&gt;The past 15 years especially have seen a more or less constant stream of scandals where people at the top of societies power structures very clearly acted badly or even broke laws, yet nobody was ever held to account ... except those who tried to reveal the wrongdoing.<p>I find this argument baffling when applied to the EU.<p>Most of the scandals were in the banking and finance industries, not - say - the EU parliament.<p>The Greek debacle, which was probably the biggest failure of the EU since its creation, was <i>created</i> by the EU&#x27;s banking and finance industries.<p>Perhaps it&#x27;s the industry that&#x27;s the problem, and not Europe itself?<p>Not that the EU isn&#x27;t remote, but it&#x27;s not so remote that it has no interest in promoting standards of human rights legislation.<p>By a remarkable coincidence, a key foundation of Brexit is the dismissal of the EU&#x27;s requirement to treat workers in a civilised manner as &quot;Brussels red tape&quot;.<p>As for Trump - the idea that you can dethrone an Establishment run by and for narcissistic billionaires by electing another narcissistic billionaire seems entirely fantastic.<p>If Trump is elected, the US establishment will be happy to do business with him, as usual.<p>Sanders may be a tougher nut to crack, which is why he can&#x27;t be allowed to win - and why the idea that these candidates &quot;challenge the Establishment&quot; is nonsense, when no Establishment policy is under any serious threat in this election. (Or any other.)