You can have democracy or the EU. You can't have both.

We all know that cousins shouldn't marry, but even today people ignore that most important rule - and the results can be quite distressing. We know that intermarrying can cause serious disabilities and birth defects, but there is an as yet unexplored social phenomenon as to how their offspring invariably end up working as Members of the European Parliament.

While it's all too easy to mock the afflicted in Ukip clan, when you look at the rest of our MEPs your realise that being a knuckle-scraping primate is not unique to Ukip. Clearly from the Green party pictured above we can see the family tree has been reduced to a shrub. This is quite serious. If any of these people were counter staff at your local B&Q and you had questions about an electrical appliance you would ask to see the manager or a supervising adult.

I suspect the reason for this is twofold. Firstly nobody with any gumption wants to be an MEP if they can succeed at something else in politics. Media follows people of influence, and MEPs are certainly not influential either at home or in the EU. Secondly, nobody cares about the EU.

With a turnout of only 35.6% at the last by-elections it is fair to say that the vast majority of the British public have no real interest in EU affairs and in the main only turn out to make sure mouth-breathers from the loony fringes get in. In this, you can hardly blame the EU for resisting any moves to make it more democratic. With so much power concentrated among so few it would be like handing a loaded Uzi to to a toddler. If this is what democracy might look like, you can almost understand their phobia of it.