“Politicians receive all the benefits associated with holding power.”

Farage's claim that politicians, by ceding power to Europe, "get all the trappings of power and none of the responsibility" contains a kernel of truth but materially overstates the situation through its absolute framing. **What the evidence supports:** - National politicians in EU member states do retain significant material benefits of office — salaries, staff budgets, official prestige, travel allowances, and general elected status. UK Parliament records from 2011 show MPs received salaries, staffing allowances (up to ~£115,000/year), office costs, accommodation support, and other perks. - Substantial academic literature confirms that the EU's multilevel governance structure creates opportunities for "blame-shifting." National politicians can and do deflect blame for unpopular policies to Brussels, as documented in peer-reviewed research on EU blame games. This supports Farage's general point that EU governance complexity can obfuscate responsibility. **Where the claim overstates:** - The word "all" is a clear overstatement. By ceding decision-making authority to EU institutions, national politicians demonstrably lose real power. Academic research on the "de-parliamentarization thesis" documents that national parliaments lose legislative sovereignty in integrated policy areas and can be forced to implement policies they could not reject — a genuine loss of power, not merely retention of "all" its benefits. - The claim of "none of the responsibility" is also overstated. Research shows national politicians remain electorally accountable for EU-related positions — citizens use EU attitudes to inform national vote choices, meaning politicians face consequences at the ballot box for their EU stances and policy outcomes. - Farage himself, later in the same interview, acknowledges that parliamentary democracy gives voters "the power to sack everybody" — a form of responsibility that contradicts the absoluteness of "none of the responsibility." **Conclusion:** The claim contains a kernel of truth — the EU structure does allow some blame avoidance, and politicians do retain material perks — but the absolute framing ("all the benefits," "none of the responsibility") materially overstates the situation. Politicians lose genuine decision-making power to the EU, and they retain real electoral accountability. Sources: - IPSA, "Annual Review of the MPs' Scheme of Expenses and Costs Consultation – January 2011," https://assets.ctfassets.net/nc7h1cs4q6ic/3VqLKvsouHaOneoajLzYz2/169e350d4a6f0afa11d8f62dee20d3e5/Scheme_Consultation_January_2011.pdf - UK Parliament, "Members' Allowance Expenditure 2008/09 to 2010/11," https://www.parliament.uk/mps-lords-and-offices/members-allowances/house-of-commons/hocallowances07/ - Heinkelmann-Wild & Rittberger, "Multilevel blame games: Blame-shifting in the European Union," Governance (Wiley), https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/gove.12459 - Auel & Kayser, "The EU Multi-Level System and the Europeanization of Domestic Blame Games," Politics and Governance, https://doi.org/10.17645/pag.v8i1.2522 - Winzen, "Political Integration and National Parliaments in Europe," ETH Zurich / Living Reviews in Democracy, https://ethz.ch/content/dam/ethz/special-interest/gess/cis/cis-dam/CIS_DAM_2015/WorkingPapers/Living_Reviews_Democracy/Winzen.pdf - Springer Nature, "Consequences of EU Politicisation for Voting in National Elections," https://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1007/978-3-031-29187-6_13