regarding your second statement, counter argument to my claimed argument:

Unfortunately I cannot disagree.

I certainly had a much longer history in mind, as well as being selective to begin with the start of the twentieth century, whereabouts the modern system of judicial thought appears to be becoming established, and largely healthy in the broad directions.

(For personal context, my father was born in 1907. Illegitimate, because his father, fearing debtor's prison caused by a profligate young business partner, shot himself, unknowing his wife, at 43, was with child, my father. Ensued flight from our locality, the social opprobrium literally excommunicating. Paperless, illegitimacy was illegitimacy, I will never know how my father, late but present, attended a good school on scholarship, the only document most people ever then could show, unavailable. He couldn't vote, until marriage and property ownership, conveyed superficial ascendancy to the class system. Outright property ownership was still necessary to vote, during his youth.

So, very generally, I think the animus of the judiciary, began to turn, during the years my father grew up. This was in wide canvas a positive effect caused by legislation. But legislation followed countless decisions that created a weight of case law leaving legislators little option but to relieve the courts of the eash of applications, and relieve parliament of increasing embarrassment the result also inadvertently of the suspension of the Houses during wartime. So then we arrive at the classical post war history of equality in the workplace and massive massively painful demographic adjustments that only died out, never were truly assuaged.

I believe that bu the nineteen sixties, the judiciary began to asset a collective sense of greater immediate responsibility. Not least a generation among them by this time ascended or even rocketing to on high, since no encumbents sat above them - although few officers, comparatively, died in the Great Ear, appetite for public service was greatly diminished by experience personal and emotional as well as utilitarian futility. If not life, then so much hope for life, was denuded from a generation whom we don't immediately suspect to be ear casualties. This, too, was (immediately post war, from 50 anyway) the time of great individualism in the Bar. Desire to speak forth, rather than sit in Review, appealed to heartbroken men. Counterintuitively, the common trenches of the first, spurred little individual cry - the nation was st home, almost all, the war a newspaper report of alien incomprehensibility. Counterintuitively, considering that total war, involving all able, promoted iconic, stereotypical, nonconformity and isolation self ideation of a supreme personal victory. My own pet take how individualism was acceptable in total war, arose from the beginning of the concept of universal sacrifice of workshops, farms and all for the effort, leading to a new search for identity. Thus"we're all in it together" did not resonate with the irony it probably should. Unfortunately, this set a dangerous precedent, of heroism and the diminution abstract, of collective costs of war, which mars our vision and sensibilities, today.

I can't fairly stud my comment with case examples, because without a thorough survey and definitions chosen after thorough triage, I will crudely sculpt citations and findings from insignificance into fractured lay icons, else omit the most emotionally charged decisions for completely over sensitive reasons; I should make a complete hash of tracing the notable cases in isograph landscaping for beneficial study of the landscape formed by the nation's elements in fullest force.

It is altogether too easy to speak of exceptional counsel the oratory and the skills of summary, and never know when you are reviewing the true seismic shifts of history.

But I will - I have been in undercurrent throughout my comment - guiding by the hidden valley of my argument, the reader of my thoughts towards my perception that the judiciary took a conscientious active role, forcibly I think, from the time of first post rationing government. So much was in flux, I don't think of party politics before about 1965. This is totally arbitrary on my part, no different from opening a dictionary close enough to the first letter of the sought word, to be convenient.

I offer a single reason behind judicial activism, as relatively speaking certain rulings arguably might be considered: cold war and specifically the outlawing of the Communist Party Of Great Britain. I think the acquittal of Jeremy Thorpe, for example, was intended to relieve others of the the danger of blackmail.

EU parliament used to be a place to dump 2nd rate politicians who:

(1) Were appreciated by their party, but not so much by the voters. The real politics happened in the domestic parliament, so the parties would run their 1st rate politicians in the domestic elections.

(2) And were personally very interested in the EU, and thus wanted to run.

We have been sending 2nd rate but very pro-EU politicians to the EU parliament. So the opinions of the members of the parliament are quite far from the average opinions of the EU populace. We are slowly beginning to realize that the European Parliament actually matters, and we should give some serious thought about who we vote there.

It's democratic on paper, sure. But in reality, does anyone know who their MEP is? Five year terms? Total lack of responsiveness (according to comments on here today), lack of real democratic accountability. Sure, it looks democratic, but in reality it's not. Particularly when the EU Parliament doesn't even initiate legislation, the un-elected European Commission does.

First, people would have to vote an EU-sceptic majority for their domestic parliaments. This would need to happen in a majority of EU countries. Then this majority of EU-sceptic governments could achieve a majority either in the Council or in the Commission, and propose laws to change the EU governance. Then the Parliament would have to accept these laws.

I think it would have to be the Council, it's difficult to see the Commission proposing a law that decreases the power of the Commission.

Didn't the people of several EU countries vote against the EU treaty, only to have the rules of the game changed so that it would go into effect anyways?