Lots of EU noise - so why not me too?

A BIG debate has started here in UK about our membership of the EU. There seem to be various strands:

1. Ask the people, in a referendum, who may well say 'get out', unless they understand more than they do today about how it all works.

2. Work up a sweat in government, among Conservatives only although they don't have a majority - we have a Coalition, and demand op-outs on various things. Force change from outside by asking and threatening re-negotiation of treaties.

3. Force change from the inside, by deeper cooperation in European Government, but this might look like a move to federalism? Which in the end is what it is!

What choices? But why?

The EU has done a great job so far by opening up mutual market access, brought about mainly by harmonising the way we do things - like make sausages, or the time we spend at work, or justice and human rights… this has certainly had the effect of swinging people to think we have some common interests, it has prevented what we want it to, war.

But it has meant that a lot of things previously decided by the sovereign right of our Parliament, elected by we the people, are now being decided in the EU HQ where 27 different views have to be coordinated. This has brought about the situation where, it is estimated, 75% of our new laws come from EU Directives, and are just rubber stamped by the UK Parliament. This in turn means that politicians have lost lost of power.

And here's the rub. They don't like it, they hate it. But a kind of sop has been handed to the people who have until now voted for these UK MPs, by creating an EU Parliament and voting for entirely different people to send there.

This has caused huge difficulties in democracy. And as the EU Parliament gets stronger, with more powers, inevitably the Euro MEPs get more powerful. But our domestic politics has not woken up to this. Just check how much TV reporting covers the UK Parliament a how little covers the EU Parliament - actually their coverage is about zero.

So what to do?

If we want to stay in the EU, and this I think goes without saying for our position in the world and our future prosperity, then we have to improve the democracy of the EU.

I have a proposal for this which is quite simple. Stop electing separate MEPs and just elect UK MPs. Then send a bunch of them to Strasbourg as our Euro MEPs. Rotate them every 6 months and this will closely bring the discussions in the UK inline with EU decisions, and give us a genuine strength for EU reform and a way to drive it forward.