In both cases there is a parliament where you vote for someone to represent your area. You cannot vote for anyone outside your area. In the EU your area is a country and in the UK your area is a smaller part of the country. If you live in Scotland, northen Ireland or Wales you are also governed by a different "country" with unelected officials.
Then you have the truly unelected members of government. Advisors and ministry beaurocrats and administrators.
I simply cannot wrap my head around how people can keep regurgitating this crap. All western democracies are full of "unelected" officials. The EU is not some special unelected body. You have your vote and you vote for a representative to represent your constituency. Stop spreading this nonsense.
It's not one I agree with but it certainly seems respectable to me.
The European Commission. Remember, the Commission gets to propose legislation, the Parliament (which you elect) doesn't.
now that we actually know
[...] what it will cost
Why on earth would we do this?
Before the referendum, I heard euroskeptics call the EU undemocratic citing the process where the 2005 EU Constitution / 2008 Treaty of Lisbon. They saw the constitution-to-treaty change as bypassing the rejection of the former by French and Dutch referendums; and the second Irish referendum as bypassing the rejection by the first Irish referendum.
They saw this as analogous to an election in a tinpot dictatorship, where the Glorious Leader winning is the only possible outcome. That the EU had no taste for hearing the the average citizen's voice, unless it was supportive.
If you honestly believe the big thing that's wrong with the EU is that votes are only allowed so long as the outcome is pro-EU, earnestly implementing the referendum result come what may is really the only option. Anything that stands in the way of doing that only serves to prove the importance of doing that.
And unfortunately, the Tory party has a lot of euroskeptics.
...despite the fact that no EU rules can go into force in any EU state without that state passing a law to make it happen within its borders.
And despite the rather pointless European Parliament, the real decisions are made by the elected heads of member state governments, when they meet as the European Council.
So after Brexit the new boss will precisely be identical to the old boss.
But sure, why not believe that the 350 mil a week is being stolen by a bunch of offshore bureaucrats.
The reality is the goal of the EU is to replace national governments. That replacement provides an illusion of democracy but without actually being democratic. Just go read the various statements of the people who control the European apparatus, or witness how the people's primary concerns as measured by opinion polls are simply ignored in Brussels (which does the opposite in fact).
But being an EU member state doesn't give away sovereignty, it's a way of expressing your sovereignty; it's pooling it with others in order to do things you can't do on your own. A leaving member state has a different menu of choices it can make, but because it's position is weaker, the choices are at best narrowed down, or at worst set by other parties.
In the case of the UK, it can choose between favouring a US market over a EU market, but each choice imposes restrictions set entirely by others. The EU will insist on a higher bar of conduct to pass, as part of its level playing field approach. The US will insist on limiting the UK's ability to raise the bar where it sees fit, so that US companies can more readily exploit the UK market, unencumbered by impediments it finds today in the form of things like food safety standards.
And you have to pick one or the other. Today the UK was able to influence the environment that most affected it, because it was a member of the EU. Tomorrow larger parties are shaping what the UK can choose from, with little say in it for British voters. This is a form of sovereignty shrinkage.
The idea that Brexit returns sovereignty is misleading and I suspect a lot of people will be disappointed when they find out in practice what it means.