Codecision?

Even leaving aside the routine presence of all and sundry in the Council of Ministers, codecision has been the European Union's ordinary legislative procedure since the Treaty of Lisbon, so it really does matter who sits in the European Parliament. For all its faults, largely built in, codecison bears comparison with our own parliamentary process, which is likewise that way largely by design. The loss of a Government Bill would amount to a vote of no confidence. When did it last happen? Parliament just approves Government Bills, and such Private Members' Bills as the Government felt like giving time, often ones that it had written for itself and handed over to someone amenable. Anything that entailed spending one penny piece has to be proposed by the Executive.

Ursula von der Leyen was appointed with the support of only a bare majority of MEPs, 383 out of 705, but Rishi Sunak was probably appointed without the support of any majority of the House of Commons, and Liz Truss certainly was by a very wide margin. Even the claim to have commanded the support of the majority of MPs from the governing party never remotely applied to her. Yet she still became Prime Minister. And it fell to the money markets to bring her down. There can only be a motion of no confidence in the entire Government, and that would entail a General Election if it passed. No MP from the governing party would ever vote for that. Truss never commanded majority support in the Commons, but there was no way of getting rid of her. Not there, anyway. The City could do it. And did. 

As with the monarchy, we have a Parliament because foreigners will pay to look at its palace. That is as good a reason as any. Within this tourist attraction, the Executive ensures, although most MPs including most Conservatives are more than happy that it should, that the United Kingdom remain as closely aligned as possible with the EU. So it matters to us who sits both in the Council of Ministers and in the European Parliament. No one from Britain does, but the people who do, make our laws. They will do so even more after this General Election, no matter what its outcome. Look who they are going to be.

Well, of course. While pre-existing conservative phenomena have been known to ally with Fascism, usually to their own ruin, it is the liberal bourgeoisie that keeps Fascism in reserve for when it might ever face any serious demand to share its economic or social power with anyone who did not have it before the rise of the bourgeois liberal order, or to share its cultural or political power with anyone at all. EU suzerainty will be one of its many, many, many means of repressing any such challenge in the Britain of the next five, 10, 15 and 20 years.