against the French, with the French and Italians against the Germans, and with the French against the Germans and Italians. Divide and rule, you see. Why should we change now, when it's worked so well?

Hacker: That's all ancient history, surely?

Sir Humphrey: Yes, and current policy. We 'had' to break the whole thing up, so we had to get inside. We tried to break it up from the outside, but that wouldn't work. Now that we're inside we can make a complete pig's breakfast of the whole thing: set the Germans against the French, the French against the Italians, the Italians against the Dutch. The Foreign Office is terribly pleased; it's just like old times.

Hacker: But surely we're all committed to the European ideal?

Sir Humphrey: [chuckles] Really, Minister.

Hacker: If not, why are we pushing for an increase in the membership?

Sir Humphrey: Well, for the same reason. It's just like the United Nations, in fact; the more members it has, the more arguments it can stir up, the more futile and impotent it becomes.

Hacker: What appalling cynicism.

Sir Humphrey: Yes... We call it diplomacy, Minister.

We will see.

probably. then you'll get to enjoy your centralist super state with dodgy democratic legitimacy for a few years or decades until it all comes crashing down. have fun.

I'm sure the UK will feel right at home in the Commonwealth of Nations with the likes of Zimbabwe with which the UK apparently has so much more in common than mainland Europe.

 

[QuicheFontaine]

One interesting comment I just read is by Andrew Duff (former LibDem MEP)

Proudly complicit in a Euro Parliament power grab. I'm astonished this guy wasn't reelected.

 

[TCRS]

I'll take that over a government that honestly thinks human rights are incompatible with common law.

the UK government? we've had human rights enshrined in law since 1689 baby. or even earlier if you want to count the magna carta. what we don't like is the european union meddling in our business and rightfully so. sovereignity over everything.

but if you want to take von pompoy as your president over that... lawl.

 

[anonymous_abc]

the UK government? we've had human rights enshrined in law since 1689 baby. or even earlier if you want to count the magna carta. what we don't like is the european union meddling in our business and rightfully so. parliamentary sovereignity over everything.

but if you want to take von pompoy as your president over that... lawl.

Oh the irony.

Proudly complicit in a Euro Parliament power grab. I'm astonished this guy wasn't reelected.

He was MEP for 15 years. He was hardly kicked the first chance everyone got, and I doubt he was any less a federalist prior to being nominated.

 

[Arksy]

I'll take that over a government that honestly thinks human rights are incompatible with common law.

That's a pretty serious heckle towards a country that invented parliamentary democracy, constitutional liberty and that abolished the slave trade.

 

[anonymous_abc]

That's a pretty serious heckle towards a country that invented parliamentary democracy, constitutional liberty and that abolished the slave trade.

One can only rest on ones prior victories for so long, recent history is pointing in a different direction.

 

[TCRS]

One can only rest on ones prior victories for so long, recent history is pointing in a different direction.

Says the europhile. The only institution here that has a questionable democratic legitimacy is the European Union. Our bid to free ourselves from the EU is meant to achieve exactly that: more parlimentary democracy, better representation and sovereignty.

 

[Irminsul]

the UK government? we've had human rights enshrined in law since 1689 baby. or even earlier if you want to count the magna carta. what we don't like is the european union meddling in our business and rightfully so. sovereignity over everything.

Yeah, that stupid meddling.

You have such great human rights:

Convicted prisoners can't vote, even though the UK's blanket ban on prisoner voting was held to be in breach of their human rights as long ago as 2005.

 

[anonymous_abc]

Says the europhile. The only institution here that has a questionable democratic legitimacy is the European Union. Our bid to free ourselves from the EU is meant to achieve exactly that: more parlimentary democracy, better representation and sovereignty.

Yea and Davy and his chums are doing a good job bombarding the only institution within the EU that has actual democratic legitimacy. No one here is arguing that the Commission is fine and dandy. I for one would welcome them being scraped and replaced by a government formed from the democratically elected European Parliament.

 

[QuicheFontaine]

He was MEP for 15 years. He was hardly kicked the first chance everyone got, and I doubt he was any less a federalist prior to being nominated.

It doesn't look like he's ever been that popular according to his wikipedia page:

he was first elected in the 1999 European Parliament election when the Liberal Democrats won 12% of the regional vote,[2] and retained his seat in the 2004 and 2009 elections when they won 14% of the regional vote, but lost his seat in 2014 when his party took less than 7% in the region.

 

[Kurtofan]

Good news everyone.
The far right populists have not managed to form a group in the European Parliament. The deadline for the first round is today.
SZ (German source)
TAZ (German source)
Wilders wants to continue trying though, so good luck to him on that.

Forming a group would get them more speaking time and money. In order to do so they need 25 members from at least 7 different member states.


Judging by the second article a few FN parliamentarians are in the same group as UKIP.

A newly elected FN parliamentarian (Joelle Bergeron) was asked to stand down after she came out in favour of giving immigrants the right to vote, she decided to leave the party and join the European UKIP group instead.

Here's what the EFD has to say about her inclusion:

An EFD press release said: “Although elected on a Front National list at the last European elections she has admitted that she had joined the party with great hopes but realised that their philosophy was very different [...] Joelle Bergeron has joined the group as an independent and declares herself an Anglophile, with the desire for democratic self-determination and a respect among different nations."

http://www.euractiv.com/sections/eu...-candidate-joins-farages-new-efd-group-302906

UKIP is lucky they have the FN to make them look good in comparison, lol.

 

[anonymous_abc]

It doesn't look like he's ever been that popular according to his wikipedia page:

I don't know the chap so I have no interest in arguing his personal case, but you know that is the great thing about proportional representation a party that gets 15% of the vote actually has a chance of seats in parliament in order to represent those 15% of the constituency. None of that FPTP nonsence.

 

[Zornica]

Is that a promise that the constant moaning and bitching will stop once the UK is outside the EU? Then I'm all in favour of it.

as if...

If Cameron and his goons really intended to leave the eu, they'd have left a long time ago instead of pushing the ballot further and further back. It looks more like a bluff so they can blackmail other EU members to vote in favour of the UK on legislations. "Do what we want or we will leave". It doesn't seem to work (anymore) though. Most MEPs and Countries are probably as fed up with the UK as I am by now.

To loosely quote Merkel: Dear mister Cameron, if you dug yourself a hole, at least stop digging.

 

[grumpy]

Hearing brits trying to lecture others about "democratic legitimacy" is the funniest thing in the world considering the huge democratic deficit within the "u"k.

 

[Arksy]

Hearing brits trying to lecture others about "democratic legitimacy" is the funniest thing in the world considering the huge democratic deficit within the "u"k.

What?? Could you explain what you mean?