A major bugbear of the Leave Campaign during the recent EU referendum was their view that the EU was an undemocratic behemoth. Gove told us there were five EU presidents, all unelected. Of course, they ranged from the EU’s effective head of state (whilst we have a Queen) to the Speaker of the European Parliament (which would be weird to directly elect) and the President of the European Central Bank (which would be stupid to directly elect)
But no person drew more ire than Jean-Claude Jüncker, the Luxembourgish President of the European Commission. An unelected bureaucrat that nobody in Britain wanted! Of course, the Tories shied away from the fact that their strop from the European People’s Party in 2009 gave a lot of latitude to Angela Merkel to choose the European People’s Party spitzenkandidat.
Of course, irony would eat itself when Theresa May was declared our next presumptive prime minister without a ballot of Conservative members, let alone a general election. Of course, May herself was not happy when Gordon Brown did the same in 2007, but that’s for another day.
Today, I present some statistics for your convenience, to fully appreciate the post-Brexit democracy.
Election of the President of the European Commission:
- Number of eligible voters: 751
- Number of indirect votes for Jüncker: 38.6 million (28,014 in the UK)
- Number of direct votes for Jüncker: 425
- Number of Scottish votes for Jüncker: 2
Election of the Leader of the Conservative Party:
- Number of eligible voters: 330
- Number of votes for May: 199
- Number of Scottish votes for May: 1
Comparative statistics:
- Number of votes for Al Murray, the Pub Landlord, in 2015: 318
- Number of nominations received by Gordon Brown in 2007: 313
- Number of votes for Margaret Thatcher in the 1990 leadership election (first round): 204
I don’t know about you, but I’m personally very glad that we took back control of our democracy.