[greatpatton]

Referring to 'unelected officials' highlights a misunderstanding of how the EU operates and getting really tiring. They are named like most executive of other countries and confirmed by the EU parliament. The French prime minister is even more an unelected official than a EU commmissioner.

[A_D_E_P_T]

In the US, executive branch functionaries don't get to propose legislation, and even their ability to interpret rules has recently been constrained.

The EU commission consists of appointed bureaucrats, and one's national representatives in the EU commission and the EU parliament are always -- by definition -- a minority. I think that the UK's old share was something like 9%, which was not nearly enough to pass or block legislation without a lot of outside assistance.

Simply put, there was no way for a voter in the UK to meaningfully affect EU regulations. There was -- and still is -- essentially zero democratic influence at the member-state level.

[cauch]

But similarly, for a voter in Kansas, there is no way for them to meaningfully affect US regulation: Kansas people and representatives are a minority when taken at the level of the US, and they will not be enough to pass or block legislation without a lot of non-Kansas assistance. (and, sure, Kansas also has its own laws, the same way being in the EU does not mean each country does not have their own government able to take a lot of decisions independently of the EU decisions)

[A_D_E_P_T]

Sure, but there are important differences.

Kansas is run by officials who are formally affiliated with the national political parties -- the Democrats or Republicans -- and in most cases they'll push the party line. In the UK, if you're an old-school Tory, which is a sizable portion of the national voting demographic, the majority of the political parties in the EU commission and parliament will not reflect, promote, or support many of the positions you feel most comfortable with. The EU commission and parliament are dominated by centrist, pan-European blocs (e.g., EPP, S&D, Renew Europe) that rarely align with Tory priorities.

Kansas itself is not a uniparty state; the current governor is a Democrat, the former was a Republican. The EU, in contrast, had (and still has) an entrenched majority that is to the Tories as the Democracts are to Republicans -- and there's no prospect of that changing. So, de facto, those old-school Tories were like Republicans in Hawaii -- set to lose every contest.

Further, if Kansas were somehow a uniparty state, a Kansas man who feels out of place or unhappy with his local political situation could pack up and move to Texas, or Idaho, or Vermont. Happens all the time. But you can't exactly ask a working-age man from Leeds to pack up and move to Luxembourg or Slovenia. It's a much more difficult proposition, and it almost never happens.

[cauch]

Ok, so the problem is not that the UK representatives in EU was in minority. This was your argument, that you are now admitting is not a good one. You change your argument now, in your previous message, you say nowhere that one condition for being "unelected" is someone to be not culturally integrated with the EU (or something like that). And that is a different discussion, where there is no winner, because the pro-remain people are probably considering themselves close to EU, and therefore, for them, your argument does not correspond to their reality (and "unelected" becomes rather subjective).

But also, if you don't like Kansas as an example, you can take any different example, taking any region, in any country. You often have parties that are located in some part of a country and not the other (Scottish and Welsh for example, but you probably have that in plenty of other places) and that don't align either with the dominant parties. Where do you stop? It looks like you it's just an easy no-true-scotsman argument where you just decide that this specific case is "unelected officials", and you can always find unrelated differences to pretend that other cases are ok.