To most people in the UK the European Elections in May 2014 will either be a big yawn, a chance to protest about Europe, or chance to protest about UK domestic policies – and if recent turnout figures of 38% in 2004 and 35% in 2009 are a guide, it will be apathy that determines your constituencies MEP’s.
But how many people are aware that they may get a say in our membership of the E.U. - and that whether we stay ‘in’ or ‘out’ of the EU - they are sending their regional representatives to Brussels on huge salaries and expenses, averaging around £182,000 a year.
Indeed, one senior UK MEP who shall remain nameless, but is still in office, told the Observer in May 2009 that he had already claimed close to £2 million just in expenses, way back then.
So what I have trouble getting my head around, is just how expensive the protest vote can be, not just in monetary terms, but also in the quality of muppet, of any political party, we send over to Europe to represent out interests.
So while I ‘get it’ that in the past, a EU membership protest vote usually meant that the town fruitcake could get the taxpayers jolly to heckle a foreign bureaucrat, or two, on your behalf, but to but to reiterate the point, and a similar shock could await the independence referendum in Scotland, what happens if there was a surprise ‘yes’ vote and we are being represented by a bigger bunch of half wits, on far bigger remuneration packages, than the usual suspects in Westminster?
So IF/WHEN an E.U. Referendum is guaranteed by law, on every practical level, isn’t it far better to have VOTED for the best MEP candidate within a constituency, to PROMOTE the interests/views of that constituency, REGARDLESS of which UK political ‘tribal’ colours they wear – rather than take pot luck that around 37% of the voters get it right?
Remember no one party can wave their expensive MEP magic wand and GUARANTEE that the UK leaves Europe, as only a parliamentary majority in the house of commons of 326 seats, against the ‘never will leave’ political party’s, could even BEGIN the process of changing the necessary laws.
Isitmebut the EU has morphed from a useful Common Market of several large industrial trading nations to an ever larger expensive and inefficient Federation of Europe, that needs to change to be internationally competitive.
But whether it changes or not, ‘the people’ have to be trusted to have their say, and the only practical way I can see that EVER happening, is via an all party politically binding Referendum in 2017.
What are your thoughts?