This is ideology. There’s no material mechanism to actually ensure judges are experts or have merit. They’re just picked by politicians, who themselves are selected democratically rather than by merit.
This just cuts out the middlemen. If the selection process is unable to select for merit, then it might as well be democratic.
The UK has an independent Judicial Appointments Commission.
Which can be overruled by an elected official but generally is directed to pick on merit and allowed to do so.
Allowing professionals to pick experts and only stepping in when there is a problem is much better to me than direct elections which quickly become partisan and obstructive to professional candidates.
All it takes is getting a few panel members with an ideological axe to grind and suddenly the selection process for judges and the JAC panel itself becomes politicized in that particular direction.
But furthermore, the very framework of law is political. You can’t actually non-politically adjudicate disputes or reviews or appointments or dismissals, there are always political underpinnings and ideological assumptions embedded within the process. The very fact that they currently “particularly welcome applications from ethnic minority candidates and Welsh speakers” is political, and acknowledges that it is political and ideological and not truly objective.
Law isn’t math.
An attempt to be representative is not equal to being “political”.
It’s actually a strength of the system that minorities get some representation rather than being always voted into zero representatives. And they still have to pass the standards to be considered as experts in the field.
No system is perfect, but look at America. Small area elections for judges produce poor corrupt picks. Large area elections produce partisan fights with extremists campaigning against each other.
There’s no country which is a good advert for directly electing judges.
