With four days to go before we can take part in the second largest "democratic" election in the world (after India's), it is not just the diversion of the scandals engulfing our own Parliament which has driven voting for the EU's version further than ever off the radar. At least, last time the flurry of excitement over Kilroy-Silk and Joan Collins – resulting in the UK Independence Party winning 12 seats – temporarily halted that steady collapse in turnout which in 1999 saw only 23 per cent of the electorate bothering to vote. The trouble with the European Parliament, as we know, is that none of us really know how to relate to it, or what connection this remote, mysterious body has with our lives. Probably not more than one in a thousand could name more than a couple of the MEPs we sent there last time. The farcical "list system", based on dividing Britain up into 12 vast "Euro-regions", means we probably didn't even know the names of the mediocrities we voted for. As for what they did when they got there, all that most of us are dimly aware of is that their financial rewards and perks make Westminster look like a poorhouse, with MEPs now on £83,262 a year, plus a further £34,000 food and drink allowance just for turning up, plus £229,000 for staff and office expenses, plus travel expenses so lavish that, as one put it, "if you can't pocket half of what you get, you're not trying". Nor does the political class help us to any better understanding with the vacuous leaflets they have been putting through our doors, most of which have little to do with the EU anyway. Labour tells us that Gordon Brown has been saving the economy, that if "you or a loved one" lose your job you might be able to benefit from the Mortgage Protection Scheme, and that David Cameron's top priority is to get a "tax cut for 3,000 millionaires". The Tories supply us with lots of pictures of Mr Cameron and tell us that they are "campaigning for local rail services". The Lib Dems tell us that Nick Clegg cares about "our children's future" and that the "carbon footprint" of their leaflet has been "offset" with an African Energy Efficiency Project (ie telling poor Africans they can't have reliable electricity). The BNP mentions the Somme, Dunkirk and the Falklands, and uses a picture of foreign actors in hard hats to promise it will "protect British jobs". Ukip, over a picture of Churchill giving the V-sign, tells us it wants out. Yet the fact is that, in important respects, this parliament they want us to elect them to has considerably more power over how Britain is governed than the sadly diminished talking shop we have in Westminster (which is one reason why our MPs have so lost their self-respect). As the creators of the "European project" intended, this über-Parliament, with its vast, brave-new-world buildings in Brussels in Strasbourg, has steadily expanded its powers at the expense of national parliaments, and will do so even more if they get their "Not-the-Constitution" Lisbon Treaty. But virtually nothing we can do on Thursday will have any real influence in deciding how we are governed. With 78 of 785 MEPs, Britain has only a tenth of the influence on anything that goes on in the European Parliament. And the vast majority of MEPs, including our own, are only really concerned with promoting the interests of the new supra-national government of which they are part. In short, the result of this week's election will be virtually meaningless, apart from giving voters a chance to express outrage at how they have in effect been disfranchised by our increasingly corrupt political class. Many people will express their anger by shutting their eyes and voting for Ukip (now standing second ahead of Labour in the polls). Rather fewer, but still quite a lot, will do so by voting BNP. But the very fact that these parties exist is a symptom of how our main parties have floated off into a bubble of their own conceits and concerns, which show no understanding of the world in which the rest of us live. In that sense, Thursday will drive another nail into the coffin of what, within living memory, was still, along with America's, the most respected democratic system in the world. • Reporting recently on the book Brussels Laid Bare by the EU's former chief accountant, Marta Andreasen, I said she was Ukip's lead candidate for the East Region. She is in fact second on their South-East list, after Ukip's leader, Nigel Farage. Now there's an idea... I suspect that many of those who recently elevated Joanna Lumley into the most admired political leader of our time may have had second thoughts when she announced her intention this week to vote for the Green Party. Having read through its manifesto, full of proposals for how its MEPs would work for more windfarms and cycle tracks, cleaner hospitals and fewer obese children, most of us might find bits of its wishful thinking we could support, although we might hesitate over the Greenies’ wish to shut down the economy. For gritty realism, I’m not sure that I don’t prefer the Fair Pay, Fair Trade Party (“the most exciting political party ever”), which promises, “EU to eradicate thirst for 1.2 billion people worldwide within 12 months”. On the roofs of the world Someone who came up with the bright idea of helping to save the planet from global warming by making us all paint our roofs white – to reflect the sun’s heat back into space – would, you might think, be laughingly dismissed as a harmless nutter. But Stephen Chu, who was seriously suggesting this last week, is not only a scientist – and one of the 20 Nobel Prize-winners invited by Prince Charles to St James’s Palace to spend three days discussing how to save the planet – he is also, God help us, President Obama’s energy secretary, in charge of US energy policy. As I say, God help us.European elections 2009: No wonder voters can't be bothered
Virtually nothing we can do in the European elections on Thursday will have any real influence in deciding how we are governed, says Christopher Booker.
Sunday, 31 May 2009
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