No one would dispute the mess the British political system and economy have been in since 2016, as Martin Wolf describes so clearly (Opinion, January 22). However he doesn’t seem to acknowledge the EU’s very real flaws, many of which have become increasingly visible in recent years.
The system I worked in from 2009 to 2018 — first as a lobbyist, then parliamentary adviser and latterly as a journalist — was a juddering, bureaucratic mess, with only a veneer of democratic accountability. I suspect if Wolf had to sit through a 12-hour legislative “trilogue” between EU institutions on “short selling” he too would quite seriously question the legitimacy of the beast that has been created.
Any faith I had died as I sat through a press conference with commission president Jean-Claude Juncker and European Council chief Donald Tusk, praising the Maltese prime minister Joseph Muscat’s European credentials — Malta then holding the council presidency. Their honey-tongued words came only months after one of Muscat’s closest ministerial allies was named in the Panama Papers and at a point when the Maltese government was selling European passports to thousands of individuals from the Middle East, Central Asia and China. A few months later, Daphne Caruana Galizia, the Maltese journalist, was murdered by a car bomb.
Being horrified by the state of British politics since 2016 should not blind us to the flaws baked into the European system. And any claim that the EU remains a paragon of liberal democratic virtue will be sorely tested this year as far-right parties continue their advance, not least in the European parliament — the one institution that can legitimately claim to have a democratic mandate.
Harry Cooper
Evesham, Worcestershire, UK
