Thread by @willbramhill

@Kevin_O2L I agree it is complex but your your simplification is misleading *and* wrong. The president of the European Parliament is elected from MEPs (whom we vote for) every 30 months; the president of the European Council (made up of democratically elected heads of state) is elected ...

@Kevin_O2L every 30 months; the president of the Commission is appointed by the Council, with the European Parliament’s approval; finally, the presidency of the Council of the European Union is held in turn by a member state, not a person.

In the UK, we don’t have a direct say in who ...

@Kevin_O2L is PM (May’s first term, Gordon Brown) but we may vote for a party they lead at the time of the election; we don’t have a direct say in the people who form the cabinet (which, after all, is government).

At county level we don’t have a say in who is council leader or who ...

@Kevin_O2L becomes a powerful portfolio holder (And don’t forget some of whom have got in with pathetically few votes. To take Kevin Bentley as an example, he got just 2,800 votes out of a possible 14,800 and voters “wasted” 2,100 votes on other parties).

TBH, Kevin, the real ...

@Kevin_O2L democratic sin is in the UK not Europe. Too many of our votes go to waste.

Elections to the EU parliament are by proportional representation. All votes count. Contrast that with our first past the post system where lots of votes (even a majority up to 65% if it is ...

@Kevin_O2L 35, 32, 32, 1) are wasted. electoral-reform.org.uk/voting-systems…

There’s a reason why “dark money” is flooding into the “no deal” campaign. It ain’t pretty and it is nothing to do with democracy in EU or UK. (ends)