British citizens, resident Commonwealth citizens and the Irish will be voting in the referendum on UK continued membership of the EU. The protests from people living in the UK with various European nationalities, on discovering there is no such thing as a European passport, were many.
My favourite was the Italians: we're paying taxes in the UK they cried (but tribute never conferred Roman citizenship); had they paid taxes in Italy perhaps they would have been able to stay and work in their paradise of a country and contest the failures of the European Union's economic and political rigidities from there.
As the EU unravels, starting from the fundamentally ill-conceived Eurozone, and continuing through the necessary reassertions of political realities it was supposed to supersede, the limits of 'extend and pretend' are reached. The EU's democratic deficits are exposed in elections in Greece, Spain, the UK and now Poland; its wobbles over migration and settlement mark profound fault lines.
We have Renzi's Partito Democratico, Cameron's Conservatives, Tsipras' Syriza, Iglesias' Podemos, and the new Polish President all calling for a new Europe. But no forum. The European parliament is a fake.
The 'European' electorate does not exist.
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There is no European Demos, hence there can be no European "democracy"; and you are correct, HG, the European Parliament is simply a very efficient way of funding people who otherwise would have no other visible means of support - and it is a Parliament without an Opposition (loyal or otherwise).
Pah.
Yes, Elby. No European Demos. Just a propaganda pretence.
The Independent has a whole article of complaint this morning about an Italian woman who migrated from Sicily to the UK in 1954. And STILL she hasn't applied for UK citizenship. Well, she can in time to vote in the referendum (though her descendents might well have to choose THEIR citizenship if she does. If you want to be an Italian you have to keep your passport nose clean.) Imagine the lives they would have led in God-forsaken rural Sicily instead of Luton or Bedford with the UK's benign welfare-state climate. Her descendent continues to moan about having paid their taxes. Well so they should have done. If they don't want to be British don't expect to vote though.
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