JEAN-CLAUDE JUNCKER may have the most humanitarian instincts in Europe, demanding that all EU member states do much more to help refugees arriving from the Middle East and Africa.

But that’s not the point.

He presides over the very negation of democratic assent. As president of the European Commission, he has been elected by no-one (although Wikipedia lists him as the supreme leader of Europe). His powerful bureaucracy carries no moral authority with the 508 million residents it perpetually seeks to boss about.

He has no idea how repugnant any democrat worthy of the name would have found the scene in the European Parliament yesterday, whereby an unelected president lectured elected but largely powerless MEPs on the moral duty of elected EU member state governments to take the quota of refugees allotted to them by unelected bureaucrats in Brussels.

Of course, governments in Europe and beyond should do everything in their power to help people fleeing tyranny and war. No instruction should be needed from the EU to make refugees welcome and contribute in other ways to combating oppression and promoting peace in their countries of origin.

Least of all should they be instructed by the very body, the EU Commission, whose austerity and privatisation policies have already driven millions of people to the brink of destitution from Ireland and Portugal to Cyprus and Greece.

The EU and its capitalist laws of the jungle — notably the free movement of capital and labour at the command of the monopoly corporations — are part of the problem, not the solution.

The refugee crisis is a global responsibility to alleviate, which is why, to complement national action, there must be whole-hearted engagement with the work of United Nations bodies such as the UN High Commission for Refugees and Unicef.

Relegate this royal relic to history books

THE Morning Star was never likely to join in the media celebrations of Elizabeth Windsor’s record-breaking stint as monarch.

Our enthusiasm cannot match that of Scotland’s First Minister and Scottish nationalist leader by royal appointment, Nicola Sturgeon.

Ms Windsor’s throne is the pinnacle of Britain’s largely undemocratic state apparatus based on privilege, patronage and secrecy. The royal prerogative is a device by which the ruling class and the state agencies which promote its interests can suspend our democratic liberties and go to war.

The oath of loyalty to the monarch is a justification that could be used by MPs, state officials and members of the armed forces, intelligence services and Privy Council in any attempt to suppress democratic government in Britain.

Whatever the personal qualities of the current incumbent or her predecessors and successors (if there are any), the monarchy itself represents and upholds the privileges of inherited wealth, status and power.

Unfortunately 63 years of mostly fawning, sycophantic media coverage has curtailed public support for abolishing this feudal relic in the immediate future.

But abolition of the House of Lords and the Privy Council, full democratic accountability of the intelligence services and trade union rights in the police and armed forces would help bring the British state into a 21st century for the people.