“But you know that if you vote Labour, your local Labour candidate wins, you’re going to get Gordon Brown.”

Which is hardly any real choice. Supposing you like your candidate (i.e. as someone who will properly represent your interests in Parliament and do good for the constituency) but don’t like Brown. What do you do? Supposing it’s the other way around?

It then comes down to the more brutally honest question of whether you’re actually voting for a Parliamentary representative or just an agent of the party. To whom does that person’s loyalties lie? Supposing there was an issue where the constituents wanted the MP to vote one way and the party wanted them to vote the other? Supposing the party then imposed a three line whip? We would then see how much in deficit British democracy really is.

Rather than replying to the specifics I think I ought to state my general case.

As Jack rightly points out, no-one elected Gordon Brown directly. But you know that if you vote Labour, your local Labour candidate wins, you’re going to get Gordon Brown. There’s no equivalent at EU level, but there could be.

I accept there are many failings of the European Parliament, but still 40% of Europe’s population vote for it. Somewhere between 60 and 70% of populations vote for national parliaments, although EU matters are only of very minor importance in those elections.

The problem with the EP is that its power is not measurable, i.e. it’s very hard to say what changed one way or another depending on how the EP is composed. If the EP got its act together and used all its powers carefully it could really shape the direction taken by the European Commission, but for whatever reasons it has been ineffective at doing that…

In summary, now as before, I am in favour of a federal EU based on the principles of Parliamentary, representative democracy. That’s the best way to ensure democracy and accountability.

So presumably you don’t think Gordon Brown is a legimate Prime Minister of the UK? He wasn’t elected into that role.

I think a lot more democratic legitimacy flows through national governments and into the Council than exists in the European Parliament, where people are elected on pathetically low turnout and nobody has any idea what they’re voting for or what the EP does. I admit that there is chicken and egg here, but the EP needs to do a LOT of growing up before it has earned the right to have any real say on the big issues facing Europe.

@Jon: you say “any top EU position either needs to be as a result of a parliamentary system (i.e. EP elections) or a direct vote.”, in my view the first is not much more democratic than the nomination by the heads of state and governement, and the second would be as democratic as the selection of the candidates would be.

@robert: the same applies. Yes, an MP is elected by the electorate, but it has been previously selected by the party appareil. No much democracy there. I would even say that there is sometimes much more democratic scrutiny on the ministers than on the MPs, especially if the latter are backbenchers!

The procedures have been intergovernmental enough, which should cause joy among all who want nothing more than “freely cooperating, sovereign nation states”.

This process illustrates why we need EU level parliamentary democracy, with politically responsible government.