So do you support the notion of an elite ruling class? I doubt this is what you are saying because you're certainly aware that ruling classes invariably produce privileged, cocooned dolts. How do we ensure that the best of the best (the elite) ideas are the ones which get the most attention? By having people act as the voice of certainty and authority, when really we are navigating our way through foggy unchartered waters? People are sick of "experts" because for far too long people who are really just positing theories and expressing their opinions have been held up as experts with certain knowledge of things and life. Even though it is often very clear that they have little knowledge or experience of the lives of their audience. And yes our understanding of things has come on in leaps and bounds over the last couple of centuries but in comparison to what we have yet to learn and discover it's...

The next bit is all about EU and Brexit so feel free to ignore if ... you're fed up to the back teeth with it.
I live in the Republic of Ireland. We have a constitution and if changes or additions have to be made to that document then we the people usually have our say on whether we agree or not with the proposed changes by voting in a referendum. Our country became a contracting state of the then EEC in 1973. In the 60s, before we had even joined, the European courts had ruled that EEC law was held supreme over the national laws of contracting states. If they hadn't ruled this way the participating countries would have continued to flout the laws in order to protect their domestic markets and trade and the European project would never have become the success that it has. We knew this was the case when we signed up but at that time the EEC was really an economic community more so than anything else. It did affect domestic labour laws and so equality legislation but the reason it did so was primarily for economic reasons of reducing the barriers to trade and easing labour movement between states.

Over the years the areas in which European law plays a role has increased - greatly. What started out as a purely intergovernmental union has mutated into something that isn't really a federal union nor is it simply an intergovernmental one either. And there has been very little debate and discussion between politicians and electorates about where exactly the European project is headed. I personally think this is one of the major causes of disaffection many citizens in EU countries feel towards the EU - in spite of the fact that the benefits of being part of the union are many and obvious to most people.

Because of our history our sovereignty was explicitly enshrined in our constitution. The Single European Act was the first major increase in the community's reach since we joined. When it was set to be approved by our parliament (in 88 or 89 I can't remember) a man named Crotty challenged the act saying that it must be put to the people because accepting this treaty meant a diminution in our sovereignty (I think that was the argument). Similar cases were taken in other EEC countries. None of them were successful because either the courts ruled along the lines of "while it's not a problem we're allowing it" or, as in the case of the UK, that the parliament represented the people and so a vote by the parliament amounts to the same as direct vote by the people. Not so in Ireland. Crotty won his case and so, alone among the members states Ireland has had to have a referendum each time the union created a treated which increased it powers. We've voted on the Maastricht, Amsterdam, Nice and Lisbon treaties. Maastricht represented a major increase in the EU powers and a shift towards a much more political union. The proceeding treaties have followed on down this road - but they are also concerned with adapting the structure of the union to be more efficient in this novel union that is fundamentally an economic union but that has become increasingly political and to a much lesser [ this is the point at which I realised how ridiculous it was to post this under the video and cut it out - but if you're interested in hearing the rest of what I was going say I do go into all this in the post http://twimii.com/brexit-the-eu-and-um-youtube ]