George Orwell would have voted to leave the European Union
spartacus-educational.com
spartacus-educational.com
> the spectacle of a community where people are relatively free and happy and where the main motive in life is not the pursuit of money or power. In other words, democratic Socialism must be made to work throughout some large area. But the only area in which it could conceivably be made to work, in any near future, is Western Europe. Apart from Australia and New Zealand, the tradition of democratic Socialism can only be said to exist — even there it only exists precariously — in Scandinavia, Germany, Austria, Czechoslovakia, Switzerland, the Low Countries, France, Britain, Spain, and Italy. Only in those countries are there still large numbers of people to whom the word ‘Socialism’ has some appeal, and for whom it is bound up with liberty, equality, and internationalism. [...] Therefore a Socialist United States of Europe seems to me the only worth-while political objective today.
When you do a Google search on "Orwell European Union", the article is the 3rd result.
Looks like the writer couldn't be bothered to JFGI.
Such a claim is disengenious. Of course nobody likes "being ruled" - so on an emotional level the EU must be a bad thing.
Also, this makes no sense unless supported by a claim that such a condition is unique to living in the EU.
The only way to interpret "being ruled" in the context of the EU is that it means having a hierarchical civil service (the EU commission). So why would having a UK civil servant (instead of an EU one) decide how bananas should be graded be considered a liberation from bureaucracy?
In fact, Orwell hated this kind of weaselly, ambiguous and emotionally manipulatitve statement - particulary when use to advance a political adgenda.
The "[Dead person] would have voted [x] on the EU" is the most facile form of political argumentation we've had the misfortune to experience over the past few month, and this is one of the weakest examples of this kind of argument I've seen. And if you forced me at gunpoint to construct an argument from the authority of a long dead person on Brexit, I'd probably pick someone whose politics were a little more consistent, considerably more pragmatic and a lot less a product of the very specific political climates of the era he found himself in than Orwell.
The EU is part of a "democratic form of government": the Parliament is elected directly by its citizens, while the Commission is nominated by the democratically elected governments of its member countries.
What we miss is more accountability, which we could get if the Commission was expressed directly by the Parliament, or elected directly by EU citizens.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/European_Commission#Legislativ...
"If one meets a powerful person--Rupert Murdoch, perhaps, or Joe Stalin or Hitler--one can ask five questions: what power do you have; where did you get it; in whose interests do you exercise it; to whom are you accountable; and, how can we get rid of you? Anyone who cannot answer the last of those questions does not live in a democratic system."
Moreover, countries can leave at any time, as the UK has just done. All round, seems to exceed your criteria.
Your "Moreover, countries can leave at any time, as the UK has just done." sounds a bit odd in the context of this argument. "It's silly for countries to leave the EU on the grounds that it's not democratic, when it's obviously democratic because countries can leave the EU".
Yes, technically correct. What happened last time however was that the EP said "We want Juncker and we'll veto anyone else". There was a long staring contest and the EP eventually won. A veto isn't a technicality that you can approximate away - it's just as important as being able to propose laws.
The national leaders generally didn't like this, because they prefer the EU being more like a (huge, weird) deal negotiation table than something with direct representation. The national leaders are ultimately in charge, so this whole episode is mostly an unforeseen consequence of past treaties that they're willing to tolerate.
But hey look at EU over there
Well, you could try voting for national politicians and EP fractions that doesn't like the person in question. It's unlikely to succeed, for much the same reason that voting to get rid of national politicians is unlikely to succeed, but that's more of a tyranny of the majority kind of thing.
Personally I view the political spectrum as a donut rather than straight left-to-right -- there is a point where the two become equal before diverging again.
The left/right divide is one of my pet peeves...
Frankly, it would be a better piece if they cut that paragraph out and changed the title. It was too brief to be convincing anyways.
Orwell was a smart person. He'd see the EU would be problematic and that it probably wouldn't be a perfect government on the first attempt. He would, however, quickly notice how unpractical leaving is and vote against it.
The European pairlament is even elected directly with direct appointment of the parliamentarians, which is more direct than in a lot of eu countries where you only elect parties which in turn propose concrete politicians. While all the other bodies are elected indirectly in the national elections.
The problem is that people neither understand nor care for the elections of the pairlament, and thus they think that "they did not vote for this".
It's voting for non-representation.
There was a Scottish MEP who made an impassioned speech in contrast to Farage's nonsense. a) I only saw it due to it showing up in my relatively pro-EU Facebook echo chamber; b) I'd never heard of him before.
It's not anti-democratic that the players for the lower-rang positions are of lower rang.
My biggest worry now is we are likely to go through a difficult period in the UK and all those politicians and journalists that told us our problems are the fault of those foreigners will continue to do so.
Someone on my facebook feed actually stated, in a patronising tone, that it was clearly undemocratic because the president chose the council directly, and the council then chose the president - so they just all vote for each other - and that the president was the only person on the Ballot when the MEPs were asked (obviously they view the MEPs as an entirely useless institution to make the process 'appear' legitimate to the easily fooled).
I mean clearly a little of the functionality has got through, but in such a garbled way that they really have no idea how it works, but think that they do.
Proof of that is how the EU parliament is used to 'park' politicians that are not relevant in their own countries.
When the European Parliament is the place where the politicians want to be, we will know that we have an Europe not controlled by unelected bureaucrats (for better or worse).
Those from parties that would have little chance to get elected into a national government because of 1 3-5% hurdle.
The pirate party is a prime example for this, even though they hold no seats in germany they hold 1 seat as a representative from germany.
It does not help that (in my country, cannot say about others) parties seems to see a seat in the EU parliament as a place you can give to end-of-career candidates or as a sort of consolatory prize to people that would not get much use in national politics.
If the public was educated enough to know how important their vote is on EU policies maybe the parliament wouldn't be such an elephant's graveyard.
The other is to not vote for candidates on parties that select their MEPs from the dead wood pile. The main parties will either be part of EPP or S&D, so it will be a dead vote anyway.
This was precisely my point.
More education on the importance of what gets discussed on the EP would make people demand more from the candidates they vote for.
Politics and media have an incredible adaptation to mass-demands, because they either live of their vote or their audience. It is a graveyard because nobody cares about it being a graveyard, and for the same reason it's not on newspapers or the TV, because the majority does not care (or, alternatively, the majority is already busy enough with internal politics).
I live in the Netherlands so I'm sorry to say this, but they hold way to much power in the eu. Their population is ridiculously tiny and they only have so much money because they act as a soft tax haven.
These referendums should be held EU wide and decided upon based on a total count of all votes from all eu members, where each person holds one vote. Not by asking every state individually and then having a all or nothing ruling.
Then it would be truly democratic.
Further, having an EU wide referendum would require acknowledging that the EU is the supreme governing body in Europe and that all national parliaments are subservient to it. The nations are not ready for that yet and the EU elite know it.
you may consider the Brexit was democratic. In a sense, it was, but it was also one of the most stupid collective acts I ever witnessed. Most people who voted didn't understand what they were actually voting for or against. Welcome to the rule of the uninformed. We elect people so they can make informed decisions for us. Asking an imbecile about something extremely complicated is not helpful. Asking millions of them is equally useless.