I'm going to take a crack at this. The colonies technically had a crown appointed representative who spoke for the colonists in Parliament. Colonists were originally granted charters that allowed them to set local legislative bodies to approve taxes. After those bodies were abolished and a royal governor was established in the colonies, the colonists were actually more equal to the average Englishman at the time. The governor or one of his people technically represented the American colonists. The colonists were angry they hadn't elected him to represent them but most Englishmen didn't get to directly choose their representative because voting rights were very limited.

Just to tack this on to your other answer, but Parliament wasn't a Parliament of the British Empire, it was merely the Parliament of the United Kingdom. For a colony to have a say in how Britain was run would be absurd.