Glad I lightened your day
I certainly didn't suggest the EU was anti-business, and I could also have added that they were at an arms length from the unions too - although I was including them in the 'vested interests' of the latter part of that sentence. The point I was making was that elected officials are heavily influenced in policy making by the need to get elected, which is in turn heavily influenced by their donors - the unions, the lobbyists, 'big-business' and so on. So while that influence is still there when it comes to the EU, it is considerably diluted for a number of reasons.
No point in re-running a hundred brexit arguments on this thread. but I think its fair to say that policy on the environment, pollution, human rights, health and safety at work is generally more advanced through EU rules than in the constituent nation's laws, even though I would argue that a large majority of the public would support those rules when considering them in isolation. I think that the contrast between what becomes law in a country and what becomes an EU regulation, comes about because the EU is far more of the 'benevolent dictator' proposed in this thread.
An example is air pollution, for which I am certain the vast majority of the British public would answer yes to the question "do you want clean air and no air pollution"? And yet the supposedly-undemocratic EU has set stricter limits than the democratic UK government ever did and has taken the UK to court over the levels of air pollution in our country. Which is the debate in a nutshell, do you value democracy over clean air?
FYI the greens fought for remain and are now pro-second referendum
