Since its inception as the European Coal and Steel Community in 1952, then the European Economic Community from 1956, to the European Union since 1993, the EU elite has sought to separate control in Europe from any expression of the popular will. Today the EU establishment seeks to redefine democracy to mean whatever suits its narrow interests. It thus ends up trying to defend ‘democracy’ from the demos itself–the wrong sort of people, who insist on voting for the wrong sort of parties, the populists.