Ceci n’est pas une pipe

In 1929 Rene Magritte, the world's most famous Belgian, produced one of his most famous and thoughtful pieces of work.

Entitled 'The Treachery of Images' Magritte's piece showed a simple picture of a pipe with the words Ceci n'est pas une pipe (This is not a pipe) written below.
The message contained in this picture: that seeing a representation of a real thing does not bring you closer to experiencing the reality of that thing, still resonates today - eighty years on from its production.

Another surreal Belgian institution, the European Parliament, has just gone through its regular experiment in un-reality, where it tries to convince the 500m people within the EU to engage in the second largest democratic exercise on the planet.

As the results rolled in, what became clear again is that the electorates (those bothering to turn out) of the 27 member states, were voting on issues within their national boundaries.

The French and Italians stuck with their incumbents, shamefully the Hungarians and ourselves gave democratic legitimacy to the extreme right, the Greens did well in Germany and joyously, The Pirate Party took a seat in Sweden.

Even the votes recorded for parties with manifestos robustly against membership of the pan-European trading block are based on inward-looking national issues.
So the view of voters casting their votes on European issues is far removed from the reality of 27 individual national referenda on the EU as a whole.

Similarly, when we are given the opportunity to hang our current prime minister from a metaphorical lamppost, we will be putting our X next to our preferred local candidate. But how many of us will really be voting on a constituency level?

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