I was trying to reflect the argument as made, rather than saying I agree with it myself.<p>That said, 33k is quite a bit larger than I expected, actually, given that the entire UK civil service is about 10x that size but the EU doesn&#x27;t do benefits management, tax collection, defence, doesn&#x27;t run a justice system, transport system, etc.<p>With respect to democracy in Europe, it&#x27;s a bit complicated. People tend to care a lot more about their national parliaments than the EU parliament. The UK, in particular, gets outvoted in the EU parliament a whole lot, so regardless of what you think of the system in the general sense, for the UK it results in having to do things it doesn&#x27;t want quite a bit.