Like everyone else in Britain, I received last week a communication from the Electoral Commission about the coming EU referendum. The pamphlet states the case for each side and gives instructions on how to vote.
At first sight that process epitomises democracy in action — informing public opinion in a balanced way and seeking its judgment. On closer examination the leaflet illustrates why momentous decisions should not be made this way.
The Remain and Leave camps were given a page apiece to set out the issues, with the result that each offers a list of unsupported and mostly unsupportable assertions. Britain benefits from the EU by £91bn a year, claims Remain. But Leave says the UK pays more than £350m a week to the EU, enough to hire 600,000 nurses. (There are almost 350,000 already working in Britain, so goodness knows where they would be recruited or what they would do.) We get back from Europe 10 times as much as we contribute, says Remain.